ThinkPad T61 - Trying to Upgrade Hard Drive

[Nerva]

Hello all, I have a Thinkpad T61 (~1 year old), which is one of the first T61 models produced. I currently have an 80 gig, 5400 RPM Hitachi hard drive in the T61, loaded with Win XP. I am trying to upgrade to a Western Digital Scorpio SATA 320 GB hard drive, but so far no luck. I tried taking it into a computer store. They said they cloned my old drive onto the WD, tried to connect it and get it working. For them, it wouldn't boot or show anything. Blank black screen after the Thinkpad logo screen. They also tried to connect and initialize other hard drives, messed with the boot sector, and concluded there must be a problem with my laptop because it wasn't working. So, I bought an external enclosure, Norton Ghost 14, and tried to copy the hard drive again and install it myself. This time, I get a Disk read Error (press CTRL-ALT-DEL to restart) after the ThinkPad Logo. I went into Diagnostics on BIOS, the hard drive was recognized and checked out. I also ran some tests with PC-DOC, all fine. Does anyone have any ideas? Thankyou....





-Andrew

[RealBlackStuff]

Welcome to the Forum.
In the BIOS is a switch to set SATA to "Compatibility". Don't know exactly where, but that should solve your problem.

[Nerva]

Welcome to the Forum.
In the BIOS is a switch to set SATA to "Compatibility". Don't know exactly where, but that should solve your problem.

Thanks for the reply, but I already have SATA set to Compatibility in BIOS and I also tried AHCI or whatever the other one was.

[RealBlackStuff]

Is the HD inserted the proper way, using the rubber guides, and with the label on the bottom (when seen from the top of the laptop)?

[Nerva]

Is the HD inserted the proper way, using the rubber guides, and with the label on the bottom (when seen from the top of the laptop)?

Yes, the hard drive is inserted properly with label on bottom. It is recognized and passed diagnostic tests on the BIOS - but when the OS tries to boot after ThinkPad logo I get "Disk Read Error"

[ajkula66]

Sounds to me like the cloning process has not been done correctly.

Download/borrow a copy of a "live" Linux CD and boot from it. Then go into the hard drive and save the files you choose to a USB drive.

Lastly, obtain a set of restore disks for your machine and do a fresh install.

Good luck.

[Brad]

If you haven't tried this already. Install the target disk in your T61 and the source disk in your external adapter and then run Ghost.

Brad

[Nerva]

Thankyou for your helpful replies. I re-installed the factory system onto my new hard drive using ThinkVantage System Restore. Now re-installing programs etc. Working fine. Thanks,

-Andrew