Ultrabay HDD not being recognized

[hubble]

Good day all - I am new to this forum, but a long-time user (and lover) of Thinkpads. I have an A31p purchased in 2002. It has served me well, and is (sort-of) going strong. Over the last three weeks, a lot has gone one with it, but I will spare the details unless someone thinks it's important.

What is currently happening is this: After my many issues, I now have an operating computer with Windows XP sp3 and the original hard drive as the primary drive. I want to increase the size of this drive (as I did about 6 months ago), so I put this 320 GB Western digital hard drive into the left ultrabay (no caddy). When this drive is in the ultrabay, it is the ONLY drive that is recognized by the computer, and since it is not formatted, computer won't boot, due to "no OS". I remove the hard drive, and lo and behold, the computer boots up, using the OS found on the primary drive. Ultimately, I want to clone the primary drive to the ultrabay drive, and then use the ultrabay drive as primary. But I can't do this, as the computer won't boot up if the second drive is in the bay, and PartitionMagic won't recognize the drive when the computer boots if I hook it up with USB.

When I view the BIOS with the ultrabay in, only one drive (the ultrabay one) is recognized...and the label of the drive returns a garbled description (exclamiation points, smiley faces, blocking, etc). Since only one drive is listed, I can't change the order to indicate that computer should boot from the primary, since the primary is not known to the computer. I pull out the ultrabay drive, and computer boots, and BIOS shows a proper label for the hard drive. This leads me to believe the drive may be dead, so I have a replacement on the way. But I put another drive (outside of the other two that I have been using) and the same thing is happening. Two drive failures at the exact same time seems a bit of a coincidence.

So any ides of how to get both drives to recognize at the same time? All may be moot if it is a bad drive. The other thing I can think of is a bad ultrabay holder, so I have a new (used) one on the way, too. One thing that I did do over the last three weeks was replace the motherboard, but the BIOS is up to date. Any brillance out there is much appreciated, so I can resume using my great laptop in the fashion I have become accustomed.

[rkawakami]

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

In this situation, this is how I would proceed: (it does require some additional hardware which you may or may not have)

- Use a hard drive caddy with the drive you install in the Ultrabay HD adapter. An authentic IBM adapter has a metal bottom to the adapter and could possibly short out the electronics that's on the hard drive's PC board. If you don't have a spare HD caddy, then line the bottom of the tray with a sheet of Mylar film. Photocopier transparency sheets, the kind you would use with an overhead projector, will do. If that's also not easily obtained, then try a piece of paper. If that doesn't solve your problem....
- Since your "new" 320GB drive may not be formatted correctly and you are going to be installing an OS on it (i.e., nothing important is on the drive), I would make Windows format it.
- Leave it in the Ultrabay HD adapter (but not installed), boot the system using your existing drive and then "hot-swap" the Ultrabay HD adapter; plug it in when Windows is running.
- Launch the Computer Management utility from the Administrative Tools in Control Panel. The Ultrabay disk should be listed as Disk 1 (the D: drive), assuming no optical drive is also installed. If it's not there, then you probably have an issue with the IDE controller on the motherboard. The same issue would most likely affect any optical drive you plug in so I'd check that device too.
- Since the A31p has TWO Ultrabays, try the hard drive adapter in the right Ultrabay (your description seems to only mention that you tried the left). The IDE channel is different than the left.

[tbartold]

I've replaced the hard drives in my Thinkpads a number of times, and the simplest way I've found to swap/upgrade is to put in both drives like you did, but boot from a UBCD (ultimatebootcd.com) instead and use one of the utilities on that copy the old to the new. You'll need to extend or add partitions later after you make the copy.

[hubble]

- Use a hard drive caddy with the drive you install in the Ultrabay HD adapter. An authentic IBM adapter has a metal bottom to the adapter and could possibly short out the electronics that's on the hard drive's PC board.

It is an authentic IBM drive holder, and I thought about it shorting out the hard drive. But I've used this for years without any shorts, so I am not 100% certain this is it. But at this time, I am willing to rule NOTHING out! I have ordered the perforated caddy to put on my hard drives.

- Since your "new" 320GB drive may not be formatted correctly and you are going to be installing an OS on it (i.e., nothing important is on the drive), I would make Windows format it.

I was planning on this. Fortunately, I back everything up on the drive to my 1.5 TB off-line storage. I should have no loss of any data!

- Leave it in the Ultrabay HD adapter (but not installed), boot the system using your existing drive and then "hot-swap" the Ultrabay HD adapter; plug it in when Windows is running.

