T43 ultrabay problems

[massits]

hello to everybody

I had a Thinkpad T43 I am happy with it.
I have find an ultrabay on the "bay" where I have installed a maxtor 160 Gb 2.5 hdd and works great
but I have tried to install a 60 Gb SSD ( various : 1 OCZ, 1 Kingstone, and now I have a German one ) every time after booting screen say "Operating System Not Found".
that do not happens with the 2.5" hdd, happens only with a ssd.
which is the problem ?
at the moment the pata slot is empty, have I to put a cf to pata converter or a miniPCI to pata convert ?
or the source of the problem is other ?

I want to use a SSD for its performance in my T43, I have read a lot of treads about ultrabay and SSD but I haven't find a solution for my problem..

thanks a lot

[RealBlackStuff]

Welcome to the forum.
We need a bit more information.
The main drive bay of your T43 is for IDE/PATA drives.
What drive is in there, and what operating system: Windows XP/Vista/W7...?
The Ultrabay caddy is presumably for SATA drives and had the 2.5" 160GB Maxtor in it?
Replacing the Maxtor in the caddy with an SSD should be no problem.
If you remove the main drive and then try to boot from the (new) SSD in the caddy, you get the error No OS found, because the SSD needs to be initialized and formatted.
Leave the main drive in, put an SSD in the caddy and then boot into Windows.
Then click on Start/Run, type in diskmgmt.msc and hit Enter.
You should find Disk0 (with info about your main drive) and Disk1 (the SSD, with nothing presumably).
Rightclick on where it says Disk1 and select Initialize.
When that is finished you can format the SSD.
An SSD should be formatted using Vista or W7, under XP the partition will not be aligned properly.
Let us know how far you get.

[massits]

thanks for wellcoming
answers at your infor request :
* The main drive bay of your T43 is for IDE/PATA drives. I think it is PATA
* there is no drive in ( infact at every startup I have to wait 30" freeze of Ibm logo on monitor
* YES The Ultrabay caddy is presumably for SATA drives and had the 2.5" 160GB Maxtor in it? YES, EXACT
* NOT Replacing the Maxtor in the caddy with an SSD should be no problem. NOT, if I put a SSD in the ultrabay ( and none in the PATA slot)
* The SSD is formatted and WinXP and Linux too are installed, but if I change the Bios boot options ( boot from ultrabay) appear No operative system found on screen. This happens without pata drive in.

<<..If you remove the main drive and then try to boot from the (new) SSD in the caddy, you get the error No OS found, because the SSD needs to be initialized and formatted.
Leave the main drive in, put an SSD in the caddy and then boot into Windows.>>

in the afternoon I'll try with a Ide/Pata drive in and ssd in the ultrabay. and I'll post here what happens.
I have installed directly the ultrabay taking off the Pata for reduce the laptop weight.. but I think I have to leave the pata in..
I'll be stronger enough for a bit of weight more..

sorry for my english

thanks a lot for your help RealBlackStuff

[massits]

Now I'm formatting the disk ( previously I have use ita like an external HDD)
later I'll try with the procedure for initialize the SSD

[cadillacmike68]

Now I'm formatting the disk ( previously I have used it like an external HDD)
later I'll try with the procedure for initialize the SSD

That'll do it. When winblows sees an HDD in a USB, it "fixes" that disk's MBR. This makes it impossible to boot without correcting winblows' "fix" later, after you put it in a bootable slot. If you don't have a drive in the main bay, you should not have to move things around in the BIOS boot order either. It'll just go through the list and boot off the first device that is actually there (and has a bootable MBR!). I leave FDD both CD bays, main HDD bay and Ultrabay in the list. If you need to temporarily boot a CD for an install, then F12 should be the way to do that without changing the order.

When you look at disks in diskmgr, be attentive to what you see, especially if they are all the same brand or size. It sometimes scrambles the numbers. I have had on occasion, with 3 HDDs in the system, seen diskmgt label the HDD in the dock's ultrabay as disk 0, the HDD in the ThinkPad's ultrabay as disk 1 and the main boot drive as disk 2.

[massits]

I have a 128 Gb OCZ SSD, another 60 Gb SSD and a Samsung 160 Gb HDD.
only the samsung works ( Win XP ) stand alone without HDD 0.

Every way I have tried to install Win 7 in the SSD is failed " Impossible install windows in the current disk".
no disk options are available, oly "update" and "driver"
I have modified in GPT, in Dinamic etc the disk. with or without partitions
none "initialize the disk" option was present in the diskmgm.msc only modification of "dinamic or GPT "
the system see the OCZ SSD but is impossible to install Win7
it says " impossible to install win7 in that disk. The partition has one or more dinamic volumes do not supported for installation"

what is going wrong ?

Now I'll try to change the disk in "base disk" with HDD0 in diskmgm.msc" and try to install win7 once more time

I can only modify/erase/create partitios but not install. It say :" is possible that the computer's hardware does not support the startup from this disk. Vrify that th disk controller is abilitated in the computer's bios menu".



thanks

[massits]

the problem was that I have abilitated only the USB CD drive in the startup bios menu, noe I have abilitated the SSD drive too and it is in installation !!!!!!!!
for someone probably my experience seems absurd but it is my first time wit a similar hardware modification on a laptop, especially on a IBM..

Later I'll describe if ita works correctly or not, id standalone without the HDD0 in or not etc..

I hope this tread can help other users

thanks cadillacmike68 & RealBlackStuff for your help

[massits]

sometimes happens that " no operative system found" appears on screen, just restart and it works..

[massits]

at the end my T43 is working with a Linux ubuntu based distro, ( backtrack) this OS recognise all the hardware, ( 3g usb huawei e 1750 too) installed on a OCZ 120 Gb SSD in ultrabay ( latest fw upgraded) plus the 40 Gb HDD Pata in main slot.

thanks for help