TP600 HDD reporting oddity

[PatW]

Hello All, would anybody be able to help with a problem with my 600, 2645-410? Admittedly I have posted before with this but am still struggling (years later!)

The machine works fine with it's original HDD but is a tad small these days at 2Gb. So I aquired a TravelStar DJSA-210 (10Gb) for it which I believe is compatible, having checked through various articles of this site.

The problem with this drive is when an O/S is being installed, there is always an error creating an install folder. Also, any partitions I create (using FDISK or Acronis) just disappear after a restart. I've tried installing NT4, 2000 and Xbuntu and all hit the same problem.

Have tried the following after reading through the forum:

Updated BIOS (to IBET54WW)

New CMOS battery

Ran HDD check in 'Easy Setup' (OK) and 'Initialized' the BIOS

Removed RAM sticks

Erased MBR and performed a low-level format (using IBM/Hitachi utility)

Applied HDD firmware update from IBM for the DJSA-210

Ran the IBM/Hitachi diagnostics from floppy (again, OK)

Finally, to eliminate the drive itself I put it into an old Dell I borrowed from work- seems fine and installed Win2000 no problem.

So, still no joy! BUT- one small (possibly important) thing... I noticed on the Dell Diskmanager displays the drive model as 'DJSA-210' whereas on my 600 this seems garbled (i.e !SA-@210)

Has anybody any ideas or come across this before? Would be eternally grateful for any help.

[whizkid]

It seems like a bad connection to the drive. It could be on the drive (unlikely since it works in another machine), the drive bay connector, or a broken trace on the system board.

If it were me, I'd take apart the machine and touch a soldering iron to each pin of the drive connector in case there are cold joints. If that doesn't fix it, a new system board should.

[SMA]

As far as I recall it, the largest HDD that can be supported natively in a ThinkPad 600 is a 8.4 GB HDD.
This does not mean that a larger HDD cannot be installed, it just means that some support software must be installed.

To install NT4, it would be necessesary to first install something like Ontrack Disk Manager, but it is no longer available for download. I have just check it at Hitachis web site. (www.hitachigst.com)

Fortunately, Windows 2000 and XP has this support builtin, so it should be possible to install these directly, but I do belive that it will be necessesary to let the windows installation procedure do the HDD partitioning then.
Not letting windows do the partitioning might be the reason why the already attempted windows 2000 installation did not succeed.

[whizkid]

The 600 family can natively support drives up to 130GB. Windows NT IIRC can boot on drives up to 8GB (I think it would only create boot partitions of 4GB) and create and use partitions much larger than that.

Hard drives should always be PARTITIONED and formatted in the ThinkPad you will be using them in. They (ThinkPads) traditionally have peculiar drive geometry settings that cannot be manually changed.

[PatW]

First of all, many thanks for your help so far.

I've tried the soldering iron remedy but still no joy, so its time to try and find a cheapish motherboard I think...

Pat

[Harryc]

First of all, many thanks for your help so far.

I've tried the soldering iron remedy but still no joy, so its time to try and find a cheapish motherboard I think...

Pat

The 600's are so cheap these days you might be better off getting an entire base, maybe a 600X with a faster CPU. Just food for thought. Oh, I would also try another hard drive since your original works. The fact that the new one works in a Dell is not 100% conclusive evidence that the Thinkpad system board is defective, IMHO. .

[PatW]

Thanks HarryC

Seen a motherboard on ebay for $19 plus shipping from the US, so may go for that. A cheeky question- will any '600' motherboard be OK??

Agree that it is weird my original drive works OK - my friend lent me a Toshiba HDD2168 just to try, and that was reported as a 'POSHABA $168'... !!

[Harryc]

According to the parts list, the system board for a 13.3 in LCD machine (which you have) is different than the 12.1 and 13 in. models. The correct part # for your machine is 10L1711.

Parts List

The right board on EBay

[tfflivemb2]

I would look at getting a 600E system board, if you are still happy with using your system...this way you can have more upgrade options.

[bobgarty]

Seen a motherboard on ebay for $19 plus shipping from the US, so may go for that. A cheeky question- will any '600' motherboard be OK??

I have a number of good 600E complete bases I want to shift - I am UK based (Herts) - PM me if u r interested and i will let u know the specs.

[sktn77a]

The 2Gb systems were generally FAT16 (OS limitation) systems but the 600 series supports larger drives. What file system(s) are you creating on the drive? Are you using IBM recovery CDs or plain OS installation disks?

[PatW]

I've used both an original NT4 CD and the IBM restore CD- which always stops after the partitions are set and the machine reboots. Always tried to format NTFS- should I try FAT16?

Also read somewhere on here that Linux asks the drive directly its's capacity etc (rather than the BIOS) so downloaded Xubuntu - still no joy when it gets to the 'partitioner' phase...

bob- thanks, I'll let you know when I have some money for a board...

[bobgarty]

bob- thanks, I'll let you know when I have some money for a board...

No Probs - NB = these are complete bottoms (inc. board with proc/fan in base plastics, pcmcia cage, sub card, modem, tv out card, 2x 64mb Dimms etc.) just add your screen assembly, keyboard, optical device, battery, and disk and off u go. Not looking for big money - region of £10-£13 posted depending on postal charge.

Think The CMOS batteries are dead or missing too.