Thinkpads Forum

We recently received several T410s's. We also have several Serial Hard Drive Bay Adapters that were used in T400's. However when we put the adapter and a HDD drive in the ultrabay slot, nothing happens. The T410s doesn't recognize the HDD nor does the HDD start to spin like it does in the T400. We have tried several adapters in several T410s's all with the same result, nothing. Why wouldnt the computer recognize the drive and its adapter?

For the record all of the adapters have WD Scorpio Black 320GB drives. Also we have also tried using the Samsung Solid State Drives in the adapter too. Same result.

Thanks

Seem to have found my own answer. The adapters we have are Ultra Bay II but the T410s needs Ultra Bay III.

So, this is pretty confusing. Is my "Ultrabay Slim" HDD adapter for my T61p not going to work with the "Serial Ultrabay Slim" bay of the T410s I have on order?

On a related note, has anyone had any experience with the 3rd party HDD caddies sold on ebay? They sell for under $14, which is a lot cheaper than from IBM. Since there's not much to them, I could believe it can be made for under $20, but I could also believe the thing might not latch properly.

kkwst2 wrote:So, this is pretty confusing. Is my "Ultrabay Slim" HDD adapter for my T61p not going to work with the "Serial Ultrabay Slim" bay of the T410s I have on order?

No, it won't. Not only for the above mentioned reason (that I didn't know about) but because after T61, the UltraBay was switched from PATA to SATA interface, that's why it is now called "Serial UltraBay".

Although from user's perspective this is a problem because old drives don't work anymore, it was needed as PATA interface is pretty obsolete now (there are no new drives using it). It also made the old SATA-I limit problems go away.

yak wrote:... after T61, the UltraBay was switched from PATA to SATA interface, that's why it is now called "Serial UltraBay".

I don't believe this is strictly correct. I'm pretty sure the T61 ultrabay supported both SATA and PATA drives, and thus both interfaces. I say this because I currently have a SATA HDD in a SATA adapter on my T61.

kkwst2 wrote:I don't believe this is strictly correct. I'm pretty sure the T61 ultrabay supported both SATA and PATA drives, and thus both interfaces. I say this because I currently have a SATA HDD in a SATA adapter on my T61.

I was talking about the interface used in the UltraBay connector. Your T61 uses PATA there. You are able to use a SATA harddrive because the adapter has a bridge chip inside.

What's interesting is that the T61's chipset does not support PATA anymore so there is another bridge chip on the system board. This means that the signals between the SATA chipset and the SATA harddrive in the UltraBay are converted to PATA and back each time.

The Serial UltraBay removed the need for any of these bridges. A SATA harddrive in UltraBay is connected directly to the chipset and runs at full SATA-II speed.