Page 1 of 1

T60 Ultrabay / Hard Drive: suggest

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 2:29 am
by pictux
Hi all,
i'd like to expand storage on my T60 (1952CTO).
Since i have many PATA/IDE 2.5 HD, i'd like to buy this:

26R9246 - 62P4554 ThinkPad 2nd HDD Adapter for Ultrabay Slim

I see that it's a T40 accessory, but also that it may work with my T60.
Is this right?

At eBay i find it from chinese OEM at very low price: did someone never buy one of these?

Thanks!
Regards
M

Re: T60 Ultrabay / Hard Drive: suggest

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 2:44 am
by yak
This thread may contain some valuable information about the topic:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... dd+glasses

Although T4x UltraBay HDD adapters do work in T6x, you should get a T6x adapter because they have a different front bezel. T4x use a curved one, T6x a flat one.

Do a search here on the forum, there are more threads about this.

Re: T60 Ultrabay / Hard Drive: suggest

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 3:05 am
by pictux
Thanks,
i didn't find that thread, searching...

Regards
M

Re: T60 Ultrabay / Hard Drive: suggest

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 3:12 am
by ssd_thinkpad
I bought a cheap chinese one for my T60 and it is working fine. Only one thing to notice: The T60 first sata hdd is packed in a rubbericed steel cell while the second ultrabay hdd is not packed into any steel cell and is further more not packed into something rubbericed. I put a ssd into the ultrabay hdd as this hdd is comfortable with shocks :)

Re: T60 Ultrabay / Hard Drive: suggest

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 4:22 am
by pictux
Hi,
thanks for sharing experience.
The one you have bought is for PATA or SATA disk?
I see that is available also a PATA version with flat front, specially designed (by chinese OEM, not by IBM) for T60!

Regards
M

Re: T60 Ultrabay / Hard Drive: suggest

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 4:33 am
by ssd_thinkpad
I bought a chinese oem T60 PATA HDD Ultrabay adapter with a flat black front for the T60.

If you look inside the ultrabay of your T60 you see three ports: PATA, battery, SATA. The first two are on the same position like on the T4 series, only the SATA port is new to the T60. Thats why the old pata and batterie ultrabay adapters are compatible to the T6 series.

Re: T60 Ultrabay / Hard Drive: suggest

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 5:08 am
by yak
ssd_thinkpad wrote:If you look inside the ultrabay of your T60 you see three ports: PATA, battery, SATA. The first two are on the same position like on the T4 series, only the SATA port is new to the T60.
AFAIK that's NOT true. The ports from left are: PATA, serial/parallel, battery. The middle one is used by the COM/LPT adapter.

That's why the SATA HDD adapters have a built-in SATA<->PATA bridge chip. I recall there were some reports here on the forum of problems with these adapters and some specific HDD drives (it was a Seagate I think).

SATA port replaced PATA in the UltraBay in post T61 ThinkPads (T400/500).

EDIT: Here's the thread about the OEM SATA adapter problems:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 74&start=0

Re: T60 Ultrabay / Hard Drive: suggest

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 5:27 am
by pictux
Thanks all for posting.
@yak:
thanks for the link to that thread.
Just a question: i see that the 62P4554 (the PATA adapter) is selled as compatible for T61 too.
It's not true?

Thanks
M

Re: T60 Ultrabay / Hard Drive: suggest

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 5:40 am
by yak
pictux wrote:Just a question: i see that the 62P4554 (the PATA adapter) is selled as compatible for T61 too.
It's not true?
T60 and T61 use the same UltraBay devices. They have the same PATA connector inside UltraBay so all PATA adapters work in both.

Like I said, SATA adapters are implemented using a bridge chip, so they connect to the notebook using the PATA connector. They work on both T60 and T61.

The UltraBay PATA connector was replaced by SATA in T400/T500 models so drives from these won't work with T6x and vice versa.

So, it is true. 62P4554 will work in T61 too.

Re: T60 Ultrabay / Hard Drive: suggest

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 5:44 am
by ssd_thinkpad
This topic has interesting points including pics about the T60 ultrabay

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=47555

Re: T60 Ultrabay / Hard Drive: suggest

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 5:44 am
by pictux
Thanks,
Like I said, SATA adapters are implemented using a bridge chip, so they connect to the notebook using the PATA connector. They work on both T60 and T61.

The UltraBay PATA connector was replaced by SATA in T400/T500 models so drives from these won't work with T6x and vice versa.
sorry, i misunderstood what you mean.
Now all is clear!

Thanks to all for support!
Regards
M