Thinkpads Forum

Would it make sense to use an external (sata) hard drive connected to a card plugged into the pci slot in the advanced dock.

Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6815108103

External hard drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822148154


I bought the advanced dock (unfortunately before I came across this great place) and I am trying to figure out how to get a faster, large capacity, hard drive hooked up to my T60p. I originally planned to use the sata ultra bay adapter but now I see that it would be a slower connection than usb-2. I only need a bigger drive at my desk; not while undocked.

Any thoughts?

where did you get the statement that SATA ultrabay is slower than USB2? Sounds like internet misinformation once again.

This forum entry states that the bandwidth is (may be) limited to 34MB/sec. As far as I can tell this appears to be true. Do you have information to the contrary?

2. The Advanced Dock's Slim bay appears to be bandwidth limited at 34 MB/sec. This is a big disappointment. I tested this by using HDTach to benchmark a 60GB/7200 PATA drive as follows:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=22358


These two sites discuss bandwidth for various connections (some of which relate to the T60p and the advanced dock).

http://www.mobilityelectronics.com/expa ... peed.html#
http://www.directron.com/expressguide.html

My question;

• Is the Ultrabay on the advance dock a (full speed) sata connection?
• Would a connection made to a sata card (connected to the pci slot inside the advance dock) be a reasonable way to connect an external hard drive?

i'm not up on the performance of these things, but perhaps the express card slot would be of use?

here are some express card eSATA cards:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... tegory=421

I use Ultrabay 2nd HDD on my T42p (PATA interface) and transfers between the main 7K100 drive to the 5K60 on the Ultrabay is very fast, as fast as transferring from the main drive to a E7K100 on a external USB enclosure (transfers are very quick)

I had not thought about using a PC Express card adapter. That is a good idea!

I am interested in getting an expert opinion on whether or not there would be any advantage to using an external sata drive. If the transfer speeds are limited by the hdd or some other factor then I would just buy a big (greater than 500gb) Seagate usb drive.

I went out and bought an eSATA to PCI-E card for my ThinkPad Advance dock.

It is a:Vantec SATA/eSATA PCI-Express Host Controller Model: UGT-ST400


I installed the card, booted up the T60p (in the dock) and get an error message: Expansion ROM not Initialized, PCI mass storage controller in slot 03, Bus:0C, Device:00, Function:00.

I have looked over the BIOS settings.



I can not figure out what to do next.

Any Ideas?

Easy solution.

Remove Optical Drive from Ultrabay in laptop.
Replace with SATA Hard Disk caddy.
Insert Optical Drive into Advanced Dock ultrabay.
Performance is almost identical between the two drives - close enough not to be noticeable.

This is what I do. In fact most of the time, I run with 2 internal HD's and swap the optical drive in when I need it.

Actually I've followed this process of mainly running with 2 internal hard disks for both my previous Thinkpad's - an A20m and T41p.

Roll on the Hitachi 200GB 2.5" 7200RPM SATA drives.

Thank you for the response.

I have considered using the Ultrabay adapter but I would like to have a much larger drive (500 GB or more) connected to the T60p.

The sATA adapter in the PCI-e slot still seems like the best way to do it. I can not find any information on how to connect (and configure) a card into the Advance dock slot. I called the Lenovo support line and did not get any help at all. The only user manual I find is here (ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/op ... 9t2394.pdf).

Does anyone here know of a step by step set of instructions on how to add a card to the Advanced dock?

PIJim wrote:Would it make sense to use an external (sata) hard drive connected to a card plugged into the pci slot in the advanced dock.

Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6815108103

External hard drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822148154


I bought the advanced dock (unfortunately before I came across this great place) and I am trying to figure out how to get a faster, large capacity, hard drive hooked up to my T60p. I originally planned to use the sata ultra bay adapter but now I see that it would be a slower connection than usb-2. I only need a bigger drive at my desk; not while undocked.

Any thoughts?

Given the size of drive you want to use, your simplest solution is to have a USB2 External drive. I personally don't think it makes a whole lot of difference what kind of drive is in the enclosure, i.e. IDE vs. SATA, but at least one mfr. of external enclosures (Buffalo) advertises that their external drives are faster because they use SATA drives inside; they claim (I think) 15% faster disk accesses. I have one of their external drives (250gb) purchased from Frys.com recently with a $30 rebate that brought the cost down to about $70 delivered (presumably that deal is over and you wanted a bigger drive anyway). I have other USB2 (and a FW) drive attached to my desktop as well and to be honest I don't see any speed difference between the Buffalo with SATA drive and the other external drives I have.

