Thinkpads Forum

I recently replaced the original Hitachi 100GB/7K drive (lets call it HD1) in my X60s with a new HD (HD2.) I'd like to use HD1 as a spare drive using the ThinkPad Serial ATA Hard Drive Bay Adapter.

I installed HD1 into the adapter, placed it into the X6 bay and everything booted up normally from HD2 (I already reinstalled the Recovery CDs from Lenovo at this point onto HD2.)

I intended to use Disk Management to reformat HD1, but when I went into DM, it detected HD1 as Disk0 and HD2 was Disk1. I tried to reformat HD1 ( it still had all of the original contents... XP, ThinkVantage programs, etc...), but DM would not let me as it was still accessing the drive as a system drive. Weird.

So I tried another route. I removed the Bay Adapter from the dock, booted my machine normally so that it was solely running on HD2. Once bootup was completed, I placed the adapter back into the dock. I went into Disk Management, and HD1 was STILL being detected as Disk0. As such, I could not reformat it, change drive names, etc...

Does anyone have any advice as to how I can completely reformat HD1? Is there something that I need to do with the startup configuration so that HD1 would no longer be treated as Disk0? I just want to use it as a simple external drive.

The second hard drive is a bootable disk. You might try installing the second drive (HD1) in the machine, attach a floppy drive or CD drive, and boot from a Windows 98 diskette (floppy) or a Linux CD (CD drive) and delete all the partitions on HD1 and reset the Master Boot Record. You can do this with the first recovery CD by exiting at the first stable menu and using FDISK to delete the partitions and then running FDISK /mbr.

After that, you should be able to put HD2 back in and format HD1.
... JDH

jdhurst wrote:You can do this with the first recovery CD by exiting at the first stable menu and using FDISK to delete the partitions and then running FDISK /mbr.

After that, you should be able to put HD2 back in and format HD1.

I placed HD1 back into my notebook. Then I changed the boot order in the BIOS Setup Utility so that the machine would boot from the Recovery CD in my external USB CD drive.

When you say "first stable menu" are you referring to the BIOS Setup Utility? If yes, I do not see any selection to run FDISK, nor do I see any option to do so from the ThinkVantage program.

I'm assuming that you mean that I should be able to run FDISK /mbr from a DOS prompt (which I can't seem to find or access.)

If I let the machine reboot normally from HD1 (with the USB CD drive disconnected), it keeps on looping the ThinkVantage splash page (screen goes off again, loads TV page, goes off again, etc...)

yodabeesh wrote:<snip>
I placed HD1 back into my notebook. Then I changed the boot order in the BIOS Setup Utility so that the machine would boot from the Recovery CD in my external USB CD drive.

When you say "first stable menu" are you referring to the BIOS Setup Utility? If yes, I do not see any selection to run FDISK, nor do I see any option to do so from the ThinkVantage program.

I'm assuming that you mean that I should be able to run FDISK /mbr from a DOS prompt (which I can't seem to find or access.)<snip>

No. I mean boot from the recovery CD as if you were going to re-image (recover) HD1. At the first stable DOS (blue text) menu, press Escape (or F3) and then F3 to exit to a command prompt. Now try to run FDISK and delete partitions and reset MBR as described earlier. ... JDH