Thinkpads Forum

I purchased a Samsung MP0402H (40gb) hard drive to put in my Thinkpad 600 (2645-51U). I then installed XP on the machine and it completed the initial installation (the one before it reboots the first time). There were no messages about writing while setting up. The harddrive was partitioned at 40GB NTFS. However, when it rebooted, it kept giving me a disk read error. I used Samsung's DR-DOS Caldera hd boot program to split the partition to two 20gb and everything is going fine. Is there a limitation on the thinkpad that won't allow me to use all 40 gb's on one drive?

I had no problems putting a 60GB in my 2645-45u, so it seems logical that your setup should have worked the first time.

The only thing I can offer is to ask if you have the latest BIOS on the machine. This might help.

Also, did you partition and format the drive (the first time) in the Thinkpad? This is very important for things to go right.

I also added that same drive to my 2645-45U and haven't had any issues with it but I didn't format it with just one 40 GIG partition.

I know that XP doesn't like over 32 gigs with FAT32 though but you did say it was NTFS so I dunno.

Forgot to mention a couple of things. I did upgrade the bios to the latest version and the final partitioning was two 20 gb's with FAT 32. Got me...Oh well it works. Thanks for responding.