UltraBay 2000 2K adapter for SATA *PICS*

[robert213]

Comment #1:

I was not able to get the Thinkpad Forum "Search" feature to find these posts:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 08&start=0
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=81315

First Attempt - Keyword "SATA" in Forum "ThinkPad T2x & T3x Series"
Second Attempt - Keyword "Ultrabay" in Forum "ThinkPad T2x & T3x Series"

I found them using the advance search feature through "Google"

Comment #2:

For new owners of T2x and T30 machines, there exists an Ultrabay 2000 adapter for SATA Hard Drives.

Comment #3:

No, that particular SATA adapter will not work in a T2x/T30/T4x/R5x.
You need Ultrabay 2000, not Ultrabay Slim or whatever other variant.
This one works, but is expensive: http://cgi.ebay.com/IBM-Thinkpad-2nd-Ha ... 0015284949

18 months later, this eBay "Buy-It Now" auction is still active...
http://cgi.ebay.com/360015284949

I am converting one of my T30's into a "jukebox" for my office stereo system. I plan to save all of my circa 1960's and 1970's albums on a 500 GB SATA HD.

Admin note: Added PIC warning since I posted a couple of images.

[robert213]

I finally found some time to open up the package tonight.

I received a brand-new Ultrabay 2000 SATA Hard Drive adapter...
a. brand-new, still in shrinkwrap, no scratches
b. minor assembly required - the black plate which holds HD in place must be fastened to adapter. Screws are included.

[cadillacmike68]

I finally found some time to open up the package tonight.

I received a brand-new Ultrabay 2000 SATA Hard Drive adapter...
a. brand-new, still in shrinkwrap, no scratches
b. minor assembly required - the black plate which holds HD in place must be fastened to adapter. Screws are included.

So, with this item (which i can't view because the USAR has ebay blocked) i can use one of those jumbo drives in my T30?? That might come in handy. I had already bought two PATA 320 GBs from WD, they are working fine. but it would simplify file transfer bw my T30s and T61.

[rkawakami]

Yes, the SATA HD Ultrabay 2000 adapter will allow you to use modern-day drives. I picked up two from eBay for $32 (total, including shipping) a few months back: http://cgi.ebay.com/250730717947 It is the one that I've posted about a few weeks ago: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=96810

[cadillacmike68]

Yes, the SATA HD Ultrabay 2000 adapter will allow you to use modern-day drives. I picked up two from eBay for $32 (total, including shipping) a few months back: http://cgi.ebay.com/250730717947 It is the one that I've posted about a few weeks ago: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=96810

That's the seller i found while looking for something else. I think i'll try one of these trays.

[robert213]

It appears that there exists two differents designs of this UltraBay SATA HDD Adapter

I purchased this one:
http://cgi.ebay.com/360015284949

Like my IBM IDE/PATA HDD adapter, the back is completedly enclosed.
Unlike my IBM IDE/PATA HDD adapter, it is made of stainless steel instead of brushed aluminum.

Then, there is this second one:
http://cgi.ebay.com/250730717947

Make note that the back piece is made of plastic, instead of stainless steel, and has an open section approx. 1" x 2".

----------------------------------------
Does anyone else own the first design?

A plastic bar was enclosed in the package. I thought that it would be used to hold the HD securely in place. Apparently, it is simply a plastic protector for the SATA connector when not in use.

Four screws were enclosed. What is the purpose of these screws?

Most importantly, I attempted to mount a Hitachi Travelstar 7K320 250 GB HD. The SATA female connector is apparently incorrectly offset about 1 mm, such that I am NOT able to mount my HD.

Should I use a file to remove the plastic glide tabs along the left side?

Should I return the product back to the seller?

Did anyone else experience this problem?

---------------------------------------------------
Does anyone own the second design? Did you have any problems mounting your SATA HD?

[rkawakami]

I would imagine that the four screws are for securing the hard drive to the adapter. It looks like there's two slots near the "front" edge of the adapter that would attach to the bottom side of the hard drive, keeping it from flopping around. Why are there four screws?? Unless there's two more slots that I can't see near the back edge of the adapter, I don't know.

