Win 7 T43p on Ultrabay SATA

[johnameigh]

I'm trying to run a new install of Win 7 on a T43p in the Ultrabay using a SATA adapter sled. It locks up hard sometimes, but more often just shuts off, after a half hour at most. It doesn't try to restart but will when hit the power switch. All drivers are installed. The same HD setup works fine with XP. It seems to be OK in safe mode. Any idea's??? Thanks!

[Johan]

@ johnameigh:

Welcome to the forum!

While I regret to say that I really have no idea about what the cause may be for the problem you describe, I would like to ask about a couple of things (not related to your problem):

1) Do you experience the "2010" error under boot? If so, you may perhaps want to see the thread T43 no more error 2010 (picture warning)

2) Do you experience the approx. 30 sec. delay during boot (since your bootable drive is not in the main HDD bay, but is in the UltraBay)? If so, there's a way to get rid of this delay (I just learned the other day!); see this post.

3) What specific drive do you have in the UltraBay; a HDD or a SSD? (manufacturer and specific model?).

4) Do you have any drive in the main HDD bay? (if so, what drive, formatted how, and with or without an OS on this drive?)

Thanks!

Johan

[johnameigh]

1) I am running a modified BIOS, the "2010" error is long gone.
2) I have a drive in the PATA slot, but yes there was a delay when it was not present, but maybe not always. Maybe when the BIOS was set to boot to the SATA first, maybe it went away? I'll check that and post latter. I'll have to put a XP back on the drive, I wiped it because Win7 wasn't useable on it, even safe mode was bad.
3) The SATA drive is a HDD 60gig 7200rpm Seagate ST96023AS.
4) The PATA drive is the original 100gig 7200rpm Hitachi HST721010G9AT00 with XP Pro formatted NTFS.

Since my first post I made a 20gig partition on the PATA drive and put Win7 Ultimate on it as a test. Its much better but it still cuts off hard sometimes in Win7. XP runs solid in SATA sled or PATA bay.
I got the UltraBay sled in preparation for any problems that might come up as I do a SATA mod on the PATA drive bay.
I ordered the UltraBay sled and a DV9000 SATA connector at same time. I hope to get time and courage to do it soon
The drive I'll most likely run then is a 500gig 7200rpm Hitachi 7K500. I have it in a USB case for storage for now.
I'm also considering a 750gig Momentus XT Hybrid, or a terabyte HDD as the 7K500 is to full to fit an OS.
A SSD won't be considered unless I find a way to get Win7 100% stable.
I had the Hitachi 7K500 in the UltraBay sled and ran some benchmarks. I don't remember the numbers but it was clearly held back by the PATA bus and/or bridge chip so a SSD would be wasted in the UltraBay.

[Johan]

Thanks very much for sharing - interesting!

A somewhat related thread, which you may perhaps benefit from having a quick glance at, is How to use 2.5" SATA SSD in Ultrabay (main boot drive).

Moreover, in the thread T43 SSD FAT32 or NTFS Windows XP (in this post) forum-member clicker some time ago reported success with installing Windows 7 Ultimate on an Intel 320 SATA SSD in the UltraBay in a T43. Unfortunately, I have not been able to get clicker to share more information about his setup/experience (in despite of PM'ing clicker even several times!?!), but perhaps you may have better luck doing this, if you are also interested?

Good luck with getting your T43p-SATA setup running stable and fast - and please keep us posted on your progress/problems/experience... thanks!

Johan