Thinkpads Forum

Hello,

I want to get a 2nd sata hdd for my t60p for use with the ultra bay hdd adaptor. I was wondering about any compatibility issues.

Should I get the hdd from a Thinkpad dealer (the biggest hdd they have is 100 gb) or is it just as safe to buy another sata hdd somewhere else, which would be a bit bigger and cheaper?

I cannot answer your question but I can tell you that I am pleased with my 7K 100gig drive from Lenovo.

One annoyance: it is not plug and play. You have to mount it using the disk manager utility under My Computer. Now it stays mounted between power offs, but if you change back to the DVD drive and then switch back to the hard drive, you have to manually update disk manager.

I am sure there is some sophsticated reason for this manual mount, but for my purposes, plug and play like a USB drive would be my preferance. Maybe your 3rd party hard disk would be plug and play? Somehow I doubt it...

Perfectly safe to buy another hard drive somewhere else (newegg.com) and save yourself the $$$...

Now, that being said, the T60 won't actually have two SATA drives...

The connector that the Ultrabay HDD adapter uses inside the bay is the IDE connector that the DVD uses...I was dissapointed when I learned this.

So, you can have dual SATAs but only the primary will actually be used by the SATA controller...the Ultrabay drive will be adapted to the IDE (PATA) bus....

Ah I see.... I have to put a SATA harddisk in the Ultra bay, but it will be connected to a regular IDE controller, did I get that right?

Thanks for the info - certainly good to know.
My intention is to use the second harddrive mostly for storage. Fortunately speed isn't much of importance to me for this second drive. I rather have a bigger than a faster drive.

kwramm wrote:Ah I see.... I have to put a SATA harddisk in the Ultra bay, but it will be connected to a regular IDE controller, did I get that right?

Thanks for the info - certainly good to know.
My intention is to use the second harddrive mostly for storage. Fortunately speed isn't much of importance to me for this second drive. I rather have a bigger than a faster drive.

PRECISELY! Doesn't that stink? So you'll pay a little more (even wholesale consumer) for a SATA drive that won't be used as a SATA drive.

It was a glaring design oversight IMO but I'm overlooking it because everything else is so B@D@$$ on this lappy!

oh right...those sata drives are more expensive too
and I think there are no 160gb sata drives out yet.

An extra internal 160 gb would have been just what I need. (edit) on a second though, do they even fit into the ultra bay adaptor? I assume it's for the standard 9 mm height drives only?

kwramm wrote:oh right...those sata drives are more expensive too
and I think there are no 160gb sata drives out yet.

An extra internal 160 gb would have been just what I need. (edit) on a second though, do they even fit into the ultra bay adaptor? I assume it's for the standard 9 mm height drives only?

Yeah the Ultrabay is only like 9.5mm so those taller 12mm drives wouldn't fit.

EDIT: Get you the Adaptec 2.5' HDD USB2 enclosure...it's one of the better one's IMO...that's gonna be about the next best thing to dual internal...and you'll get to keep your DVD in!

Stefan, did you receive software with your Ultra Bay adaptor that would allow you to clone the main drive to the Ultra Bay drive? This would be handy for backing up purposes. I have read on the T42 forum where guys do this with Acronis software and can insert the cloned drive into the laptop and be back in business in a matter of minutes, in case they have a hard drive crash.

I don't know how this will go on the T60, but I can mount and unmount my 2nd Bay HDD as if it was plug and play. IDE doesn't natively support PnP operation on the hardware level, that usually is implemented by the OS and whatever hardware abstraction layer it decides to use. Windows XP should be able to handle the hot removal of one and the insertion of another.

Jhkaska - No software came with the drive. I did not see any instructions on how to "map it" in disk manager either... was not intuitive but Lenovo tech support was quick to point it out.

Christopher states it should function as plug and play, but mine does not. Maybe just a system feature of my system... no biggie.

Stefan, I received my 100gig7200rpm Hitachi drive today from NextWarehouse. This is identical with the drive in the laptop. I stuck it in the slim bay adaptor and slid it into the laptop. Got the balloon about new hardware and in a couple of seconds the windows plug and play routine said that it was installed. Except that it didn't show up in My Computer. Went to device manager and it showed up there as correctly installed. So I followed your advice and went to Disk Manager. Here I discovered that the disk needed to be initialized and partitioned. After completing that process, it now shows up in My Computer and is finally usable. Without your advise on Disk Manager, I would still be lost, so thanks.

Also, I was able to remove it and reinstall it after a reboot with out the problems that you described. It was recognized imediately.

