Hard Drive upgrade in R51

[heeltoejoe]

My 40 G hard drive crashed last week in my 1836 machine. I purchased and installed a 160 G IDE and ordered the Recovery and Rescue disks from Lenovo. After initiating the Setup Utility Program and installing the first of the Recovery disks, I get a message stating "Error in the installation". Talking with a Lenovo technician, we attempted to use the F5 or F6 buttons to move the HDD02 up into the list that could be "seen" by the machine. According to the tech, the 160 G HD is too large to be seen by my 5 year old machine. The drive appears in the list but is in the "Excluded" portion of the list. I would be one grateful bloke in Wyoming if there is someone out there that could help. Thank you!

[BillMorrow]

it looks like you will need a smaller HDD>.

but don't take my word for it..

it has been at least 3 years since i did any HDD upgrades..

nevermind, the HMM is not what you want..
i need to find the TABOOK for that thinkpad model..

i'll do more searching..

[heeltoejoe]

Thanks Bill. According to the manual, it looks like 60 G is the largest HD my machine can support. Does anyone know a way around this where I can use the 160 G HD?

[BillMorrow]

i was looking for the TAWBOOK.pdf..
but i can't find it right now..

if the 60gig is max, and i'm not surprised, then thats pretty much it since that limitation is part of the chipset..
you might be able to fool the bios but i'm not the one to ask..

ray will have an answer..
just give him time to log on..

[ajkula66]

I'm sorry to disagree with Bill on this one...and Lenovo needs to re-train certain people...

That machine WILL run a 160GB drive, no questions asked.

Your problem is somewhere else. My bet would be that one or more disks in the recovery set are defective.

I had 250GB in one of my R50p units...and it worked fine. There's no known HD limit for ThinkPads of this generation.

Error in the installation message has NOTHING to do with a HD size.

Restore defaults in BIOS and try again.

Good luck and keep us posted.

[Harryc]

I agree with George, bad media, defective hard drive, or possibly a boot sector issue. Try running active kill disk before loading the R&R discs.
http://www.killdisk.com/

[heeltoejoe]

Bill, George, and Harryc,

All is well. After reading your suggestions I went back first to check that I had installed the HD correctly. I had not. The Best Buy "Geek" and I had installed it upside down. After flipping it over and reinstalling the rest of the Rescue and Recovery process went smooth as silk.

With much gratitude and respect,

Heeltoejoe