Thinkpads Forum

Hello all, I just became an owner of an X200. Anyway, I removed the factory hard drive and installed a non-Lenovo FRU Hitachi 100GB 7200rpm hard drive. Windows 7 Enterprise was freshly installed.

Now daily when I'm browsing the net, watching videos, or basically doing anything, it will freeze. The first indication is the hard drive LED lights up solid but it is not being accessed as I don't hear any noises. The current app in focus will pause with a Windows waiting cursor and I can't do anything for approximately 45 seconds. Then the hard drive LED goes out, and Windows goes back to normal. This seems to happen more often when watching videos (or more likely accessing large amounts of hard drive data), so I installed the latest Lenovo Intel chipset drivers to replace the standard SATA controller, but the problem is still there.

I also have a similar Hitachi 100GB hard drive I use in a W500 and it does the same thing to that laptop as well. I'm pretty sure these drives don't have any physical problems but I will chkdsk them anyway. The weird thing is I used these drives before with a T61 and T60 with Vista and never experienced this problem. I also use a 200GB Hitachi drive in a T60p with Windows 7 and don't have this problem. So I wonder if it is a problem related to Windows 7 and these hard drives or with the newer chipset/DDR3 memory and these hard drives?

I'm just speculating as I like to do that alot. Anyone feel free to help as I find these pauses annoying.

Thanks
Roger

P.S. Wow, whaddya know. Just as I was about to click Submit, it did it again.

I'm not sure -- just a guess here -- would sata compatability mode in bios make a difference? My X200 uses achi mode with my ssd -- I don't even know what that means, but I read somewhere here on the forum to set the bios to achi mode for ssd -- so maybe compability mode is what is needed for your hdd?

To me these freezes clearly indicate a problem with the hard drive and I have the impression that it's not a compatibility problem.

Don't save anything important on this HD, if the problem persists you should just get another drive (and not an IBM/Hitachi - but that's a personal standpoint).

Check the SMART, use HD Tune to do an error scan, try SpinRite.

I had nearly identical symptoms when my 320GB Scorpio Black was failing.