Ultrabase HDD Drive Adapter Problem

[faberryman]

Okay gurus, what's the trick? I put a formatted HDD in an HDD adapter, inserted it in the Ultrabase, started up my laptop, and can't see the hard drive. I tried this with a couple of hard drives in both an X2 Ultrabase with an X20 and an X3 Ultrabase with an X31. No go. Am I overlooking something obvious or do I have a bad HDD adapter? The DVD-ROM works fine in the Ultrabases.

[dmdsoftware]

Okay gurus, what's the trick? I put a formatted HDD in an HDD adapter, inserted it in the Ultrabase, started up my laptop, and can't see the hard drive. I tried this with a couple of hard drives in both an X2 Ultrabase with an X20 and an X3 Ultrabase with an X31. No go. Am I overlooking something obvious or do I have a bad HDD adapter? The DVD-ROM works fine in the Ultrabases.

Some sanity things to check:

1) remove the HD password, otherwise the drive won't be detected,
2) set the drive to "device 0" - trust me, "device 0" even though technically it is the second drive in the system, it is the first on the interface

I have no problems with both the ultrabay slim and ultrabay 2000 in the X2*, X3* ultrbases, and in a T4* (for the slim version).

[faberryman]

[Fixed Typo]

I checked the BIOS and all of the passwords are disabled. I set HDD0 first in boot order followed by HDD1, and also the reverse. In either case it boots from the internal hard drive and the Ultrabay hard drive does NOT show up. I took the internal hard drive out and put it in the Ultrabay leaving the internal drive slot empty. The BIOS doesn't see the Ultrabay hard drive. My only boot options are legacy floppy and network.

All I want to do is store data on the Ultrabay drive. I want to boot from the internal hard drive and have the Ultrabay drive show up as the D drive, just as the DVD drive does when it is inserted in the Ultrabay.

Shouldn't this be easy?

[dmdsoftware]

I checked the BIOS and all of the passwords are disabled. I set HDD0 first in boot order followed by HDD1, and also the reverse. In either case it boots from the internal hard drive and the Ultrabay hard drive does show up. I took the internal hard drive out and put it in the Ultrabay leaving the internal drive slot empty. The BIOS doesn't see the Ultrabay hard drive. My only boot options are legacy floppy and network.

All I want to do is store data on the Ultrabay drive. I want to boot from the internal hard drive and have the Ultrabay drive show up as the D drive, just as the DVD drive does when it is inserted in the Ultrabay.

Shouldn't this be easy?

Not sure what you are trying to ask. You state that you want to boot from the internal drive and store data on your ultrabay drive, but then you say that ultrabay drive shows up when you boot from an internal drive. So what's the problem?

I don't think you'll be able to function with just the ultrabay drive (and leave the internal bay empty.

You don't need to make any changes to the BIOS settings.

What happens when you insert the ultrabay HD when you are in Windows? You should see Windows 'plug and play' detect the drive as if you had just plugged in a USB HD.

[faberryman]

No matter what configuration, Windows does not see the Ultrabay drive.

[brainpicker]

What happens when you go to Computer Management under the Administrator's account and click on Disk Management? Does the drive show there? What is the status? If this is a clean drive as you state and the drive shows there why not try formatting the drive again using the Thinkpad you have it installed in and see if that works.

Let us know what happens.

- Yak

[faberryman]

It was a bad adapter. The one I have now works fine. Thanks for all the input.