t42 ultra bay hard drive..

[flaco1801]

hi guys... i have a 40g hard drive and i was running out of space...i bought a caddy and a new samsung 160... i backed up the new hard drive thru the thinkpad rescue /restore feature...i went to device manager and the new hard is working fine.... i decided to take the new hard drive out of the caddy and replace the main 40g... i was expecting the machine to boot with all the same function as the old hard drive....i turned it on saw the first screen and it turns to a blank screen with the cursor blinking on the top left... i dont understand if i backed up the new drive thru the caddy why it was not working as the main drive....hope someone has an easy remedy,,, thank you, jeff

[poshgeordie]

At the Welcome splash screen press F12 and select the drive to boot from.

if that doesn't work, access bios via F1 key and check the HDD is recognised there.

Swap the drives again and check the old HDD still boots OK to make sure there's not a hardware problem.

the title says ultra bay HDD - I guess you're using the new drive in place of the CD-DVD drive with the old HDD removed. If so does the old HDD work OK in the ultra drive?

Maybe the new drive isn't bootable - boot file(s) missing? - I think you might be able to fix it if you have an XP CD, go into repair and run fixmbr? Check with other replies before doing that coz not sure.

Few ideas to be going on with.

[GomJabbar]

A couple of points.

1) A backup will not boot. You must use an image or clone. Alternatively you can install the Factory Image to the new hard drive with the Product Recovery Disk set (Warning: only have that drive in the machine if you use the Product Recovery Disk Set) (Warning: the Product Recovery Disk Set removes all existing partitions from your hard drive).
2) When you backed up your drive, Windows saw it as the D drive. In any scenario you cannot change drive letters of a bootable drive. If you install Windows to a D drive, it must always be a D drive.
3) You can clone your existing drive (also called imaging) to a new drive, but you should have the new hard drive in the main hard drive slot and the source drive in the Ultrabay caddy when you perform the clone. The reverse sometimes works and sometimes does not.
4) As soon as the clone is finished, remove the second drive and do not boot with both drives in the laptop at the same time if you have the same version of Windows on both drives. This can cause problems resulting in a damaged Windows installation.
5) You can have bootable OS's on both hard drives and choose between them at boot time by pressing F12 at the BIOS splash screen. Just make sure both drives do not have the same version of Windows installed (point #4). Note that whichever drive you boot using this method will become the C drive and the other the D drive.

[flaco1801]

thanks guys...how do i get past the blinking cursor with the new hard drive in the main caddy?.. i checked the files and it seems to have files and windows that were placed there from restore/backup...and it was the "d" drive.. seems a bit confusing... i was thinking that it was cloned or copied directly making the new drive swapable in case of existing drive failure...if i place it in the main caddy isnt it going to boot up as the existing one did?, f12 only gave me the option of changing boot order... thanks guys..

[GomJabbar]

Use cloning software to copy the existing working hard drive to the new drive. Make sure you know which is the source drive (old drive) and which is the target drive (new drive) so that you don't overwrite your existing bootable hard drive.

I have used the Clonezilla Live CD (free software) successfully in the past for this. There is commercial cloning software that is easier to use, such as "Acronis True Image" and "Norton Ghost", but you have to pay for either one of them.

http://www.clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live.php

[flaco1801]

thank you...after i clone the new drive i can remove it from the caddy and use it as the main c drive and have the old drive as a spare? thanks again, jeff

[poshgeordie]

I've not ever tried cloning, but I'm sure the answer is "yes".

[GomJabbar]

thank you...after i clone the new drive i can remove it from the caddy and use it as the main c drive and have the old drive as a spare? thanks again, jeff

Yes. I've done this myself. It does not matter if you have it in the caddy or the main hard drive slot. A single drive will be read as the C drive by Windows regardless of which location it is in.

If you are not using the metal hard drive protective cover, you should hold the laptop 'bottom side up' when plugging in the drive to the main hard drive slot to ensure that the pins plug in on the correct row.

After cloning, do not boot up the laptop with both drives in it, as I've read that this can corrupt Windows on one of the drives.

[flaco1801]

thanks jabber...i think that is what happened to me yesterday, well yesterday i reformtted the 'old drive"... was acting up all of a sudden....all the reading i have done i dont remember reading to remove 1 drive after cloning... thanks again, jeff

[cadillacmike68]

gomjabber is correct in just about every item he addresses.

It is VERY CRITICAL that you DO NOT re-boot after the clone process with BOTH HDDs in the ThinkPad. It will boot from one and the other will get assgned drive D: and the boot.ini and possibly HAL.DLL will get trashed and you get to do it over again. I have recovered from this with a Win98 boot floppy, but i don't have 100% success, so just don't do it.

However, it DOES NOT MATTER where the two drives are. I have 100% success with either method and have dozens of clone operations that i have been forced to do. You can get away with this on Thinkpads with the Ultrabay, because the ultrabay is simply the secondary slot on the primary IDE channel. One can be in the "internal" bay and the other in the ultrabay in a HDD TRAY.

BTW, That's a tray not a caddy. The caddy (other than the ones that i drive around) is that small thin metal wrap-around (gomjabber calls it the protective cover) with the white plastic insulator that you screw onto the HDD with 4 small screws. You have to have a caddy on both drives. The main drive will not fit properly into the internal bay without one (although you might be able to micky mouse it), and if you put a drive with no caddy in an HDD tray - well you'll get what you deserve with a shorted circuit board - don't do it. Thinkpad HDD caddies are only about $1 each in lots of 3 or more on ebay. I got them for all my HDDs (ok I'm short 1 for my wife's computer's HDDs) to make swap-outs much quicker.

You may mave an entirely different issue come up over time however, with that 160BG drive. I'll post more on that when i can make a definite finding. edit: it won't matter, T40 series can handle boot drives larger than 128GB with no issues.