TP770z - HDD suddenly says it's password-protected

[Edward Mendelson]

I've been experimenting with a cheap 8GB SSD in my TP 770z, and, after moving it in and out of different caddies, it suddenly says it's encrypted. When I boot up with it, no matter which cable or bay I use, the padlock symbol appears during bootup. Of course I never put a password on it, so this is very strange.

Should I just throw away the drive, or is it possible that something has gone wrong in one of the pins and that it can somehow be fixed? Has anyone seen this sort of thing before?

[cadillacmike68]

Padlock for the HDD or padlock for the system?

[cadillacmike68]

You might want to put the drive in a T20 or T30 series system if you have one available and see if it can be read or if it still gives you a power on padlock for the HDD.

[Edward Mendelson]

Padlock for the HDD or padlock for the system?

Padlock for the HDD, not the system. And the same HDD padlock appears when I tried putting the drive into my old 760XL. (One reason for this project is to move my legacy-hardware testbed from the 760XL to the 770Z.)

No T20/30 around here to experiment with, unfortunately. My guess is that the electronics-recycling-bin will be the next place I'll put that drive...

[kfzhu1229]

I've been experimenting with a cheap 8GB SSD in my TP 770z, and, after moving it in and out of different caddies, it suddenly says it's encrypted. When I boot up with it, no matter which cable or bay I use, the padlock symbol appears during bootup. Of course I never put a password on it, so this is very strange.

Should I just throw away the drive, or is it possible that something has gone wrong in one of the pins and that it can somehow be fixed? Has anyone seen this sort of thing before?

I think your drive have cracked solder joints by now.
I remember that when my slimline IDE to 2nd 2.5" SATA caddy enclosure starts to die, it exhibits the exact same thing, asking me to enter a password (It's the IDE to SATA controller chip is toast or solder joints of the chip cracked). So if your SSD also has that same bridge chip built in, this can be the issue and it means the drive goes straight to the bin.

[cadillacmike68]

I've been experimenting with a cheap 8GB SSD in my TP 770z, and, after moving it in and out of different caddies, it suddenly says it's encrypted. When I boot up with it, no matter which cable or bay I use, the padlock symbol appears during bootup. Of course I never put a password on it, so this is very strange.

Should I just throw away the drive, or is it possible that something has gone wrong in one of the pins and that it can somehow be fixed? Has anyone seen this sort of thing before?

I think your drive have cracked solder joints by now.
I remember that when my slimline IDE to 2nd 2.5" SATA caddy enclosure starts to die, it exhibits the exact same thing, asking me to enter a password (It's the IDE to SATA controller chip is toast or solder joints of the chip cracked). So if your SSD also has that same bridge chip built in, this can be the issue and it means the drive goes straight to the bin.

Ed If you tried it in a 760 there is no need to trying in another. The point was to test in a different system which you already did.

As to the cracked solder joints. Can these cracks be seen and more importantly can they be re-flowed like the memory slot cracks in T30s?

These are external joints, not internal like the nvidia GPU fiasco which was internal to the chip - correct?

[kfzhu1229]

Ed If you tried it in a 760 there is no need to trying in another. The point was to test in a different system which you already did.

As to the cracked solder joints. Can these cracks be seen and more importantly can they be re-flowed like the memory slot cracks in T30s?

These are external joints, not internal like the nvidia GPU fiasco which was internal to the chip - correct?

From my dead adapter, I suspect it's solder joint cracking on the legs of the IC, so it can be reflowed even with a soldering iron. At least for my adapter it came in a surface mount legged package instead of a BGA one.
However, I don't know for sure if the chip itself was toast or it was the legs because I heated up the chip too much and the chip fried
Now when I insert the caddy into my Dell it interrupts everything and brings up a white screen saying an unknown device has been plugged in and I have to unplug it (Dell BIOS has the overlay feature where even in ACPI controlled Windows it can overlay anything that you are doing and halts everything, and then if you exit out of the screen it resumes like as if time has been frozen for that amount of time)
Still if you have such an adapter exhibiting the same symptoms it doesn't hurt to heat it up with a heat gun or oven and see if it comes back to life. This is no flip chip so it's not the ghetto "video chip reflow" stuff.

[Edward Mendelson]

Well, this is a drive that I was just experimenting with. I realized something else: I had been using the cable from a 770 HDD caddy with this and other drives, and the cable now doesn't work with any drive - obviously I broke something when switching drives too often. Perhaps the cable messed up the drive at some point before it stopped working entirely?

Anyway, I have another HDD caddy and cable to work with, and I'll be more careful next time.

[cadillacmike68]

That doesn't sound logical to me. That is unless an internal wire broke. I haven't used a 760 / 770 series system in many years, but I've swapped out T-series drives and trays hundreds of times with no issues.

[Edward Mendelson]

It doesn't sound logical to me either. But it seems to be what happened.

