Thinkpads Forum

My child spilled juice next to my laptop and, unfortunately, it seeped up into the hard drive. Now the hard drive is not seen in the BIOS.

Can any old laptop hard drive work with my thinkpad, and how many gigs would a stock 570 (192 RAM) be able to support?

I think I'm going to give it a distilled water bath and let it dry out a few weeks and try for some data recovery. Not holding my breath, though.


Kristen

It is impossible for anything to seep into a hard drive. They are well sealed. It is much more likely that either the hard drive electronics are bad or the hard drive controller on the system board is gone.

You should test the drive in another machine to be sure.

The 570 has a PII, so I would think you could put as large a drive in there as you like, but I cannot say for sure.

whizkid wrote:It is impossible for anything to seep into a hard drive. They are well sealed. It is much more likely that either the hard drive electronics are bad or the hard drive controller on the system board is gone.

You should test the drive in another machine to be sure.

The 570 has a PII, so I would think you could put as large a drive in there as you like, but I cannot say for sure.

Yeah, not into the drive itself, but the board. Prevailing thought is that it has shorted out.

The HDD light stays on constantly, and you can hear it trying to do something, but nada. (Operating System Not Found) Going to give it a few more days to dry completely before I deem it officially dead.

I have two 570's. I swapped the drives. The non-juicy HDD worked in both systems. The juicy one worked in neither system. So, yep, I tested it.

I was told by someone a 40 gig wouldn't work (I know a 20 will), but I wanted more than just one stranger's thoughts. Two stranger's thoughts are always better.

In all ThinkPads, if a 20GB will work, then a 40GB will work, and so will a 137GB, when they make them. The very oldest models work with drives up to 8GB. The 570 originally came with drives up to 6.4GB, according to TWBOOK.

Looking close at that book, the 570 uses the PIIX4E controller chip, which is the same as in the 600E, and the 600E can handle large drives, so I would confidently wager that the 570 can too.

whizkid wrote:In all ThinkPads, if a 20GB will work, then a 40GB will work, and so will a 137GB, when they make them. The very oldest models work with drives up to 8GB. The 570 originally came with drives up to 6.4GB, according to TWBOOK.

Looking close at that book, the 570 uses the PIIX4E controller chip, which is the same as in the 600E, and the 600E can handle large drives, so I would confidently wager that the 570 can too.

Thanks much, will pick one up.

Howdy,
I have three 570 machines with large drives. Two have 40 gig drives and one has a 60 gig drive. No problems, at all.