Thinkpads Forum

I sat on the decision to remove that pesky tab and risk critical system compromise of my T43. After staring at it for a couple of days I decided to go ahead. With utility knife in hand I severed the tab from the tray.

First test, does the tray fit into the T43? It does now without that tab.

Second test, does it work without shutting off the computer (hotswap)? Nope, could it be a power issue?

Third test, does it work after restarting? YES IT DOES. Currently formatting at 12%.

The only issue so far is that it's a square edge on the bottom and not an angled bezel. But who cares, the thing works. As mentioned above, all drives whether DVD, PATA, or SATA go through and are powered by the same EIDE interface. For the HDs can't say whether there's any benefit going with SATA over PATA. Others above mention that both perform the same.

I don't officially recommend you doing the same. And can't say whether it will work on other T4x models or others. YMMV

WOW well done that was gutsy - I personally wouldn't have taken the risk - Hat off I would have worried more about damaging my T43

Hello,

do we have some other feedback about this modification ? has anyone other tried it ?

Doesn't the SATA have a different end connector? PATA had that frail pin array, but when I swapped SATA HDDs in my T60 I thought there was an edge connector.

With my R61 I got an Adapter to put a second harddrive instead of the Cd-drive. I still did not buy a harddisc for it.
When I read the manual I noticed, that it said, that only original Lenovo hard drives will work. Is that true?
(lenovo Switzerland ships 120 Gb for $500)

John H wrote:Doesn't the SATA have a different end connector? PATA had that frail pin array, but when I swapped SATA HDDs in my T60 I thought there was an edge connector.

PATA and SATA drives use different connectors.   the ultrabay adapters have the same external connector but use the correct respective PATA/SATA connector inside.

SO does this trick work ? without any risk ?

Hagi wrote:. . . When I read the manual I noticed, that it said, that only original Lenovo hard drives will work. Is that true?
(lenovo Switzerland ships 120 Gb for $500)

No, it is not true. Any aftermarket 2.5 inch SATA laptop drive should work, however, I recommend purchasing aftermarket Hitachi Travelstar drives (which are one of the OEM for Thinkpad drives) from a place like Newegg.com or Zipzoomfly.com. Last time I looked, a 200 GB Hitachi 7200 rpm 7k200 (latest generation) drive was selling for US$179.99 plus shipping at Newegg.com.

Hi..all....Great forum!...I am a newbie and have just taken delivery of a T61P - T7800 processor 15.4 widescreen + an ultrabay SATA hard drive Bay adapter ( p/n 40Y8725).

I loaded a seagate 200gb 7200rpm sata into the caddy and swapped it into the bay. I then formated it with ntfs.

Windows recognises it and it works as expected with all programs, EXCEPT Rescue and Recovery does not see it and will not back up from it or to it!.

Any ideas? Do you think the Hitachi drive would be seen by Rescue and Recovery?..i bought the seagate drive because it has the advantage of a drop sensor that parks the heads.

Lastly, i tired tech support in the Atlanta, but got nowhere very, very slowly!...Lenovo have a new policy which means that they will not give you tech advice on a new machine unless you pay them 99$ each question!!!!!

Merry Christmas

I seriously doubt their advice would worth anything near that!

Hopefully someone else can advise you re R&R. Personally, I don't trust it and therefore I don't use it. I prefer Acronis True Image Home v. 11.

I could not agree with you more about the $99!

But be very careful with Acronis ...i used it for over three years and had mixed results...60% of the time it is great, but then there is the 40%.

After searching on the net i found that i was not alone in these problems with Acronis...That said, Norton Ghost was fantastically reliable on 98 and 2000 but went pear shaped with XP...at least Acronis is better than that..I have tried retrospect, but it produces an exact copy which is very large.

I used to ghost with Acronis then verify the image...then i would swap out my hard drive and put in a test drive ( bought for just that purpose) and recover the image back...40% of the time it said the image was corrupted despite verifying it after creation as Ok...and even veryfying it before recovery as OK. This is the only way i could be sure that my backup was going to work when i needed it to, unfortunately I learned that lesson the hard way!

This is/was a real pain, and i bought the T61P in the hope that having built in ghosting software and an optional 2nd drive would be fool proof. So much for that idea...so far!...Here's hoping!

I think (but am not 100% sure), that most of the problems people have experienced with Acronis TIH have to do with restoring from backup image files (.tib) as opposed to using the program to "clone" an entire drive over to a new drive. I think cloning is more reliable, although perhaps a little less convenient in some ways. But at least there is no "restoring" involved in the clone process, so there is one less thing that can go wrong.

I use the program mostly for making "cloned" images of my entire drive (including the service partition) on a second laptop drive and so far (knock on wood) have not had any problems whenever I have booted up from a cloned drive after swapping it into the primary drive slot.

I have always created a backup file ( .tib), and never tried a clone. If one element of a backup software fails, then you have to treat all of it as suspect, just because it is so important....like if your seat belt keeps popping open until you jiggle it...would you risk it holding you in a crash?

Please don't get me wrong, i think the Acronis is the best of the bunch, but do not rely on it, unless you literally check it there and then with a spare drive.

You would think that Lenovo R&R had the best shot at getting it right, as they know exactly the hardware and bios...they could drop the system into safe mode and then create the image.........But what do i know...Nothing!

BTW Pae77, you queried the value of the "paid for support"....The guy i got before i declined to pay $99 was quite helpful for free and said that if i did not want incremental backups, the only way was to copy the backup file on to another drive and then rename it.

I have just tried it and you cannot copy or rename or do anything to the backup file other than copy it out to dvd...the R&R prog does not see my second drive at all, and windows explorer will not allow you to do anything to the backup file.

I want to order the SATA Adapter for my T43p. I have a 250 gb WD HDD that I want to use with it.

I assume that the right adapter is the 26R9246 or 40Y8725 (I think both are the same) but I didn't found out for sure if this a an ultrabay slim and if it will fit in my T43 ....

Can someone please confirm that these are ultrabay slim ? or give me the thickness of the adapter ?

Thanks

Greg

The thickness of the ultrabay 40Y8725 is exactly 10mm. BUT like i said above rescue and recovery does not recognise a drive in it so you would be better off going for a much more versatile USB external...Try ebay..they are a couple of bucks on there and they work great.

Anyone any ideas on how to get my second drive recognised?

Ok thanks, I don't want to use it as R&R but only to get more storage on my T43p

In that case an external drive is better. The ultrabay is much bigger than a small external drive and limits you to only being able to acess your data on that laptop. plus it is 10 times the price of the small drive enclosures.

an external drive is about 4$ plus postage on e bay, then choose whatever 2.5" drive you like.... I particularly like seagate as they seem the most reliable at the moment, however do not buy their low end product ( maxtor) also western Digital are not too reliable from personal experience.

I know that ultrabay not the cheap version ist, but I never use the DVD, and I don't want to carry an external case ! I already have a WD passport, but I want to extract the drive and put it in the ultrabay.... and if I sometime need this drive on another computer, I'll put the drive in the extern enclosure again :

SO I got the ultrabay adapter and tried it in my T43p. At the first sight, everything is ok with a WD250 Go SATA Drive.

But when I'm doing a file transfert, the drive is sometimes hanging for a half second and starting again... hanging, starting, etc ....

did you get the same phenomen ?

R&R does not recognise it. my drive is a seagate 200Gb. Good Luck and Merry Christmas