Thinkpads Forum

I'm wondering if there's a physically possible Ultrabay slim-compatible Blue-ray option. Of course, I know that Lenovo never produced for the Ultrabay slim, but essentially I wonder if a mfgr produced an ATAPI 9.5mm aftermarket drive Lenovo didn't consider.

My own search finds that most are 12mm high and SATA, but I do see some ATAPI/IDE 12.5mm drives, and some SATA 9.5mm ones, and mostly MacBook-compatible slot versions. I just wonder if there's a ATAPI 9.5mm one (tray, if possible), and if it were possible to mod it in some way to work in a T61.

Don't think I'm delusional; I don't desire nor expect to watch Blueray movies on my Intel T61. I'd just love to have the option of backing up my TP to one disc.

If the answer is no, please explain why (No such drive was mfgr'd etc.)

I know that the next closest option is the 43N3200 12.5mm Ultrabay Enhanced BD-RW in the Advanced Dock (I have another thread asking about that setup). If there's no issues there, and assuming a 9.5mm ATAPI drive exists, I should be able to realize this dream.

Thanks for any info!

No BR drive for Ultrabay Slim.
But the 12mm thick Ultrabay Enhanced BR drive will fit/work in an advanced dock (or get an R61, where it also fits).
Or get a portable USB version.

RealBlackStuff wrote:No BR drive for Ultrabay Slim.

Just to clarify: I knew that none were ever offered for the UBS. I only wondered if there was any 9.5mm ATAPI BD-RW drive out there.

I totally understand that such a drive would not be immediately swapable.

Back in the T60/T61 days I remember seeing a 9.5mm Panasonic PATA drive on Engadget, but I never saw it for sale anywhere. Then the T400 switched to SATA and there was no more market.

Thanks for the info. I see it after searching, but can't find a model number for it; only press releases. If anyone has more specific info on that, please let me know. The same goes if some other device or console had an internal 9.5mm ATAPI/PATA BD drive. There may have been one that was marketed as a part for that rather than for a laptop. A longshot, I know, but possible.

I know some think it pointless to continue searching, but something tells me there's a solution out there. The dock option is viable, and may be unavoidable, but may mean more $. Plus, who wants to drag a dock along to school or work when they could have it inside? Yes, get a new TP, but that's not in the cards...yet.

Locate a virtual drive software and load your movies as .iso images from an external source.

You could add a second hard drive via an Ultrabay Slim adapter and fill it with movies too. If you get a new TP, you can use that drive there too.

No need for a new TP just to get a spinning drive. If you have no other PC, get an EXTERNAL USB 2.0 BD ROM drive. That's far more versatile for home use since it need not travel with you.

Spinning read-only media has its uses, but there are ways around needing it.

http://www.dvdfab.com/virtual_drive.htm

I've not used the above because I don't care about movies, but like virtual drives for loading vehicle manuals on my shop PC.

This forum used to be the famous "cdfreaks" and is a good place to research your options:

http://club.myce.com/

Some file size info:

http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=23953

Thanks so much for the well thought out and researched post!

However, as I stated in the beginning, my primary interest was in BD as archival media, not for viewing movies. The latter is still an interest, but a secondary one, and not something that I would expect to accomplish well with an integrated GPU. An external USB BD-RW drive is an option, but I'd prefer to have this on board if I can. If faced with USB as a sole option, I'd probably get the Advanced Dock, the R61 BD-RW drive, and then a USB enclosure (Maybe even an "IBM" one ) since I always like to reserve USB ports for other short-term purposes.

It's funny you mentioned CDFreaks and DVDFab. I used to be a regular on CDF back at its old address many years ago. I was always looking for the new ways of getting the most out of my desktop drives there, and anticipated posts about region-free firmwares. DVDFab was also one of the best DVD rippers I ever used. I never had to rip with one program, and then encode with another; DVDFab did it all. I do still mount .iso's, but it's just with other apps.

