What hard drives work in the Ultrabay? (w/Sata HDD caddy)

[mike349]

Hello,

I was thinking of getting a Western Digital 320GB Scorpio Black, but I saw a comment (I think on Amazon) "Too bad it didn't work in my Thinkpad T42." That drive is SATA, and it's under 9.5mm in height.

So what hard drives will work? (In the Ultrabay Slim SATA HDD caddy.) -Or maybe that guy was mistaken...

I was also thinking of putting a SSD in there. I saw some threads here about making the laptop bootable with that, but not about just using it for extra storage. Will Windows XP SP3 will recognize a SSD in there okay? If I can get a large capacity hard disk I'd prefer that, as storage space is more important to me than speed.

I'll be getting the caddy from ebay once I find a drive.

Thanks

[T41, Pentium M 1.6GHz, 1.5GB ram, Windows XP SP3.]

[ajkula66]

Welcome to the forum!

You should have no problem with that WD drive in the Ultrabay.

Given the transfer speed, a SSD in the same spot would be a waste IMO.

Happy upgrading.

[Johan]

Welcome to the forum, Mike!

As you've (apparently?) already read, it is possible in T42's to use both:

- a 2.5" IDE/PATA drive (SSD or HDD) in the UltraBay, with the appropriate PATA UltraBay caddy

- or to use a a 2.5" SATA drive (SSD or HDD) in the UltraBay, with the appropriate SATA UltraBay caddy.

The following threads will give you more information about either setup, and the different UltraBay caddies (incl. part numbers etc.) Will T4x take the SATA HDD in Ultrabay Slim Adapter? and T42 replacement HDD - sata interface ok and LF Ultrabay Slim IDE 2nd HDD Adapter and Fastest/largest disk I can get for T42p?

SATA caddies can e.g. found in [FS] Genuine Lenovo ultrabay slim hdd adapter FRU 26R9246 or this cheapest one (which ships from New York)

If you only intend to use the drive in your UltraBay as extra storage, you will get by far more GB/$ if using a classical mechanical (albeit relatively slow!) HDD compared to getting a fast SDD. If power-consumption (translating to battery time) is an issue, SSD's will however do much better than mechanical HDD's... check specifications for yourself!

Johan

[mike349]

The drive has been working great for 3 days. It is difficult to pull the HDD caddy out - you have to really pull that little pop out thing. So I won't be swapping it in/out if I can avoid it. I guess if I had gotten an IBM caddy it would come out as easy as the CD/DVD drive does.

An interesting thing happened yesterday. The laptop wouldn't go into standby. It just ignored that I selected that. I killed all non-essential active processes and that didn't solve the problem. I then went to shut down, and the laptop also ignored that. I turned it off by holding the power button down for 3 seconds. All seems to be fine. The next time I turned it on all was okay. That's never happened before. Is there a known issue like this with HDDs in the Ultrabay?

[cadillacmike68]

None that i have seen, but i use T30s and T61s..

Did you shut it down or put it in standby during the 3 days it "Worked Perfectly"? If no, then maybe the drive has something to do with it. If yes, then it probably isn't the drive. Could be something else acting up or just a random case of MicrosotfSucks and WinBlows.

Those are the two primary reasons why something is not working properly.

[mike349]

The standby issue never happened again. The drive has worked fine the whole time.
The initial difficulty (the first time only) pulling the HDD caddy out is gone too - it now go's in / out as well as the DVD drive.
I'm still going to avoid doing that. I'm looking for a USB adapter to run the DVD drive on.

[cadillacmike68]

The standby issue never happened again. The drive has worked fine the whole time.
The initial difficulty (the first time only) pulling the HDD caddy out is gone too - it now go's in / out as well as the DVD drive.
I'm still going to avoid doing that. I'm looking for a USB adapter to run the DVD drive on.

There might have been some grit or oxidation on the connectors, that installing and removing the devices cleared off.