Thinkpads Forum

It seems like it says that we can't use a USB optical drive. Can anyone confirm this? It doesn't seem to make sense to have this restriction on an X60 series.

I have all updates installed on my machine, and my external LG Super Multi disc drive works fine.

Not entirely sure what you mean, though...

Spif wrote:I have all updates installed on my machine, and my external LG Super Multi disc drive works fine.

Not entirely sure what you mean, though...

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-63685

On the notes it says

"The hard drive firmware update utility bootable CD does not support USB optical disc drives, PCMCIA/CardBUS optical disc drives, optical disc drives in a docking station bay, or any other drives other than the optical disc drive in the ThinkPad UltraBay. Other drives will not be updated correctly by this firmware update utility."

It is discussing usage of the firmware update disk itself and not the end result of the firmware update process.

In other words, when you create the firmware update boot disk, you can not/ should not try to use THAT DISK to update the drives firmware from any drive (USB, PCMCIA etc etc) aside from the Thinkpad's ultrabay.

This makes perfect sense, at some point, the firmware updater will need to use the external drive that will not be available since the machine's firmware that controls it is being updated . . .

smugiri wrote:It is discussing usage of the firmware update disk itself and not the end result of the firmware update process.

In other words, when you create the firmware update boot disk, you can not/ should not try to use THAT DISK to update the drives firmware from any drive (USB, PCMCIA etc etc) aside from the Thinkpad's ultrabay.

This makes perfect sense, at some point, the firmware updater will need to use the external drive that will not be available since the machine's firmware that controls it is being updated . . .

Great thanks for the help. I guess I didn't really understand the warning so I wanted to make sure.

Just to make sure will a firmware update format my HD?

Check the text file. I read it, and although there is a new firmware file, it says it does not affect my drive, so I expect there would be no update. Seems to me I tried once before to actually run an update and it said none was needed. ... JD Hurst

you must first check to see that your hdd model is included in the update, most times there is just a new model that is being updated. I think IBM uses "|" that line to denote any changes. It is a good idea to update the drive's firmware if you know how to do it, most of the time it fixes some serious issues, hdd firmware updates are not as common as in the mid 90'swhere they were available readily from the manufacturer's FTP sites, so if they released one it must address an important issue.

Just to update, I tried to update last night via USB external dvd drive and it won't work. Its true how it says you need an optical drive built-in. It tells me that it can't find my optical drive. I have the HD model which has the update but I guess it won't work for the X60 series.

Ok, so I just saw that there's an update for my HD firmware, but I don't have an ultrabase. Is the only way to fix this to find someone w/ an ultrabase? I'm also considering installing the hdd on another computer... not sure if the bios program will be cool with this though.

If your hard drives are working fine, are you sure you want to fix it? Firmware upgrade is relatively risky.

I've upgraded the firmware on many devices, and none of them have bricked before. But I've never done a HDD... is this somehow more risky? It's true that the drive "works", and I don't even know what the new firmware is supposed to "fix". It doesn't say in the firmware history, so if anyone can tell me what the new Hitachi firmware changes, I'd love to know. But the HD does make strange clicking and whirring noises for no reason. And the "load/unload cycle count" is extremely high (because the drive parks and unparks the head) and I was hoping the firmware would address these issues. I've personally tried fixing it in software, but no matter which settings I change, the problems persist (see older posts in other threads if you want to see what I mean -- might just be inevitable with windows xp).

I was able to upgrade my X60 HDD firmware without any optical drive at all, by using a USB memory stick. I had to unpack the Lenovo ISO and make some changes to it (it basically sets up a RAMdrive, loads up a DOS-mode CDROM driver (MSCDEX) and copies the files to the RAMdrive before executing them. If you run it unmodified, MSCDEX fails to load and the whole process fails with an error.

It was all a bit of a pain, and this was for the firmware upgrade before the current one, and now I have to do it again

Lev

lev wrote:I was able to upgrade my X60 HDD firmware without any optical drive at all, by using a USB memory stick. I had to unpack the Lenovo ISO and make some changes to it (it basically sets up a RAMdrive, loads up a DOS-mode CDROM driver (MSCDEX) and copies the files to the RAMdrive before executing them. If you run it unmodified, MSCDEX fails to load and the whole process fails with an error.

It was all a bit of a pain, and this was for the firmware upgrade before the current one, and now I have to do it again

Lev

Anyway you could tell me how to set that up or perhaps send me the modified files? I haven't been able to update my HD firmware at all because it wouldn't use my usb optical drive. I tried 3 others and they still don't work. I even called IBM support and they couldn't help me. The manager took my phone number down and said he would call me back but its been months since.

Thanks for the help

Sorry for the delay -- I've been out of town for the last week. I'm planning on having a go at upgrading to the latest firmware revision this weekend, so I'll let you know how it goes and if it works I'll explain what I did.

Lev

lev wrote:Sorry for the delay -- I've been out of town for the last week. I'm planning on having a go at upgrading to the latest firmware revision this weekend, so I'll let you know how it goes and if it works I'll explain what I did.

Lev

Okay great. I tried to look up information regarding "CD Drive on USB Key" but I couldn't quite understand how you did it. Thanks for following up.

I'll second the request for info on how to do this. I was under the impression it was impossible, but now I know it was just improbable

has anyone updated their hard drive for the x60 tablet? I still can't update it. I would like to update to vista but I am worried that it will crash. Any suggestions?