As far as the alignment of the drive to the adapter is concerned, you shouldn't have to alter anything to get it to work. On some Ultrabay HD adapters, you need to have the HD caddy attached to the drive before everything lines up right. With your adapter, it does not appear to be so. Putting a caddy on the HD would cover the screw holes on the bottom side of the drive, not allowing you to secure it with the screws mentioned above.

[robert213]

I contacted the seller on eBay. I am waiting to hear back from him.

[jasew503]

Wait, the T30s have a Sata controller??

Ive seen these "Ultrabay SATA 2nd Hard Drive Adapters" online in various places for the T4x series and almost bought one, but then I couldnt see how a SATA drive would work in a machine that doesnt have a SATA controller to begin with...

Was I wrong?

[RealBlackStuff]

The T2x, T30 and T40/T41/T42 and their matching Rxx models all have a PATA controller.
The T43/R52 has a SATA controller, but has an additional SATA-PATA bridge.
That means all the above take standard PATA hard disks.
By removing the SATA-PATA bridge and some clever soldering, the T43/R52 can accommodate the cheaper/faster/larger SATA hard disks.
Still, all of them can also use SATA HDs in an Ultrabay 2nd HD adapter (Ultrabay Slim for T4x/R5x and Ultrabay 2000 for the others).

[jasew503]

So what your saying is that I could get a Ultrabay Slim SATA 2nd HD Adapter for cheap online, throw a 250GB SATA HD in it, throw it in my T41 and it will work?

Can I boot to/Run an OS from it too?

[RealBlackStuff]

yes and yes.

[jasew503]

Forgive me if i sound stupid. Does this Ultrabay adapter have a built-in controller? I was under the impression older Ultrabay's were just IDE/FD in proprietary connectors for easy/hot swap capabilities. Is ultrabay more like a proprietary PCI connection then?

[automobus]

The SATA Ultrabay adapters indeed contain an interface adapter. SATA and PATA are both ATA. Similar to how Ethernet can use IEEE 802.11 wireless, Cat 3 cable, coax cable, or fiber optic. Or carrying digital audio over fiber or coax.
The Ultrabay 2000 wiring is indeed ATA or floppy, in a connector designed for hot insertion and removal. Ultrabay Plus adds USB 1.1

[Unknown_K]

So on a machine like an A30/A31 that has 2 ultrabay slots I could put in a SATA HD in one (bootable) and keep the DVD drive in the other?

[ajkula66]

Unknown_K wrote:

So on a machine like an A30/A31 that has 2 ultrabay slots I could put in a SATA HD in one (bootable) and keep the DVD drive in the other?

Theoretically, yes.

I have one of those SATA Ultrabay caddies on the way from China and will update once I test it out in my A31p...

[rkawakami]

The following is not theory, but fact ....

I just installed a Seagate 320GB SATA drive in the Ultrabay 2000 SATA adapter and plugged it into this A31p. The first attempt, using the left-hand side Ultrabay, resulted in a hung system . Swapping the optical drive from the right bay to the left and putting the SATA adapter on the right side (Ultrabay Plus) worked. This is with placing the system into standby mode before installing/removing the drive as I believe that the A31p Ultrabays are not hot-swappable. The A31p is currently running Windows XP SP3 from the main (PATA) drive. Here's the pictures:

http://www.kawakami-ca.com/images/Ultra ... SATA_1.jpg (SATA drive is drives E: and F:)
http://www.kawakami-ca.com/images/Ultra ... SATA_2.jpg (Safely remove hardware popup)

As you can see, the D: drive is my DVD-RW. A good eye will note that I also have a floppy drive (A:) connected. How is that done with both Ultrabays occupied??? The A31p is on a Port Replicator II and I have one of the 600-series external floppy drives connected to it. It's basically a four-spindle system .

I'm currently not able to put a bootable SATA drive in the Ultrabay adapter as I don't have any prepared SATA drives for this A31p. The 320GB SATA drive I used for this experiment is an image from one of my X60 systems and I don't really want to mess with that setup. If I get a few minutes, I'll clone the XP system onto a blank SATA drive and give it a shot.

As far as the no-go situation with the SATA adapter in the Ultrabay 2000 slot, I'm guessing that it may have to do with master/slave configuration on those channels. Which now makes me think that it might affect booting the system from the optical drive... I'll be right back after I test that...

