ThinkPad crashed

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fjs08 · #1 Post by **fjs08** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 2:51 pm

Hi,
My daughter has a ThinkPad t41, which we got in Nov ’03.
When she turns it on, she gets the IBM ThinkPad intro page, that stays on forever then double beeps and it goes to a black page that says in the upper right hand corner,
“error,
0200: failure fixed disk 0
Press f1 to setup”

When she presses the f1, it goes to the IBM BIOS setup utility.
Any thoughts??

Thanks.

Frank

#2 Post by **jdhurst** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 3:06 pm

It looks like it has a bad hard drive. It is probably under warranty. ... jdhurst

fjs08 · #3 Post by **fjs08** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 7:01 pm

I guess you're right.

A lot of guys I've mentioned this to today seem to take it pretty casually, like it's an everyday occurance. Maybe I'm missing something, but to me it's a big deal. I don't expect it to happen in a 5 month old computer.

Frank

#4 Post by **jdhurst** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 7:18 pm

Normally, ThinkPad hard drives are very reliable. Some T41's came with the Hitachi 60GB 7200-rpm hard drive. Older drives (like 5 months ago) needed a firmware upgrade, and without it, they died because of an interaction with the AirBag suspension system. If you had one of those, then yes, it was common. It has long been fixed.

Otherwise, you were just unlucky. ... jdhurst

geekman686 · #5 Post by **geekman686** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 9:23 pm

My T40 hard drive crashed after just 2 weeks. IBM sent me a new hard drive overnight although the recovery CDs took a couple more days to arrive. Since then, after almost one year my T40 has been perfect.

With HDs, the reliability is the classic bath tub curve. Most die very early on or very late in their lives.

kangazoom · #6 Post by **kangazoom** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 9:46 pm

hm, are there any signs to look out for to know whether or not you've got a bad harddrive / one that'll crash?

Daniel · #7 Post by **Daniel** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 11:20 pm

I don't think there are any telltale signs of a good hard drive going bad. Once it starts going bad it goes bad fast. I've had about a 66% chance of hard drive failure in all the computers I've owned. Somewhere around 4/6. People are taking it lightly because it happens so often. Try losing a hard drive setup in a RAID-0 array. The strange thing is I haven't had an IBM GXP75 hard drive fail when everyone's seems to be failing. Got a dead quantum Fireball, Toshiba 2.5mm drive, dead IBM GXP60, and a dead Western Digital.

Hard drives are the most fragile components, they fail in desktops that aren't moved around at all, just under normal usage. Imagine the abuse they get as they're moved around in a notebook computer.

Skywing · #8 Post by **Skywing** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 11:45 pm

Daniel wrote:I don't think there are any telltale signs of a good hard drive going bad. Once it starts going bad it goes bad fast. I've had about a 66% chance of hard drive failure in all the computers I've owned. Somewhere around 4/6. People are taking it lightly because it happens so often. Try losing a hard drive setup in a RAID-0 array. The strange thing is I haven't had an IBM GXP75 hard drive fail when everyone's seems to be failing. Got a dead quantum Fireball, Toshiba 2.5mm drive, dead IBM GXP60, and a dead Western Digital.

Hard drives are the most fragile components, they fail in desktops that aren't moved around at all, just under normal usage. Imagine the abuse they get as they're moved around in a notebook computer.

an undead Deathstar? thats unpossible!

fjs08 · #9 Post by **fjs08** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 4:45 am

HI,
>>Some T41's came with the Hitachi 60GB 7200-rpm hard drive<<

Yikes. I bought my son a t41 in mid April. His is the 2373geu that has a 60 GB 7200 rpm hard drive. How do I know if he should do the upgrade, which if is anyway difficult will be like major surgery for him. He isn't computer literate.

Frank

snife · #10 Post by **snife** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 5:21 am

fjs08 wrote:HI,
>>Some T41's came with the Hitachi 60GB 7200-rpm hard drive<<

Yikes. I bought my son a t41 in mid April. His is the 2373geu that has a 60 GB 7200 rpm hard drive. How do I know if he should do the upgrade, which if is anyway difficult will be like major surgery for him. He isn't computer literate.

Frank

Check out the following page:

http://www.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/ ... PAD-HDFIRM

most likely you will NEED it to avoid the 200 error

fjs08 · #11 Post by **fjs08** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 7:06 am

Snife,

Thanks for the link to the page. I sent it to my son. I was wondering how we could tell if he has an "affected" hard drive.

Frank

cynic · #12 Post by **cynic** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 11:31 am

The upgrade will only work on affected drives. I don't know how to read the firmware of a drive, though I'm sure it is possible. It just happens to be easier to run the non-diskette update and let it do its thing.

Bill (the host of this forum and an IBM ThinkPad reseller) also has information and links to this issue on his site if you click here

fjs08 · #13 Post by **fjs08** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 5:01 pm

I spoke with Bill tonite and he mentioned that one could just shut off the APS system and that would eliminate any conflict. Of course you can't use the APS system.

Frank

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