Thinkpads Forum

Got a new T61 the other day and it came with Hitachi 5K160, 160Gb, 5400RPM drive.

So I also ordered a bog standard (ie non-Lenovo) Hitachi 7K200, 160Gb, 7200RPM drive and a SATA USB enclosure, intending to run with the faster drive and to use the 5400 as a backup clone (using Acronis TI).

What I've found is that the original drive won't work in the enclosure - the enclosure lights up but the drive just won't spin up. Yet put the faster drive in, and it's fine! So I cloned using the original in the machine and the faster in the enclosure so I have 2 identical drives, yet the enclosure still wont spin up the old drive!

Am I going mad here?? Is there some protection on the original drive that stops it spinning up in the enclosure? I'm using 2 USB cables and I even tried a separate power lead, so power shouldn't be an issue, and anyway I'd expect that to be more of an issue on the faster drive, not the slower one.

well i use a 160 gb lenovo drive also in an usb enclosure and it works properly.

The culprit could be the USB enclosure. I experienced this problem with a Fujitsu drive. It would not work with CompUSA's enclosure but worked with another make.

Thanks - I guess assuming there's nothing really wierd going on with the drive then the only thing it could be is the enclosure. It's just a bit strange that it works fine with the faster drive, but not with the slower one.

Rory wrote:
Am I going mad here?? Is there some protection on the original drive that stops it spinning up in the enclosure? I'm using 2 USB cables and I even tried a separate power lead, so power shouldn't be an issue, and anyway I'd expect that to be more of an issue on the faster drive, not the slower one.

I also agrees to a certain extend that it is the enclosure...however, a possible culprit could be the USB cable. The Lenovo side is the faster USB 2.0 version while the enclosure could be USB 1.0 or a different voltage. Find one of those older USB cable that has a Y head on the lenovo side.

One of the head is the standard 2.0 and the other serve the older technology.

Rory,
What make and model is your external USB enclosure? It would be good to know in case some of the rest of us who use these need to beware of any complications. Also, what are you using to power the enclosure. Some of them come with a Y adapter to power the drive and provide the bus connection and others use a separate power block. Let us know which one's not working.
thanks,
DenTP4rm

It was this one:
http://www.span.com/catalog/product_inf ... ts_id=8574

you can see it has good reviews - there's also a link there to to the manufacturers page.

The only reason I picked that one was they were the only supplier who also had the HDD in stock.

It does have a Y lead - I'm not very familar with them and this one has a USB pass-through connector (male at one end and female at the other - I assume so you could also plug something else in, like a mouse). There's a fairly thin cable from that pass through into the other USB plug and then a thicker cable out to the mini connector that goies into the enclosure.

I did also try powering the drive with another lead that puts 5V into it but that didn't help.

To reiterate, it works perfectly with the faster Hitachi drive, but simply won't even spin up the 5400 drive. Very odd, and it made me think that maybe the drive supplied by Lenovo is tweaked somehow (in firmware?) so that it will only spin up when actually in a Lenovo machine?

I doubt that's the case.

FWIW, I bought a 7K200 200GB in a Hitachi branded external enclosure and swapped the drive with the 5k160 80GB that came in my T60. The 5K160 80GB works just fine in the Hitachi enclosure with a SATALink SP1F215A controller. I only need 1 USB cable to run it.

Rory,
I haven't heard of the housing you mentioned or the seller you purchased from. Doesn't mean they are questionable, I'm just not familiar with them. I've had great luck with both Seagate and Hitachi drives in an Apricorn enclosure you can get through PC Connection as well as other places. It's mentioned favorably by several others here in the Forum.

I usually do a little research here before buying anything related to my Thinkpad. That's one of the great things about the Forum. I'd say if you can't get the housing to work properly with the drive maybe you should try another housing.
all the best,
DenTPr4m

I've ordered an Ultrabay adaptor today, although I realise that won't really prove anything about the drive itself (assuming it works of course!).

