T60p: New owner questions about Dock, 2nd HDD, Dual monitors

[scottkeen]

Hi everyone, aloha from Hawaii.

I just received my T60p with Windows Vista installed and the Advanced Dock docking station to go with it. I have an order for 4 GB of RAM (Patriot brand, on sale for $244 for 4GB kit at Frys.com!)

I have a few newbie questions, which I've searched for answers but still need your help.

1) I would like to have a 2nd HDD, installed in the Advanced Dock. Which drive bay adapter do I need? Can I use SATA drives? PATA drives? Which part numbers do I need?

Ideally, I would like to be able to have the 2nd HDD in the Advanced Dock, then when I head on a trip, pop it out and take it with me so I can swap out the DVD in the T60p and put in the 2nd HDD. Is this possible? Do I need 2 different adapters?

2) This leads me to a related question. I'm confused about "Ultrabay", "Ultrabay Slim", and "Ultrabay Enhanced". What's the difference? Which will work with my T60p? Which will work with my Advanced Dock?

3) When I have the T60p docked in the Advanced Dock, I would like to connect TWO (2) Dell 2001FP Digital LCD monitors to the Advanced Dock, disable the internal T60p LCD, and have an extended desktop across just the two Dell monitors. The Advanced Dock comes with 1 built-in DVI connector. Can I just buy any PCI-e video card with a DVI connector and plug it into the Advanced Dock so I can connect a 2nd digital LCD monitor? Is there a recommended brand/model number?

Thanks for any help you can offer with these newbie questions.

I'm a long time fan of the ThinkPad line, still have my IBM ThinkPad 240 sub-notebook!

[andyP]

Congrats on your purchase and welcome to the forum.

1) The HDD Drive adapters you can use are 40Y8725 for S-ATA and 41U3148 for P-ATA drives. These are UltrabaySlim drives which also fit in the Dock's Ultrabay enhanced. Your TP has an S-ATA drive as standard and it may be better using S-ATA in the bay should you decide to clone your drive at some point.

2) The differences in the types of bay are to do with height and the connector type. Ultrabay Slim devices will fit in Ultrabay Enhanced, but NOT the other way around as they are about 2/3 mm higher.
Ultrabay Slim and Ultrabay Enhanced will work in Ultrabay 2000 using an Adapter, (which I can't find at the moment), but NOT the other way around as the connector is different. Then there was also the UltraSlimBay - only for UltraSlimBay drives.

3) This should be no problem, but if you are going to invest in a grafic card you may want to concider obtaining a dual head card; should you at some point decide to attach a third screen.

Hope that all helps a little.

[RonS]

If you don't need the Thinkpad's built-in screen, you can use both the DVI and VGA on the dock to run both external screens. That way you don't need to put a graphics card in the dock.

[scottkeen]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I bought the Advanced Dock for the reason of adding a video graphics card with DVI output. Right now, I have the two LCD monitors connected to the Advanced Dock using the internal DVI and VGA connectors. The VGA text is fuzzier and the whites are more "yellowish", so I'm pretty determined to add a video card with DVI output to the PCI-e slot.

Follow-up question on #2 regarding Ultrabay - Can I use the same SATA 2nd HDD adapter for BOTH the Advanced Dock drive bay and the T60p drive bay?

Which kind of bay is in the Advanced Dock? Ultrabay Enhanced? Slim? Which kind of bay is in the T60p?


Thanks again for all your help. This T60p is shaping up to be a really good desktop replacement!

[andyP]

The Dock has an Ultrabay Enhanced, the TP T60 has Ultrabay Slim, and yes you can use the S-ATA 40Y8725 adapter in both bays.