I have the 770 second hdd adapter, which works with the 760-type cable and the 770-type cable. When I test with a known-good disk, the 770z sees the disk if I attach it to a 760-style cable, but not when I attach it to this apparently broken 770-style cable. (I haven't taken apart my other caddy yet; waiting for another IDE SDD to arrive.)

If something can be broken, sooner or later I'll break it... But I'll keep experimenting. Meanwhile, if anyone has a spare 770 HDD caddy and cable, I'm in the market for one.

[kfzhu1229]

It doesn't sound logical to me either. But it seems to be what happened.

I have the 770 second hdd adapter, which works with the 760-type cable and the 770-type cable. When I test with a known-good disk, the 770z sees the disk if I attach it to a 760-style cable, but not when I attach it to this apparently broken 770-style cable. (I haven't taken apart my other caddy yet; waiting for another IDE SDD to arrive.)

If something can be broken, sooner or later I'll break it... But I'll keep experimenting. Meanwhile, if anyone has a spare 770 HDD caddy and cable, I'm in the market for one.

The ribbon cable can tear if you swap around the drives too much.
The caddy for the ThinkPad 770 is meant so that if you replace the hard drive, you swap the hard drive with the caddy like a cartridge! This practice is basically so that when you wanna upgrade your hard drive, many don't know the drive inside the caddy is standard and resort to IBM for buying their upgrades! Notice on the caddy it says not to disassemble the caddy to sway customers away from doing this! I noticed the same thing on the Tecra 8000 that I got, and so far for laptops of this age I have touched only Dell doesn't do this practice...
What this means is the ribbon cable is NOT designed to be frequently plugged and unplugged, and you have probably ripped one by now for trying the hard drives...
I am curious though whether you broke the one I sent you or the one you have.
I think you should just resort to a 7200RPM IDE HDD that isn't too large in size before you break more. These caddies are extremely hard to come by!

[Edward Mendelson]

Yes, I made the mistake of pulling on the cable instead of using a plastic spludger to pull it out gradually. It was the one you sent, but it's entirely my fault that it broke. I now have two other caddies with cables, and I'm going to be very careful with both of them.

A 32GB Kingspec SSD just arrived (formatted with an Apple HPFS file system, now removed), and I've put it into one of my other caddies, where it's working perfectly. I won't remove it from that caddy and cable, and am copying my old 760XL setup into it now. So all is well. I destroyed only one cable - again, entirely my fault!

[kfzhu1229]

Yes, I made the mistake of pulling on the cable instead of using a plastic spludger to pull it out gradually. It was the one you sent, but it's entirely my fault that it broke. I now have two other caddies with cables, and I'm going to be very careful with both of them.

If it's like one or two traces ripped, you can technically still do wiring over them to get it fixed, put a drive in and never touch it again.
Either way I guess well we should be glad about me sending over that caddy so that you aren't too short on those caddies right now.
I remembered when I wanted to buy another caddy before my 770ED died, it was like 45 bucks plus postage and without the hard drive. And that was 5 years ago when the laptop itself only goes for something under $100

[Edward Mendelson]

Yes, I made the mistake of pulling on the cable instead of using a plastic spludger to pull it out gradually. It was the one you sent, but it's entirely my fault that it broke. I now have two other caddies with cables, and I'm going to be very careful with both of them.

If it's like one or two traces ripped, you can technically still do wiring over them to get it fixed, put a drive in and never touch it again.

Yes, I can see where things have come loose at one of the connector between the cable and drive. If I need to use this cable, I'll try a repair, but meanwhile, all is well. Thank you again!

[cadillacmike68]

Well, sort of a happy ending.

Is the original SSD still suffering from cranial rectal inversion, i.e. still thinks it needs a password?

[Edward Mendelson]

Well, sort of a happy ending.

Is the original SSD still suffering from cranial rectal inversion, i.e. still thinks it needs a password?

Yes, but I don't need it any longer. It contained copies of my DOS and Win31/95/98/NT/2K setups that I had made on a 760XL, plus a new XP installation. I've now got all of those on a 32GB SSD and don't need the locked 8GB disk any longer. And it's still locked in all systems.

[cadillacmike68]

Well, sort of a happy ending.

Is the original SSD still suffering from cranial rectal inversion, i.e. still thinks it needs a password?

Yes, but I don't need it any longer. It contained copies of my DOS and Win31/95/98/NT/2K setups that I had made on a 760XL, plus a new XP installation. I've now got all of those on a 32GB SSD and don't need the locked 8GB disk any longer. And it's still locked in all systems.

Target practice time. I have a few FUBAR'd HDDs for the next time I'm at a private range.

[axur-delmeria]

Target practice time. I have a few FUBAR'd HDDs for the next time I'm at a private range.

I'd rather open them up and harvest the rare-earth magnets, then maybe use the disk platters as mirrors.

[cadillacmike68]

Target practice time. I have a few FUBAR'd HDDs for the next time I'm at a private range.

I'd rather open them up and harvest the rare-earth magnets, then maybe use the disk platters as mirrors.

Hang them up in a Manila disco!

[axur-delmeria]

Hang them up in a Manila disco!

I don't dance though.