Thinkpads Forum

Hi all, first post.

Just recieved my T60p, from EBay. Overall quite a nice system, but the HDD is a Samsung HM120JI? On the Lenovo website, this particular system, the 2008-8JG is supposed to have a 7200rpm drive, but I'm pretty sure this one is a 120gb 5400rpm one. Just making sure.

Searching the internet shows Samsung HM120JI is 7200rpm.

Looks like Lenovo is offering a bigger 7200RPM drive?

I'm confused :-/, I find it being reported as 5400 in some cases and 7200 in others?

A quick check reveals these, 4 against 1. Which is true, the 1 manufacturer or the 4 retailers.

7200:

http://www.samsung.com/au/products/hard ... m120ji.asp

5400:

http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=SM-HM120SA
http://www.epinions.com/Samsung_SpinPoi ... full_specs
http://www.myshopping.com.au/PR--82012_ ... al_ATA_HDD
http://www.todaytech.com.au/view_products.asp?PID=3163

bontistic wrote:Looks like Lenovo is offering a bigger 7200RPM drive?

Again, it can be customized. But since the original poster bought this machine from ebay so anyone could've upgraded it to higher speed.

bontistic wrote:A quick check reveals these, 4 against 1. Which is true, the 1 manufacturer or the 4 retailers.

7200:

http://www.samsung.com/au/products/hard ... m120ji.asp

5400:

http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=SM-HM120SA
http://www.epinions.com/Samsung_SpinPoi ... full_specs
http://www.myshopping.com.au/PR--82012_ ... al_ATA_HDD
http://www.todaytech.com.au/view_products.asp?PID=3163

But if you click on specifications on that Samsung page, it says rotational speed of 5400.

infrd wrote:I'm confused :-/, I find it being reported as 5400 in some cases and 7200 in others?

Download this software (freeware), it will tell you what exactly you've installed on your system.

Lenove usually uses HITACHI 7k2 harddrive.
Both of my T42 and T60 hard drives are HITACHI 7k2 .travelstar

ronan_zj wrote:Lenove usually uses HITACHI 7k2 harddrive.
Both of my T42 and T60 hard drives are HITACHI 7k2 .travelstar

That is very true but since the poster is from Australia we can't really say if Hitachi is what those guys get too.

Belarc advisor reports Samgsung HM120JI 120.03GB

I don't think 120GB 7200rpm drives exist do they?

infrd wrote:Belarc advisor reports Samgsung HM120JI 120.03GB

I don't think 120GB 7200rpm drives exist do they?

It does. I suppose you have not visited the link I mentioned before. Again, nowhere it says it has 5400rpm speed.

This time I even pictured the screen for you, see this picture.

Click on specifications and it says 5400.

Wow, now I'm having all sorts of problems. So out of nowhere I get a BSOD. And I havn't been able to get back into Windows since. Either get BSOD during start up, or an error message shows saying something like 'Error loading operating system'. Tried to recover using Thinkvantage, and I get a bluescreen while trying to load that aswell? When it does load, system recover fails, whoa I'm kinda stuck right now.

infrd wrote:Click on specifications and it says 5400.

You're right. That hdd in 7200rpm does not exist. On the main page of samsung there is a typo.

Since you bought this laptop from ebay and if the person advertised for 7200rpm hdd you should complain to him about it.

That drive is a 5400 RPM samsung. There is no 7200 RPM great than 100 GB commercially availble today. Hitachi recently announced the 7k200 which will be a 200 GB 7200 RPM drive.

Contact the ebay seller and let him know about the discrepancy.

infrd wrote:Wow, now I'm having all sorts of problems. So out of nowhere I get a BSOD. And I havn't been able to get back into Windows since. Either get BSOD during start up, or an error message shows saying something like 'Error loading operating system'. Tried to recover using Thinkvantage, and I get a bluescreen while trying to load that aswell? When it does load, system recover fails, whoa I'm kinda stuck right now.

Can you boot into safe mode? More importantly can you read what the bsod says.

Do this to make it readable next time and report back the error #.

gator wrote:That drive is a 5400 RPM samsung. There is no 7200 RPM great than 100 GB commercially availble today. Hitachi recently announced the 7k200 which will be a 200 GB 7200 RPM drive.

This is why I asked if Lenovo offers a bigger 7200RPM drive. Last time I checked, biggest was 100GB.

Yes OP, you should definitely conctact your seller for an immediate exchange or return.

bontistic wrote:This is why I asked if Lenovo offers a bigger 7200RPM drive. Last time I checked, biggest was 100GB.

Apologies friend, I'm literally very boozed up.

Note to self: Never drink and answer questions on forum.

No need for apologies. Got confused myself. Hope the OP has this T60p up and running again. I also hope he tried to restore his Last Known Good Configuration if he's using XP.

