Thinkpads Forum

Hi,

I just tried to swap over my T61's DVD Burner which is also Ultrabay Slim and noticed that the T400's DVD Combo drive had an extra notch on it and the connector looks diffrerent, are they incompatible?

And a supplementary question if I may, why is the Serial DVD Burner for these new T400s so expensive? It's only a DVD burner at the end of the day, even if it is smaller.

Thanks.

They are in fact incompatible. Question #2 shoud be directed to Lenovo, I have no idea. If you think that's expensive, price out a blueray drive for a T400.

Dead1nside wrote:I just tried to swap over my T61's DVD Burner which is also Ultrabay Slim and noticed that the T400's DVD Combo drive had an extra notch on it and the connector looks diffrerent, are they incompatible?

All ThinkPads prior to T400/T500 series having UltraBay Slim use PATA interface between the system board and the bay drive. Because PATA is getting obsolete, Lenovo switched to a serial SATA interface in new series. This made the drives incompatible and is a reason for the notch.

Thank-you, it looks like there's two types now 'Slim' and 'Slim Serial'.

I'm just a little annoyed as I wanted to swap the drive so I could burn DVD recovery media instead of the 13 CDs required instead.

My comment about the DVD Burner Ultraby Slim Serial drive being so expensive is because a normal PC DVD-Burner is so cheap and the miniaturisation can't be that much more expensive to the magnitude of 10x or so. Although I am aware that Lenovo upgrades in general are very expensive e.g. HDDs and RAM.

Thanks for replying to me. I'm sure the price of these Slim Serial drives will come down when they become more ubiquitous, currently only the latest models use them.

Dead1nside wrote:My comment about the DVD Burner Ultraby Slim Serial drive being so expensive is because a normal PC DVD-Burner is so cheap and the miniaturisation can't be that much more expensive to the magnitude of 10x or so.

Ultrabay "Slim" devices are 9.5mm high and are part of the overall form factor of T series thinkPads.

9.5mm optical drives of any type have always been more expensive than full size optical drives, or even 12mm optical drives. The situation is no different for SATA optical drives than it was for PATA ones.

Cheers,

Bill B.

Dead1nside wrote: My comment about the DVD Burner Ultraby Slim Serial drive being so expensive is because a normal PC DVD-Burner is so cheap

I agree with you regarding the pricing. However I do prefer to buy certain Lenovo parts. Here is the solution I've adopted. If one watches the web site regularly, they have been having good sales on a regular basis on these items. Its just a matter of patience and watching. They usualy select between one and four accessories for the sale. Not long ago I got an Ultrabay slim DVD burner to replace the combo drive (CD-RW) for my T60. It was half off making it a good buy. Hope this helps.
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Cheers...
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archer6 wrote: I agree with you regarding the pricing. However I do prefer to buy certain Lenovo parts. Here is the solution I've adopted. If one watches the web site regularly, they have been having good sales on a regular basis on these items. Its just a matter of patience and watching. They usualy select between one and four accessories for the sale. Not long ago I got an Ultrabay slim DVD burner to replace the combo drive (CD-RW) for my T60. It was half off making it a good buy. Hope this helps.
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Cheers...
posted via BlackBerry Bold

I'll certainly look out for one, I didn't think it would be a major problem I actually forgot that the T400 only had the DVD/CD-RW drive and not a DVD-Burner until I had to burn the recovery media. Either way, if I can get it for half or so of the ~£150 one costs I'll buy it.

On a side note, burning 13 CDs and then feeding them back in to the machine to recover, recovered the machine quicker than my T61 using 1 CD and 2 DVDs.

Can you borrow an external drive, if just for the purposes of making the recovery discs?

yak wrote:All ThinkPads prior to T400/T500 series having UltraBay Slim use PATA interface between the system board and the bay drive. Because PATA is getting obsolete, Lenovo switched to a serial SATA interface in new series. This made the drives incompatible and is a reason for the notch.

So with the older Slim drives (for my old X61, for example), using a SATA drive in an Ultrabay adapter would mean that the adapter would convert it from SATA to PATA, and then the Ultrabase would convert it from PATA back to SATA again? Is that really how it works?

Yes tom, indeed Sata drives are limited by the PATA bridging on the Ultrabay, would be nice to know the max speed a drive on the Ultrabay can achieve, I think it should be faster than USB 2.0? Can't wait for USB 3.0 to arrive.