Thanks again for the info. Your CDF reminder has me thinking I should search over there for an answer too.

Well, it seems to be a dead issue, unless I can find some Panasonic product sample from 2007. There's just no such animal out there.

My last desperate thought is, aside from my earlier desire to swap that unattainable drive into a Multiburner caddy, whether an SATA-based 9.5mm BD-RW drive could have an 12.7mm BD-RW ATAPI drive controller board swapped in from another similar model by the same OEM. I expect that a 12.7mm ATAPI Blu-ray drive controller board is probably not going to fit into the 9.5mm casing, but this remains the only other way I can imagine this possible.

Dreams, though.

How often do you plan to archive? I ask because if it's not too often you might just want to get an external drive. I have a UJ-240 for my X220i that I a couple times a year use to do backups for my desktop. It works well, if a bit slow. Another thing to consider is the media is a bit flaky, particularly the rewritable discs. When I got my first BD-RW drive about three years ago, I burned a RE backup disc. A few months later nothing could be found on the disc. An external hard drive might be another option too. For what you're going to pay for a drive and some media, you can probably get a 1TB drive and it'll hold 50 single layer BD discs worth of data. Last option would be to sell the T61 and get a R61, which accepts the BD drive.

I've thought about the R61, although I find myself quite attached to my T61. I expect to keep my T61 even if the situation allowed for my being able to buy another current T or W model. However, it's not just sentiment has me wondering about a BD option. It's also the frustration at how close the T61 came to having this option. I mean, it's not as if I were a T42 owner asking for this. This option was a reasonable expectation...at least for a time.

As for frequency of use, I could see myself burning 30-40GB to disk every other month at most. But even if less often, the appeal of burning tens of gigabytes to a disc that need not be powered, take a USB slot, nor handled with kid gloves (ok, don't scratch it) is great. In one zippered padded case, I could carry several terabytes of backups. Such a case would also survive a drop better than a 1.5TB external hard drive (biggest, ATM). Also, don't forget the price for said external drive, the same external drive sold a year previously, has almost doubled in price due to the recent HD crisis.

On the other hand, BD media isn't cheap either, but it's getting cheaper and I can buy it in affordable quantities as time goes on versus saving up for an external HDD. You said you had a media issue three years ago, and there may still be some, but that was three years ago. I remember from my days at CDF, that changes in write methods and firmware releases happened in months and weeks. I expect the situation to have probably improved. Insofar as using one externally, you said it yourself, it can be slow. I haven't ruled out attempting to just get an external, or a bare drive and an enclosure, but when burning such a disc over time, I worry about an accidental cable pull. There's less risk with a DVD due to shorter burn times, but I still prefer to burn DVD's internally for the same reason. That's one of the reasons I had considered the Advanced Dock as seriously as I had.

Now, despite my concerns over external hard drives, I actually do have a few. Yet, one other drawback aside from their cost, power consumption, and fragility, is (ironically) that they are rewritable media. Archiving, especially backups, are things I'd like to do with media that is designed for this purpose. While I would want the option to burn BD-RW media, and likely would, long-term backups would be something I would prefer to save to media destined for it. Once saved, write-once media allows no accidental erases or deletions. I used to buy DVD-DL discs in the past for this purpose, although I find 8GB rather small now.

Lastly....well, wouldn't it be great to mod such a thing together? I only wish I had a stack of burners I could toy with to see if it could be done. Of course, that's another dream as well.

The R61 and T61 have almost the same dimensions/weight.
Why don't you propose a swap in the Market forum?
AFAIK you can swap the complete lid between T and R, so you'd get to keep your own.
Also check with forum member TuuS, he got loads of T61.
Last but not least, find a same size cheap for-parts R61 and swap your T61 bits over, they probably are drop-in items.

Heh, I haven't discussed this specific issue with TuuS, but we've been in touch over other parts.

The last bit seems the most affordable if I go the R61 route. I'll consider it.