Have tried stuff like last known good config and everything, wasn't working. So I had to go to work. Come back 4 hours later, tried restore again, and seems to be working this time. Still in the process of loading windows. Can anyone tell me why it only took like 5 minutes to "re-install" windows? Anyway, will update. I think the seller swapped out the 7k100 drive for the 120gb samsung without telling me (not very happy about at all, not the least since it has caused me heaps of trouble).

According to the seller, they replaced the 100gb HDD with the 120gb because the 100gb was incompatible with the extra 1gb stick of RAM they added (and for some reason saw fit to not tell me about it). Honestly, to me that sounds like a load of BS. But, I'm planning on running this 5400rpm, and getting a 200gb 7200 some time later, then throwing this 5400 into a portable enclosure. I need an external anyway.

I dont believe that 1 bit. If what they said was true, then they replaced the RAM as well???

Please check the brand of memory that you have installed. I am having doubts that they have been switched with generic RAM. Hence their claim of incompatibility. Although I don't think there is such a thing of HD/RAM incompatibility.

Edit: Did you say extra? Meaning 2GBs of RAM? Then my bad.

Well, the palmrest wasn't installed properly when I first got it. So while re-attaching the palmrest myself, I took the opportunity to check the memory. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that both sticks were more or less identical, samsung pc5300 chips. Oh, and I have 1 dead pixel in the lower left quadrant :-<

Update: System was restored, and all seemed normal...for a while. Then I got another BSOD. Laptop won't turn on, wouldn't even load bios. When I press the power button, I get 3 loud beeps. One long beep, followed by 2 short ones. It just hangs with a black screen and I am forced to do a soft shutdown.

A few minutes later, I am able to boot into windows. What the hell is going on?

Update 2: I got another bsod, labelled BAD_POOL_HEADER.

Tried to boot in safe mode, and it gives me something like "Windows cannot start because the following file is missing or corrupt"

\Windows\System32\Config\System

I think that's what it said anyway, I could have remembered wrong.

BSOD when trying to access thinkvantage during bootup:

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

I suspected memory to be the culprit, so I removed one of the sticks and seems to be running OK so far.

here's the way I see the situation:

the original owner put in an extra stick of memory, and at some point started having problems and misdiagnosed the problem as the hard drive. He then decided to dump off his problem on ebay.

Here's what I would do.

1. check lenovo to see how much if any remaining warranty is left, if it is less than one month, move immediately to get the unit to them for repair.

2. If you have time, or while you are waiting for your shipping box to arrive I would try a series of trials to see if something works, in this order:

A. Remove the topmost memory stick (The one most likely installed by the previous owner) and try booting. wait for error messages.

B. If problem persists, leave memory out and remove the hard drive, boot from a bootable cd. wait for error messages.

C. If problem persists, switch memory modules, and try again with CD drive. wait....

D. If problem persists. it is likely the motherboard, the processor L2 memory, or the video memory (although these are unlikely) but these should be covered under warranty.

If the problem happens with the hard drive removed, do not send it in with the warranty work because it was not part of the original system (Lenovo will likely blame you for the problem).

If the problem only happens when the hard drive is installed, try removing any antivirus software, or do a clean install.

My number one suspicion is the added memory module, because the problem happened to him, prompting him to switch hard drives when problems started happening.

Curious to see about this one. Fraud on Ebay has gotten worse. I used to get good parts all the time, but seems like now most are bad and sold as good.

I'm trying out all possible combinations of memory in the 2 slots. Even though the two are almost identical, running PC Doctor memory test has them both pass (normal test and stress test) when installed individually on the bottom slot. The memory stress test fails when both sticks are installed. When user added memory is installed in top slot only, system got blue screen pretty much as soon as windows loaded. With the factory (presumably) RAM installed in top slot, have had no issues and passes all tests. Currently running for a couple of hours and counting.

Possible defective RAM? Looks pretty likely at this point. Oh, and warranty for this system is international and lasts till March 2010.

infrd wrote:When user added memory is installed in top slot only, system got blue screen pretty much as soon as windows loaded. With the factory (presumably) RAM installed in top slot, have had no issues and passes all tests. Currently running for a couple of hours and counting.

I think the problem is pretty obvious to you, as of this point the user installed memory is bad.

You don't need to send it to lenovo if the system runs fine on the factory installed module. Contact the ebay seller and complain about this issue.

test the "bad" memory in the bottom slot. It could be a problem with the top socket itself. Seems unlikely, but I would want to rule it out.

The 'bad' memory seemed fine in the bottom slot, but crashed the system on the top. That's why I decided to test the factory memory on the top, and it has been running perfectly. Not too sure what can make a memory work on one slot and not the other.

top socket is bad would be my guess. mobo replacement for that!