Thinkpads Forum

It is a very well known error when you try to upgrade the thinkpad harddisk to SSD.

The SSD I bought is Kingston SSDNow V100 Series SV100S2N/64GZ 2.5" 64GB which is this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820139421
My thinkpad is T60p 2613CTO. After using this SSD for 1 month without any problem, I got the error message when I reboot the system "2100: hdd0 initialization error (1)".
My system is Windows 7 professional.

This error for me, triggered by plugging the ThinkPad Serial ATA Hard Drive Bay with a Seagate Momentus 500G internal hard drive.
Before that, I have used the Thinkpad IDE Hard Drive Bay for a long time.
I am not sure who actually trigered the problem. Serial ATA Hard Drive Bay or Seagate Momentus 500G hard drive ?

I tried to upgrade BIOS without success. I also tried to put this SSD into external USB driver and plug it under Windows 7, Windows XP and Linux. Linux can see the partitions but cannot format or mount them. I cannot see this SSD disk using Windows disk manager. Sometimes Ican see the disk in Windows Explorer, but still cannot read the data in it.

I have read a lot of posts before I ask for help. Now, what I ONLY want to do is saving my SSD hard driver.

Any suggestion or solution would be very appreciate.

Thanks in advance.

Shallot.P wrote:It is a very well known error when you try to upgrade the thinkpad harddisk to SSD.

I have seen zero evidence of this error being discussed here, so I question your comment that it is well known. By whom?

Harryc wrote:

Shallot.P wrote:It is a very well known error when you try to upgrade the thinkpad harddisk to SSD.

I have seen zero evidence of this error being discussed here, so I question your comment that it is well known. By whom?

It's been discussed here at least one time http://www.thinkpads.com/forum/viewtopi ... 39&start=0. I found it on google.
There are many similar cases on google, using the keywords "2100 initialization error".

I think the damage to the SSD should not be irreversible.

The thread you linked to is discussing a mechanical Seagate HD, not an SSD. You said "well known error when you try to upgrade the thinkpad harddisk to SSD."

Worth having a look at this: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-63685

What happens if you cold-boot, still problems?
PC Doctor apparently does a background write test every now and then, which can cause that error.
See also this: http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State ... td-p/14141

Harryc wrote:The thread you linked to is discussing a mechanical Seagate HD, not an SSD. You said "well known error when you try to upgrade the thinkpad harddisk to SSD."

I do see some posts here discussing how to choose SSD model to avoid this issus. But I can't find it now.
whatever it is... the point is how to make the dead SSD work again. If you have some suggestions on it, thank you. If not, thank you all the same.

Shallot.P wrote: the point is how to make the dead SSD work again. If you have some suggestions on it, thank you. If not, thank you all the same.

Well, that question is even easier to answer. Once an SSD is gone, it's gone. There is no way to recover data. At least with mechanical drives there was a possibility (albeit expensive) to send it into a data recovery company for data retrieval...no such animal for an SSD.

RealBlackStuff wrote:Worth having a look at this: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-63685

What happens if you cold-boot, still problems?
PC Doctor apparently does a background write test every now and then, which can cause that error.
See also this: http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State ... td-p/14141

Thanks for your reply.
I read that two posts before and noticed there is a "Hard drive firmware update" on lenovo. But I think these firmwares are for the harddisk models listed on that page. As far as I known, there is no firmware update for this SSD.
I have tried many times on cold-boot. It stopped on the BIOS screen for several minutes then I got the error message "2100: hdd0 initialization error (1)".
I don't have the PC Doctor on my laptop.
Actually, when I pluged in the SATA Hard Drive Bay, Windows 7 prompted there is an update and I need to reboot the system to let the SATA Bay work. I just reboot the system as usual. Then, bad thing happened.

After seeing "2100 initialization error", some posts said they can do cold-boot or at least read data from an external USB driver. Unfortunately, I am not that lucky.

Harryc wrote: Well, that question is even easier to answer. Once an SSD is gone, it's gone. There is no way to recover data. At least with mechanical drives there was a possibility (albeit expensive) to send it into a data recovery company for data retrieval...no such animal for an SSD.

recover data? No, I have given up to revocer data. I just want to let SSD work again even in an external USB driver.
But now, I cannot even format it.

Try a low level format with ActiveKillDisk. If that fails it is lost ...
http://www.killdisk.com/

There is no warranty on your drive??? I quickly skimmed through the thread but seeing how you are not getting any results...

I recently did a sort of factory reset with an SSD. It only took a second and the drive was cleared. If you do the Killdisk it will take a long long time! If your drive is not responding maybe this wouldn't hurt to try.

ATA Secure Erase

This is merely a suggestion so if you feel uncomfortable working with command lines- then this may not be for you. Use at own risk.

emeraldgirl08 wrote:There is no warranty on your drive??? I quickly skimmed through the thread but seeing how you are not getting any results...

I recently did a sort of factory reset with an SSD. It only took a second and the drive was cleared. If you do the Killdisk it will take a long long time! If your drive is not responding maybe this wouldn't hurt to try.

ATA Secure Erase

This is merely a suggestion so if you feel uncomfortable working with command lines- then this may not be for you. Use at own risk.

It definitely has warranty. But I'm not in the country I bought it and I'm not sure whether the warranty covered overseas.
Actually, I'm a system programmer under Linux. So the command line tool is what I love most.
I tried "fdisk" before using Ubuntu liveCD. Even fdisk cannot read /dev/sda appropriately. But the Ubuntu disk utility in X windows can display all partitions correctly.

Just now, I tried Ubuntu 10.10 liveCD. After connecting the SSD as an external USB driver, I can mount one partition. However, reading data is still very unstable.
There are 2 partitions on my 64G SSD,all for Windows 7 system only. The first partition is 90MB created by windows7 while installation, the second one is about 64GB.
The partition I can mount in Ubuntu 10.10 liveCD is the first one.

Thank you emeraldgirl08, I will have a try on hdparm later.

Yesterday, I got confirmation from Kingston that they can 95% sure the problem is the SSD control chip.
How bad luck I have... Compare to the mechanical harddisk, does SSD have more chance to fail?