Okay, the good news is that I'm still able to select the DVD-RW drive from the F12 boot menu and successfully boot my PC Doctor for DOS disk. But this is without any SATA drive connected. I'm now going to clone off the 40GB PATA drive onto a 500GB SATA drive and see if I can boot the A31p from the SATA. Back in about an hour or so....

....and so now I'm running from a 500GB Seagate ST9500420AS drive, mounted in the SATA adapter in the right-side Ultrabay, after removing the PATA drive:

http://www.kawakami-ca.com/images/Ultra ... SATA_3.jpg (SATA drive is C:, DVD-RW is D:)
http://www.kawakami-ca.com/images/Ultra ... SATA_4.jpg (Hardware Manager showing 500GB Seagate drive)

It booted fine, although it seemed to take a little bit more time. Could be that it needs a few more seconds to find the bootable drive in the Ultrabay. Or it might be that the data transfer speed is getting bogged down going through the SATA-to-PATA conversion. I'll try to get a CrystalDiskmark spec run on the drive in a little bit.

All-in-all, it appears to be a useful option if you need a huge amount of storage on this older Thinkpad. I might even keep mine like this for now .

And one last entry for the night.... I ran CrystalDiskMark on both the PATA and SATA drives and was surprised:

40GB Seagate 5400RPM PATA (main drive)


500GB Seagate 7200RPM SATA (in the Ultrabay)

[Unknown_K]

Well I ordered the SATA bay adapter and should have a SATA laptop drive ordered shortly to try it out on my A31p.

[Unknown_K]

Got my drive in today and the Ultrabay 2000 adapter in yesterday. Tested on an A31P

With the Ultrabay installed in the right side I get (using HD tunes v2.55 on Windows XP sp3):

Main PATA drive: Hitachi 80GB Ic25N080ATRM04-0 (8MB cache, 4200RPM)
Supported UDMA 5 ATA-100
Active UDMA 5 ATA-100
Average : 22MB/sec
Burst: 74.3MB/sec

SATA drive: 250GB Fujitsu MHZ2250BH (8MB cache, 5400RPM)
Supported UDMA 5 ATA-100
Active UDMA 2 ATA-33
Average: 26.1MB/sec
Burst: 27.1 MB/sec

Can the adapter be set tp UDMA-5 for extra speed?

[cadillacmike68]

Looks like these are viable items - I'll have to get one as soon as i can get my ThinkPad T30 running again!!!

[cadillacmike68]

Robert213 - have you heard back from that ebay seller?

The one with the metal bottom is more than twice the price of the other one (plastic bottom with a cutout). Folks seem to be having good luck with the latter, so I'm going to pick up two.

[JBUK]

I was seduced by the previous postings to install a SATA HDD in my T23.
So I ordered up the ultrabay tray, the type with the open bottom and 4 screw holes. I fitted a Hitachi HTS541680J9SA00.
This was a blank disk with one partition. I am using XP.
It was recognised straight away then I started running tests to see what speed it was running at.
I was disappointed to see in HD Tune an average rate of 14.1MBps and burst rate of 13.3 MBps. Now this HDD is not the fasted drive on the block so I put in the ultrabay a Western Digital PATA WD1200BEVE and ran HD Tune again and got very similar results : Av= 13.7MBps, burst= 12.7MBps. I put a further PATA disk in, a slowish Toshiba MK2018GAS, and got similar readings.
The WD disk in the normal slot gives much better transfer rates around 50MBps.
Then just out of curiosity I put the WD onto the USB2 adapter and ran HD Tune again, better throughput (just) was achieved at 18MBps.
So my conclusion for a T23 is that none of the SATA speed advantage is available here but a SATA ultrabay is useful for a slow inexpensive high capacity disk and also for using to get data off and on a SATA disk. But the data rate of the ultrabay bus seems limited to a max throughput of 15MBps which is slower even than an external USB2 disk.

[automobus]

SATA average rate of 14.1MBps and burst rate of 13.3 MBps.
PATA: Av= 13.7MBps, burst= 12.7MBps.
disk in the normal slot: transfer rates around 50MBps.
USB2 adapter, better throughput: 18MBps.