You could always buy your 500gb SATA drive and put it into a 3.5" external enclosure that accepts SATA drives. These exist and cost a little bit more than the more typical enclosures that take IDE drives (expect to pay about $35 or so instead of <$20). If you buy either an external USB2 drive or you build one yourself, the drive can then be used on virtually any computer you choose, not just the T60, an added plus.

Hey PIJim,
I tried to do pretty much what you did. If you ignore the error that you get on boot up

Expansion ROM not Initialized, PCI mass storage controller in slot 03, Bus:0C, Device:00, Function:00.

and install the that came with your card (I think its an SI3132 controller chip). It will work. The only problem is that everytime you restart, you will get that horrible horrible beep and that message. I ditched the idea only to save my ears. There are also other side effects.

Thinkvantage, does not recognize the drive, hence Rescue and Recovery will not work from backups done to that drive.

I have not tried the expresscard sata interface. That might give you more mileage.


Rajeev

Thanks for the interest in my efforts.

I bought a PC Express card (http://www.siig.com/product.asp?catid=7&pid=1036) and successfully set it up on my TP T60p. I have the external Seagate 500 GB eSATA disk drive attached and running.

This new set up has resulted in these (admittedly unscientific) results.

A 10.5 GB file transfered from the T60p HDD to the Seagate 500 GB eSATA external drive in 9 minutes and 4 seconds.

The same 10.5 GB file transfered from the T60p to a Seagate 500 GB USB 2 external drive in 18 minutes and 12 seconds.

I still hope to be able to connect the drive to a card in the PCI-e slot in the Advanced dock. Any continued advice would be appreciated.

BTW; The big files are video and photo projects that I work on. I typically have ten to twenty projects going at once and I keep them in 'project' form which results in really big files. The quicker transfer speeds will hopefully take some time out of the jobs.

I have talked to IBM support in Atlanta three times and we have exhausted all reasonable options for fixing this issue. Each time I have been bumped up to a higher level tech ending with the 'lead' tech. Included in the things we have tried are the items listed below.

• Updated the BIOS to 79ETC9WW (2.09).
  Applied all of the critical updates through Think Vantage System Update.
  Shipped me a new Advanced Dock.
  Changed the SATA BIOS settings to Compatibility Mode.

It turns out that rbsrao79 is right. The system will operate just fine even though the error message appears each time you boot (Expansion ROM not initialized, PCI mass storage controller in slot:03 Bus:0C Device:00 Function:00). The support guys at IBM Atlanta have decided that this happens because there an arbitrary limit to the number of devices supported in the BIOS. They are convinced that a change to the BIOS will correct this and they have put in a request to the higher levels to make this happen. Of course they cannot predict exactly when the updated BIOS will appear but they assure me that it will happen.

In general I feel really well served by this process. Everyone I have spoken to and worked with have been polite and professional. The last guy I worked with told me "This is a good one....I want to get this one solved".

PIJim wrote:
A 10.5 GB file transfered from the T60p HDD to the Seagate 500 GB eSATA external drive in 9 minutes and 4 seconds.

The same 10.5 GB file transfered from the T60p to a Seagate 500 GB USB 2 external drive in 18 minutes and 12 seconds.

Maybe I'm way off base here and I do not have any personal experience using eSATA on the T60 (though I am considering it) but I would have expected significantly better transfer rates over usb2 then reported above.

I transfered another big file (folder) from my T60p to both a Seagate SATA 500GB hard disk drive and a Seagate USB 2 500 GB hard disk drive. the results are pretty much the same as before.

the folder is 14.6 GB (5578 flies, 532 folders)

T60p to Sata HDD.......10:35
T60p to USB 2 HDD......20:54

PIJim wrote:I transfered another big file (folder) from my T60p to both a Seagate SATA 500GB hard disk drive and a Seagate USB 2 500 GB hard disk drive. the results are pretty much the same as before.

the folder is 14.6 GB (5578 flies, 532 folders)

T60p to Sata HDD.......10:35
T60p to USB 2 HDD......20:54

Ideally eSATA can be almost 5 times faster then usb2 according to specs. Of course real world is a horse of a different clolor.

So, can anyone 100% answer, that the PCI-e eSata card is NOT limited to 34 MB/s like the UltraBay?

I can confirm faster speeds.

I have been able (via perfmon) to observe data rate transfers between a Seagate Freeagent Pro using a SIIG 512 pc express bus card and a Highpoint array card (2304) w/ 4 seagate 750GB hard drives in raid 1+0. Transfer rate at peak via perfmon was 65MB in each direction (130MB/sec).

I am running mysql on it and the performance is amazing ... though has anyone resolved this boot up issue yet?

+-ADT