My next effort will be to try to clone my primary drive onto it with Acronis, We'll see.

jhkaska wrote:I have read on the T42 forum where guys do this with Acronis software and can insert the cloned drive into the laptop and be back in business in a matter of minutes, in case they have a hard drive crash.

I do this on a regular basis with my X31 (+ 2nd HDD in Ultrabase X3), with Acronis TrueImage 8. Works like a charm, highly recommanded!

The Ultrabay adapter for the T60 adapts a SATA drive.

I bought a T4x HDD adapter too to adapt PATA drives. It will fit in the Ultrabay slot but is a rounded bezel. It doesn't match the outside form of the case but it does fit and work. I used this to move the data from my old T23.

Cheers,
Tony

I purchased an 80K Hitachi drive from a web vendor and an SATA ultrabay adapter from Lenovo. The SATA ultrabay adapter has a tab on the inside part of the adpater that apparently tells the system that it has a SATA drive and transfers are substantially faster with a second HDD.

Ultrabay adapters for PATA drives that worked with T4x systems still work in the T60p, but they don't have the tabs and the system recognizes them as ATA.

And you can replace the system drive with a non-Lenovo hitachi drive.

WilsonF wrote:I purchased an 80K Hitachi drive from a web vendor and an SATA ultrabay adapter from Lenovo. The SATA ultrabay adapter has a tab on the inside part of the adpater that apparently tells the system that it has a SATA drive and transfers are substantially faster with a second HDD. And you can replace the system drive with a non-Lenovo hitachi drive.

Thanks for this information it was very helpful!

WilsonF wrote:I purchased an 80K Hitachi drive from a web vendor and an SATA ultrabay adapter from Lenovo. The SATA ultrabay adapter has a tab on the inside part of the adpater that apparently tells the system that it has a SATA drive and transfers are substantially faster with a second HDD.

Did you benchmark of P-ATA and SATA adapter for reference? BTW, could you pls post closer picture of SATA adapter for reference? Thanks.

jhkaska wrote:Stefan, I received my 100gig7200rpm Hitachi drive today from NextWarehouse. ...

My next effort will be to try to clone my primary drive onto it with Acronis, We'll see.

Hi jhkaska,
Can you tell me if you were able to clone ok with Acronis? Also, any of you other folks try another drive like the Seagate ST910021AS?
thanks,
DenTP4rm

[i]Can you tell me if you were able to clone ok with Acronis?[/i]

Yes, worked great. The desktop even copies exactly like the original. I used Acronis 8.0.

Just a couple of comments. The hard drive caddy is seated in the rubber bumpers, which must be removed. Then four screws fasten the hard drive to the caddy. I tried to re-insert the drive back in the laptop but couldn't get it to engage. Found that it goes in upside down (with the label facing down).

Also, be aware that the cloning software that comes with the T43 hard drive adaptor called EZ-GIG will not clone the SATA drive. Not sure why. So no software comes with the T60 adaptor.

jhkaska wrote:Also, be aware that the cloning software that comes with the T43 hard drive adaptor called EZ-GIG will not clone the SATA drive. Not sure why. So no software comes with the T60 adaptor.

If I'm not mistaken the EZ Gig software is a sort of proprietary version of Acronis. If you notice the interface looks pretty similar. It may be a "slimmed down" version. I know that in earlier versions they had trouble in cloning SATA drives even in desktops. So far I haven't had any trouble with the Acronis 8.0

Thanks for the headsup on the drive caddy swapping. I'm still waiting on my T60p but I'm trying to get a head start as I like to start off with a good clone as soon as I get the system set up and running. Thanks for the help, DenTP4rm

When I first bought my z60m (returned, getting my custom T60 in 2 days!), I purchased the Ultrabay HDD adapter. I had no idea it was SATA, so I cancelled it. That's because I needed something for my 40GB from my dead Dell Inspiron 8000. It's good to know that it would've been useless anyway because it's really an IDE connection!

That same morning when I cancelled the part, I got one of these cheapo enclosures from ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Aluminum-USB2-0-2-5 ... dZViewItem

It costed me $7 total, shipped in 1 day (the seller lives less than 20 miles from me), and it works like a charm! It's USB 2.0, plug-n-play (no drivers needed), and has a very slim form factor. Sure, the material is cheap, but I can use my 40GB hard drive as a portable (albeit bulky) USB drive! Sure beats my 512MB Swiss Army USB drive. Granted, USB 2 is slower than IDE, right? But I just needed someway to be able to access my files off my dead laptop.