Thinkpads Forum

I have a t60p running vista with latest sp1.

I can eject the DVD drive and insert a Seagate 320GB drive with the serial ata adapater.
However, Vista does not detect the drive, the drive light comes on and stays on.

If I put the computer to sleep and then wake it up, the new drive is correctly detected.

How do I get Vista to detect the new drive without putting laptop to sleep ?

Do you have the hard disk password enabled?

No, no passwords are set.

It's almost like the drive is not initializing correctly, however I have 3 different drives and the all act the same.

Maybe it is then similar to the problem over here http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=75481
Is your ultrabay caddy a genuine Lenovo/IBM one? There have been problems reported with non-OEM caddies. A search here may find the relevant threads.
It may also be a Vista issue but I wouldn't know since I don't use Vista.

Since you have 3 different HDs with this same issue, I doubt it´s related to the particular HD. Are you sure you push the ultrabay deep enough so that there is proper contact between the connectors

Yes It goes in all the way ... like I said If I put Vista to sleep and imediatley wake it up again, the drive is detected.
So I don't think it's the adapter ... I have also tried to reset the BIOS to it's defaults and that did not help.

It sounds like the hot-swapping isn't working. Do you dismount the optical drive first within the OS (correct way) of just push the button?

Yes, I correctly eject the drive (func/f9) ... If I plug the DVD drive back in Vista correctly sees the drive. The problem is only with the disks in the adapter.

A shot in the dark: do you use any registry cleaners? Do you use any virtual CD/DVD software (like Daemon Tools, Alkohol120 etc)?

I use Alcohol 120 which has installed one virtual drive. Why ?

I have seen something similar with some virtual CD/DVD software, where the virtual CD drive would "steal" the letter off an USB HD in such a way that the HD would not appear under My Computer at all. Not sure though whether it was present under Disk Management. Also, the OS was Win 7 beta. Rebooting or disabling the virtual drive, re-attaching the USB and then enabling the virtual drive solved the problem. So, I guess you could try disabling the virtual drive and see if the issue persists. I don´t think uninstalling Alcohol120 is necessary in any case.

virtual cd/dvd software was my next guess. I have a T61p here running vista, with latest drivers, etc. I can eject my optical drive and plug in a SATA drive in an ultrabay adapter with no problem