Can't do this. For some reason, I have NEVER been able to hot-swap any of the Ultrabay devices (floppy, CDRW, HDD) while running WinXP. When I did that this morning, I received the famous Blue Screen of Death, so my particular computer won't allow me to hot-swap these devices. (I get a persistant Beep Beep Beep when I put a new device in, followed by the BSOD about 1.5 minutes later).

- Launch the Computer Management utility from the Administrative Tools in Control Panel. The Ultrabay disk should be listed as Disk 1 (the D: drive), assuming no optical drive is also installed. If it's not there, then you probably have an issue with the IDE controller on the motherboard. The same issue would most likely affect any optical drive you plug in so I'd check that device too.

Again, I can't swap once WinXP is running. I must do this prior to Windows launching, and I can't do this, because once the Ultrabay HDD is installed, my primary HDD with the OS magically disappears, and there is no trace of OS. So I can't boot with the Ultrabay drive in (no OS), and I can't boot with the Ultrabay HDD out (BSOD). This is a NEW/USED motherboard (replaced the original one about 3 weeks ago, but I don't know if my Ultrabay was working when I put the new motherboard in or not), so I am wondering if the IDE controller isn't working. Is this a user-servicable thing, or should I attempt to return the motherboard to the vendor?

- Since the A31p has TWO Ultrabays, try the hard drive adapter in the right Ultrabay (your description seems to only mention that you tried the left). The IDE channel is different than the left.

Tried this, with the same results. Left or right Ultrabay spot performs the same thing. I even went one further, and put the primary drive (with the OS) in the Ultrabay (making the assumption that the Ultrabay takes first priority), and put the secondary drive in the primary HDD spot, thinking that the computer recognizes the Ultrabay first, will boot up (using the primary dive that is in the Ultrabay slot and will use the OS on that drive), and then recognize both drive. Nope, didn't work.

I do appreciate your feedback. If you or anyone else has any input, please continue to post!

Chris

[hubble]

I've replaced the hard drives in my Thinkpads a number of times, and the simplest way I've found to swap/upgrade is to put in both drives like you did, but boot from a UBCD (ultimatebootcd.com) instead and use one of the utilities on that copy the old to the new. You'll need to extend or add partitions later after you make the copy.

Thanks, I will try that utility. But I must get both hard drive recognized by the computer at the same time before I can do any data transfer. Honestly, once both drive are recognized simultaneously by the computer, I am golden, as I have copied data from one drive to another tens of times. I just need to get to that spot. But I will look into that utility once I get both drive recognized at the same time.

[RealBlackStuff]

Looking at the timeline, I'd say the motherboard is bad. Return it for a refund or replacement.

[tbartold]

Thanks, I will try that utility. But I must get both hard drive recognized by the computer at the same time before I can do any data transfer. Honestly, once both drive are recognized simultaneously by the computer, I am golden, as I have copied data from one drive to another tens of times. I just need to get to that spot. But I will look into that utility once I get both drive recognized at the same time.

Are you saying that the BIOS is not recognizing the drives? Or are you saying that the OS is not? The UBCD only needs the BIOS to recognize the drives, you'll be booting from it, not from one hard drive or the other. You don't need to get the OS to recognize both drives to boot from the CD.

[neofile]

Coincidentally I just joined this site because I had exactly the same problem with a thinkpad A31 I just bought. If I installed a second drive in the left hand bay, the PC would try to boot from it even though it wasn't a bootable disk. If I put the system disk in the left hand bay and the non-boot disk in the internal slot, the PC then tried to boot from the internal slot. The only way I could get the PC to boot from the correct disk was to have only one disk installed, anywhere, in which case the PC happily booted from the right location every time.

I've never seen a machine behave like this. I have the latest BIOS and controller, but it still didn't identify the disks or their locations correctly. It seemed to make no difference if I manually changed the boot order. Neither drive appeared during the POST test. All very, very weird.

The solution for me was to swap things around so that the system disk stayed in its original internal location below the cardbus slots, the optical drive was moved from the right hand ultrabay to the left hand ultrabay, and the data disk was put into the right hand ultrabay to replace the optical drive. I hadn''t realized initially that it was possible to swap devices from one type of ultrabay to another, or I would have tried it before. Once I'd done this, the PC booted from the correct disk, correctly identified the second disk, and has worked fine ever since.

So, my thanks to the contributor who mentioned that the right hand and left hand sides of the machine were different IDE channels. That was the clue that solved the issue, I hope it helps others too, because this one is a real hair-tearer.