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T420

T400/T410/T420 and T500/T510/T520 Series
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grioghair
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun May 27, 2018 5:31 pm
Location: Indianapolis, IN

T420

#1 Post by grioghair » Sun May 27, 2018 5:41 pm

I have a Thinkpad T420. It won’t detect my sandisk extreme flash drive in the bios.

Is there a fix for this?

Thank you

Steve

Update:

It is a 64GB usb 3.0 drive. I know I am plugging it into a usb 2.0, but I have never had problems with this before on much older systems. It detects it fine in the system - I am using it for Linux - but it just will not detect it via the bios.

RecTech
Posts: 26
Joined: Tue Aug 16, 2011 5:55 am
Location: Huddersfield, UK

Re: T420

#2 Post by RecTech » Fri Jun 01, 2018 4:33 am

If you press F12 on start up can you see the device?
https://www.rectech.co.uk
Specialist in refurbished laptops

grioghair
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun May 27, 2018 5:31 pm
Location: Indianapolis, IN

Re: T420

#3 Post by grioghair » Sat Jun 02, 2018 8:44 pm

RecTech,

No. It doesn’t show up on the startup, and it doesn’t show up in the bios...period. The only place it shows up is in explorer when you have booted the system. I have tried it on different USB ports, and it never detects it anywhere - apart from once you are running the system

Steve

Cigarguy
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Joined: Thu Aug 09, 2012 3:08 pm
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Re: T420

#4 Post by Cigarguy » Sun Jun 03, 2018 1:51 am

Yep, I had the same problem. It will not recognize a USB 3.0 drive as a bootable option. Once Windows 7 or a Linux distro is booted, the OS will recognize it but I couldn't boot from a USB 3.0 drive. My solution was to only boot from a USB 2.0 drive. I found this out when making a dedicated $5 USB 2.0 16 GB USB drive as my Parted Magic drive.

Did not do an extensive research as to why this was. My theory is the legacy BIOS doesn't support USB 3.0. I've had no problem booting USB 3.0 to a UEFI BIOS desktop machine. YMMV.

grioghair
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun May 27, 2018 5:31 pm
Location: Indianapolis, IN

Re: T420

#5 Post by grioghair » Sun Jun 03, 2018 7:17 pm

Cigarguy,

I have booted to other usb 3.0 flash drives, so I am thinking it has something to do with the sandisk architecture. Already tried a different usb 3.0 drive and it booted perfectly. I have also hooked up a large usb 2.0 external drive and that was fine too, so it is not a size restriction. Seems to be only sandisk related

Steve

jaspen-meyer
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Joined: Wed May 19, 2010 11:21 pm
Location: Pardubice, Czech Republic
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Re: T420

#6 Post by jaspen-meyer » Sat Jun 09, 2018 3:45 am

try remaking the partition table or the mbr/gpt.

A few programs which can do both are:
gparted, fdisk, gdisk.
T420 i7 3612QM seabios; T420 i7 3630QM; T400 Q9100 seabios; T61 P9600; T60 libreboot; x62; x60s libreboot, led; x24 xiphmont led

grioghair
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun May 27, 2018 5:31 pm
Location: Indianapolis, IN

Re: T420

#7 Post by grioghair » Thu Jun 21, 2018 9:22 am

I am still trying to fix this. I have just bought another flash drive of the same capacity from amazon. If that doesn't work either, then it is a limitation of the bios. I am kinda thinking it might be an incompatibility between the t420 bios and sandisk usb drives.

I have tried formatting that drive. I have used gparted and windows format. I have used gpt, fat32, ntfs, exfat, ext4 - nothing has made that drive visible in the bios. Like I said though, it works within the system fine.
:(

Steve

jaspen-meyer
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Re: T420

#8 Post by jaspen-meyer » Thu Jun 21, 2018 3:42 pm

how are you making the usb disk? which distro & version are you putting on the usb?

Maybe try syslinux instead of grub.
T420 i7 3612QM seabios; T420 i7 3630QM; T400 Q9100 seabios; T61 P9600; T60 libreboot; x62; x60s libreboot, led; x24 xiphmont led

grioghair
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun May 27, 2018 5:31 pm
Location: Indianapolis, IN

Re: T420

#9 Post by grioghair » Fri Jun 22, 2018 7:46 pm

I am just using Windows format or gparted. Just a standard format.

But, on the good side, my other flash drive arrived today. Same size, 64gb, usb 3.0. This one is made by transcend. It was detected in the bios immediately. So it is totally something to do with that sandisk drive.

Like I said, it is probably incompatible with the t420 bios

I have formatted the t420. It had windows 7 pre-installed. I cleaned it and installed budgie Ubuntu 18.04.

I also updated the bios to 1.51

Steve

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