Thinkpads Forum

Hi All,

New here with a Problem: TP 600E 2645-UN1 is failing to recognize new Hard Disk Drive (IBM 30GB) or, now, not even the old HDD (IBM 10GB). This unit is known to have this problem; the previous HDD upgrade (from 6.4GB to 10GB) didn't go smoothly either. At first it didn't work; but once it was recognized there were no further problems.

This time, all components (including the DVD reader in the slimbay and the external floppy) work fine, and check good by Easy-Setup. At power on, the HDD goes through the normal sounds of spinning-up, and the HDD access light goes on/off as normal, but the Easy-Setup (and the Advanced Test Ctrl-A) is not recognizing any HDD. FDISK or IBM-Hitachi DFT find none either. The HDD checks fine on another PC, and I have tried various partition types, including IBM Disk Manager (which shouldn't be necessary on 600E).

I have tried CMOS clearing and initializing (in Easy-Setup), running with or without battery, less memory etc to no avail. These tricks worked for the previous HDD upgrade. After about a week of trying, I opened up the laptop (and cleaned it up) but didn't find anything visibly bent, broken or burnt. While gradual and invisible death of the system board is always a possibility, with the experience of the previous HDD upgrade I am inclined to think that this is the case of bit stuck somewhere and needing to be cleared.

And, I also tried the Configuration Utility for DOS Version 4.43 (7hu601us.exe), where supposedly I can set the hard disk type. But what HDD type can I set for an IDE controller that's probably using LBA?

So, at this point I'd like to try to use the built-in hex editor to manually edit the CMOS to force-include the HDD. Can some kind folks guide me in that regard ? (similar to the "127 error" silencing as in http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=1199

Any other troubleshooting ideas are welcome as well. Many thanks in advance. I'd keep you posted; I really expect this TP to welcome the HDD someday soon.

-vj

Are you making sure that the drive is seated properly? I have had problems in the past with the hard drive not connecting all the way in the slot.

You can always install the hard drive with the keyboard bezel and modem removed, so that you can see the pins and hard drive line up properly.

EDIT: Welcome to the forum!

Thanks for the sugesstion. I've checked the connector again to make sure its tightly seated. Just to eliminate possibilities, I even tried powering on with the HDD pushed half-way into the connector; no difference except that HDD activity light seemed to burn a little longer at some stages. When I opened the case previously, I removed the modem and looked and cleaned under it as well. Also removed and reseated the CPU card. Didn't remove the system board though, so didn't get a chance to look under it. Also, I haven't yet tried the password clearing (the pin shorting method) as passwords haven't been set on this unit anyway. BTW, when the problem first manifested it had the INET24WW Bios which I upgraded to the latest INET36WW a few days ago. Haven't given up hope yet, thanks again!

You may want to download the Thinkpad hard drive firmware utility and see if it finds your hard drive. It's available here: http://www-3.ibm.com/pc/support/site.ws ... MIGR-41008 and is also available as a bootable ISO image.

Davemci,
Thanks for the hint; I've tried that too. F/W on this IBM IC25N030ATCS04-0 HDD is CA3OA71A. I ran the update program on another PC with this HDD attached and detected. The executed download (fwhd3404.exe) says that there's no new(er) firmware.

Hi All,

Thanks again for all those who offered help; Sorry for this much belated update. In December 2006, I managed to get this TP600E to recognize the 30GB HB. It started the low-level formatting and proceeded smoothly for 80% of the way, until I bumped on the laptop and it reset. It was "dead" again. A thorough inspection of the interior of the laptop showed nothing wrong. In March 2007, I took a shot at this again. By this time, the CMOS battery has gone dead, so I put in a new one.

I don't remember the exact sequence of events, but ever since the new CMOS battery, there has been no problem recognizing HD & CD/DVD drives in the BIOS! So, I suspect a weak CMOS battery to have been the culprit.

In the months following March 2007, I have used the TP600E with Windows ME, with one minor problem: the Panasonic/Matshita DVD-RAM UJ-820S optical drive is not properly detected in Win ME, while it's seen by BIOS, DOS, and bootable CDs. Recently I have tried to install Windows XP on a second partition on the same HD (as a "multi-boot" system). Please read, and feel free to comment and help, on that issue at:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?p=354801