I am quite surprised about one or two things. First, your Ultrabay throughput is unusually low. My throughput is limited by the drive, not the bay. Although my experience is with a X22 rather than T23, they both are similar, each with the ICH3-M southbridge, each with two ATA 100 channels.

What computer did you use to test throughput by USB 2.0? Some computer with native Intel USB 2.0? If you say that was a CardBus card in your T23, then that would be a second surprise to me.

(edited to correct link to the throughput I see)

[JBUK]

I am quite surprised about one or two things. First, your Ultrabay throughput is unusually low. My throughput is limited by the drive, not the bay. Although my experience is with a X22 rather than T23, they both are similar, each with the ICH3-M southbridge, each with two ATA 100 channels.

What computer did you use to test throughput by USB 2.0? Some computer with native Intel USB 2.0? If you say that was a CardBus card in your T23, then that would be a surprise to me.

Yes me too I as so surprised that I thought I would post about it.
I ran the usb2 test on the same Tpad using a cardbus card.
I will dig another T23 out and see if it behaves the same, as like you, I am sure that I have not seen such a speed drop using the ultrabay before.

[JBUK]

UPDATE:
Using a different T23 I am getting better results with the ultrabay disks.
The WD PATA disk shows in HD Tune a normal 42.7MBps instead of the earlier 13.7.
The SATA disk has improved but only to 27.1. This is much less than the disk is capable of I am sure.

I decided to run Aida and this showed an active ATA rate of 33 for the SATA disk which is consistent with the result obtained.
Installing the WD PATA drive upped the ATA rate to the correct 100 and perhaps explains why this disk performs better in the ultrabay.Disk benchmark results in Aida were very similar to HD Tune with both drives.

I am still left with a underperforming SATA drive though. Disappointing.

[cadillacmike68]

Got my two trays in (with the cutout and 4 screws). Only used the two screws furthest away from the connector - the other two are not needed since the connector can hold the disk securely.

Worked fine in a T30 - didn't try in a T22 or T23, and i didn't do any speed tests. This is a winning item AFAIAC.

[stepon]

I'm getting some pretty slow numbers on my PATA to SATA Ultrabay adapter. Same results as member JBUK.

Benchmark: HD Tune 2.55
Drive used: Western Digital WD10TPVT 1TB SATA II
Caddy: eBay "New ULTRABAY Second 2nd SATA HDD Caddy Adapter for IBM THINKPAD R30 R31 R32 T30" from ny-compu-tek
*the plastic base with hole*
Thinkpad: T30-2366-97U *max upgrade*

I had three different benchmark tests for this drive.
1. ASUS Sabertooth X58 based system - my workstation
2. T30 via USB 2.0 PCMCIA card and Silverstone Raven enclosure
3. T30 via eBay Ultrabay caddy

Transfer | Burst | CPU Usage
ASUS X58 - 65.0 MB/sec | 76.0 MB/sec | -1.0%
T30 USB 2 - 28.1 MB/sec | 25.4 MB/sec | 16.2%
T30 eBay - 14.1 MB/sec | 13.9 MB/sec | 3.0%
Access was nearly identical at 18.6 ms for all.

I didn't test on the T30's internal PATA bay with the SATA for obvious reasons but an upgraded drive gave these numbers.
Hitachi DK23EA-60B (60 GB)
Transfer | Burst | CPU Usage
T30 PATA - 24.6 MB/sec | 60.6 MB/sec | 12.0%

So, is this adapter poop? For around $20 USD, I am happy that is works at all. But is there a better caddy out there?

[Unknown_K]

I guess the CDROM slot is limited to ATA-33 so nothing you put in there will be faster then 27MB/sec or so because of overhead?

[stepon]

I thought the Ultrabay 2000 was a proprietary version of CardBus which also has a 33 MB/sec data rate. 14.1 MB/sec is half what the bay is capable of, so adapter overhead is half speed then.

Correction: a forum member corrected my lack of knowledge on the Ultrabay 2000 which according to him, PATA + Floppy. Ultrabay Plus adds USB 1. I don't know why /33 would be used on a /100 system then.
Update: seller was contacted with performance numbers.