Thinkpads Forum

Is there any problem to use the Ultra bay stat adapter for dual boot ?

Main HD - Winxp pro
Ultrabay - Vista

Use the thinkvantage button to choose which HD to boot from.
Any disadvantages ?

Btw, where can I buy the main HD tray & rubber rails online ?

From my experience with the same scenerio with Vista RC1, here is what you need to do. Do not have the hard drive with XP and the service partition in the laptop when you install Vista. The Vista installation routine will put a boot manager on your XP hard drive and break the ThinkVantage Rescue and Recovery boot option. You can put your XP drive back in after Vista is installed.

Press F12 at the beginning of the boot sequence to get a boot menu. From here you can choose HDD0 (Main) or HDD1 (Ultrabay). Whichever drive is in the main hard drive slot is the one that will boot by default if you do not press F12. Whichever drive is booted will become drive C:, and the other drive, drive D:.

Worked for me exactly as GomJabbar described it with one minor addition: If you don't have an external usb cd/dvd drive you will need to install the harddrive into the internal drive bay for the Vista installation, you can then swap it out to the ultrabay tray after the installation completes.

That was what I exactly (take out the xp HD) because I need to use the dvd rom.

Just wondering if any files will be overwritten when I dual boot (i.e, vista overwirtten some xp files or xp overwritten some vista files) ?

bigbear2007 wrote:Just wondering if any files will be overwritten when I dual boot (i.e, vista overwirtten some xp files or xp overwritten some vista files) ?

I did not have any problem with the above.

bigbear2007 wrote:... Btw, where can I buy the main HD tray & rubber rails online ?

Yes... from IBM/Lenovo part #41V9756 METAL RUBBER SLIDE. Call 800 388-7080-2-1-1

i have a very annoying issue: whenever i boot from HDD0 or HDD1 the windows on both hdd's sees the same order C & D (hdd0) and E (hdd1)

needless to say how stable windows is when i boot from hdd1 and the windows drive order is that one.

any idea how to fix this?

thanks,

dorin

dorin wrote:...hdd's sees the same order C & D (hdd0) and E (hdd1) ... any idea how to fix this?

Go to Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management, right-click on the drive letter you want to change and change it.

Note: There are peculiarities to the order in which you can change the drive letters; you will discover those on your own. Expect several reboots before you complete the task of renaming all the drive letters.

Go to Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management, right-click on the drive letter you want to change and change it

that was the first thing i tried, but then it was even more chaotic, some of the programs they had the start line to c: (hdd0) some to e: (hdd1)

really need a work around here...first of all i just cannot understand how this thing happens...from the start ain't logic.

any options in bios? eventually even to disable hdd0 without having to pull it out? i really need 2 totally independent versions of windows... pls help

Dorin, I experienced the same problem with 2 xp sp2 installations, unfortunately I have yet to discover a solution. Interesting, I do not have this problem when XP is on one drive and Vista is on the other. Probably due to different boot methodologies between the 2 OS's.
I'm wondering if installing XP to the drive in the location it will be use in will work. To do this you'll need an external usb cd/dvd drive for the XP installation to the drive in the ultrabay(hdd1). If you've got the time it's worth a shot.

steve, i got it! check http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 381#251381 for the solution!
cheers,
dorin

dorin wrote:steve, i got it! check http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 381#251381 for the solution!
cheers,
dorin

Having done many dual boots over the years I came up with that solution independently a few weeks ago and it did not work for me. Unfortunately, I'm not in a position now to revisit the issue as I'm now using one of the drives for Vista. I did ghost the original XP installation so maybe another day I'll try when I get fed up with all the annoying Vistas issues.

dorin wrote:steve, i got it! check http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 381#251381 for the solution!
cheers,
dorin

Having done many dual boots over the years I came up with that solution independently a few weeks ago and it did not work for me. Oh well, guess I should have dug my heels in and tried harder. Unfortunately, I'm not in a position now to revisit the issue as I'm now using one of the drives for Vista. I did ghost the original XP installation so maybe another day I'll try when I get fed up with all the annoying Vistas issues. Or maybe Lenovo and MS will actually roll out fixes that work someday and maybe I'll get my free Vista upgrade too...Nah!!!