Thinkpads Forum

W500 takes about 10 to 20 minutes to boot to either internal HD or HD in Ultrabay. If I put a bootable CD/DVD in the Ultrabay (Windows 7 install disk or other bootable CD\DVD) it will boot, but if I put the LENOVO DIAGNOSTICS Linux OS self booting CD in I get lots of read errors. It does not ever get loaded far enough to run.
In another Thinkpad T61 there are some error messages but it boots and allows the memory and disk tests to run.

Pressing F1 and going to BIOS when I run the Hard disk drive diagnostics program get the folllowing:
Status Test aborted
Result Pass: Controller Diag
Error code 0000: Read verification failed.

Both internal and Ultrabay HDs appear to be OK

When desktop finally appears it seems the system is running in super slow motion.
Clicking on Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome takes a minute or two for the initial screen to show up.
Selecting something from the browser also takes a long long time.
Executing a program from the harddisk takes a long time or just hangs up.

Is this a disk controller problem? Seems that the Thinkpad HD Diagnostic shows read errors.
Is it a processor problem?
If so do I have to replace the Motherboard?
What other tests can I run?
Have other T61 and T61P Thinkpads to use for testing but only 1 W500 Thinkpad.

bighank wrote:W500 takes about 10 to 20 minutes to boot to either internal HD or HD in Ultrabay. If I put a bootable CD/DVD in the Ultrabay (Windows 7 install disk or other bootable CD\DVD) it will boot, but if I put the LENOVO DIAGNOSTICS Linux OS self booting CD in I get lots of read errors. It does not ever get loaded far enough to run.
In another Thinkpad T61 there are some error messages but it boots and allows the memory and disk tests to run.

Pressing F1 and going to BIOS when I run the Hard disk drive diagnostics program get the folllowing:
Status Test aborted
Result Pass: Controller Diag
Error code 0000: Read verification failed.

Both internal and Ultrabay HDs appear to be OK

When desktop finally appears it seems the system is running in super slow motion.
Clicking on Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome takes a minute or two for the initial screen to show up.
Selecting something from the browser also takes a long long time.
Executing a program from the harddisk takes a long time or just hangs up.

Is this a disk controller problem? Seems that the Thinkpad HD Diagnostic shows read errors.
Is it a processor problem?
If so do I have to replace the Motherboard?
What other tests can I run?
Have other T61 and T61P Thinkpads to use for testing but only 1 W500 Thinkpad.

These are all symptoms of a failed hard drive. I cannot imagine a situation where this could be disk controller, processor, or motherboard. Hook it up to another computer as an external and get your data off if you can. Great time to upgrade to an SSD.

Don't believe its either HD, native or the one in a SATA Ultrabay drive caddy. After initial BIOS screen the system starts to boot. But after a few seconds the disk icon at the bottom of the LCD screen pulses on and stays on for several seconds then go off and pulses on again.
Sometimes after 10 or 20 minutes the system will boot.
As I said I tried running the Linux based Lenovo Diagnostics from CD in the Ultrabay drive and got hundred of read errors from the DVD/CD drive in the Ultrabay which on this system is a SATA and not a PATA interface.
With multiple SATA devices failing it seems more likely that the SATA controller is defective.
Has anyone replaced this component?
There is a vendor on Ebay advertising that he will replace components not the whole motherboard.
What do you think?

Test the hard drive(s) in one of your other ThinkPads and report back.

Removed both the internal HD and the Ultrabay HD and put them in the Utrabay of a T61. Used F12 to boot each disk from the Ultrabay. Both started booting and both crashed with errors. Tried booting in Safe Mode with same results. Then took the smaller W500 disk from the T61 Ultrabay and reinserted it internally in the W500. SURPRISE.
Booted to desktop. Shut down and rebooted. This disk is OK.

When I placed the larger disk, a 750 GB WD Scorpio Black in the W500 Ultrabay and booted from the smaller internal Segate disk got the pulsating disk icon and no boot. Simply putting the WD Scorpio Black in the Ultrabay is enough to crash the system. This disk is only a year old and I never expected to fail so soon.
Have had bad disks before but usually a single disk doesn't take down the other one. Noted that the Ultrabay interface in the W500 is SATA and not PATA like in the T61. This might be why the bad WD SATA disk dragged down the SATA interface on both disks or with the DVD/CD drive in the Ultrabay slot. The WD SB 750 was partitioned as dual boot with Windows 7. When I put the WD disk back in a T61 Ultrabay it said that one of the partitions wasn't formatted. Attempting to format the disk failed.

Booted Acronis and use the prepare disk for use option which destroyed the partitions on the WD disk. Trying to see if a clone disk option using EASE US TODO backup program will allow it to be accessed again.

Isn't there a diagnostic tool in T61's BIOS that would allow you to test both disks properly without having to boot from them?

Before you start cloning/erasing anything, that's where I would go...

I tried the BIOS HD test before posting and this was in my original post:


Pressing F1 and going to BIOS when I run the Hard disk drive diagnostics program get the folllowing:
Status Test aborted
Result Pass: Controller Diag
Error code 0000: Read verification failed.

After believing the WD 750 scoprio blank was toast ran the WD Datalife write zeros to entire disk. Took hours.
Then using same diagnostic WD code ran long HD test. Again a long time to complete. No errors.
Then used WD Acronis to clone from another HD that ran in the W500 when I got it, Was a Win Vista and I only partitioned 300GB of the 750 available on the WD HD. Cloned in the Ultrabay HD enclosure. Took hours again.
At end of cloning rebooted the W500 pressing F12 to alter boot device. Picked the 750 WD disk just cloned in the Ultrabay.
It booted normally and all devices appeared to function. Then ran CHKDSK with recover bad sectors and that took hours too.
No errors found.

Replaced WD750 in the internal HD slot and put the DVD/CD RAM drive back in the Ultrabay.
Booted Windows 7 installation disk from the Ultrabay DVD drive and did a new Win7 install using the remaining unpartioned space on the WD 750 HD. It installed Win7 as a dual boot in the newly created partition.
Now when I boot from the internal WD 750 get the dual boot screen and can boot Vista or Win7 system at will.
The HD has so far not failed even though I have given it a lot of run time.
It originally failed in a docking station when the system was left on idling for several days.
Will see what happens.

P S
Ran the BIOS Hard Disk Diagnostics test on the WD750. Took hours. At the end of the test showed no errors.
Shutdown W500 and restarted it. Started to boot and appeared to hang. Felt the left rear side where the heat sinks and fan outlet is. Was almost scalding hot. Powered off immediately and left it cool overnight. Expected to see PC fried.
Rebooted this morning and it appears to have survived the inferno.
Will consider NEVER running that test again. At least not more than a few minutes. Running the WD test took forever but did not heat up the system like this. If you want to smoke the system that you just obtained then the HD Diagnostics test in BIOS is the one for you.