I know that the USB enclosures of the type I bought can be a bit "iffy" - but I wouldn't have expected a problem with the slower speed drive. I think it's the "deadness" of the drive that is surprising - it makes no attempt to spin up at all. Yet pop it back in the T61 and it's fine, or put the faster drive in the enclosure and that's fine too.

I use USB adapters all the time at work and sometimes some drives don't like some adapters but work fine with a different adapter. Sometimes they spin up but don't read and sometimes they won't even spin up. I don't know why.

USB 2.5" hdd enclosures without external power are a hack that is to be avoided. The USB bus does offer some power, but does not guarantee enough power for harddisk needs. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt. The typical symptom for "not enough power" is that the hdd does not spin up (which is the most power-consuming operation).

If you value your data, you need an external power supply. Sucks but is true.

Rory wrote:I've ordered an Ultrabay adaptor today, . . . .

Best solution, imo.

Volker wrote:USB 2.5" hdd enclosures without external power are a hack that is to be avoided. The USB bus does offer some power, but does not guarantee enough power for harddisk needs. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt. The typical symptom for "not enough power" is that the hdd does not spin up (which is the most power-consuming operation).

If you value your data, you need an external power supply. Sucks but is true.

The ones we have at work do have separate power supplies but still some drives do not work with some adapters yet they do work with other adapters.

Thanks for further comments.

I didn't realise there could be a problem with enclosures working with some drives but not others, especially as both drives I am trying are Hitachi (although different models).

Anyway, the UltraBay adaptor turned up and works perfectly, of course.

Going back to the enclosure, I picked up a 5V 2.5A (so way more amps than needed) power supply today. The polarity is correct and the LED lights up on the enclosure (with no USB lead) so I know it's connected. I tried 2 different USB leads but the result is just the same - the drive won't spin up. Therefore there must be some wierd incompatibility between the 7K160 and the enclosure.

carbon_unit wrote:The ones we have at work do have separate power supplies but still some drives do not work with some adapters yet they do work with other adapters.

Awesome, so much for QA on power bricks. Did you ever check them with a voltmeter? I'm wondering how fickle the hdd really is....

Rory wrote: I didn't realise there could be a problem with enclosures working with some drives but not others, especially as both drives I am trying are Hitachi (although different models).

Anyway, the UltraBay adaptor turned up and works perfectly, of course.

One thing that used to be a potential gotcha with PATA drives is drive translation. There is no guarantee that some particular USB enclosure uses the same head/cylinder/sector translation that the Thinkpad does, so if you want to swap drives it may appear to work until you actually do the swap and then either it just fails entirely, or can't access certain parts of the disk.

This used to bite me sometimes when I tried to use a shortcut to drive cloning by taking out a Thinkpad HDD and connecting it to a regular desktop PC to do a drive-to-drive image copy.

Which is yet another reason why the Ultrabay option is a good one.

Regarding "mysterious" differences in USB enclosures: the USB spec says the max current available per USB port is supposed to be 500mA, and USB devices are supposed to communicate back to the host to tell it how much power they require, but many devices violate these parts of the spec. (especially things like USB cooling fans and rocket launchers.. )

One of the things that may be biting people when certain HDD's don't work in certain enclosures is that the enclosure may be firmly enforcing the 500mA current limitation and refusing to attempt to boot the drive. The enclosure I use (MacAlly PHR-250CC, USB 2.0 + Firewire) seems to be pretty reliable, but you have to be sure you have a drive that doesn't overload the USB power available. When I first tried an older Hitachi 5400rpm drive it wouldn't work, but a Seagate Momentus that draws less power was fine.

This particular enclosure has an additional power input jack and comes with a USB cable that connects to this to draw power from a 2nd USB port, potentially giving 1 amp to the enclosure if the host is working at spec. (I hear the Macbook Air will go much higher than 500mA, but then again it only has 1 USB port)