T60: Ultrabay HDD adapter stops working randomly

[excelsior]

Hello, my first post here. I decided to upgrade my T60 instead of buying a new one. The new T440 models have not won me over yet.

I purchased a non-IBM ultrabay adapter for my T60 last week so I can use a SSD.

My main hard disk bay has an Intel 120 GB SSD drive with windows 7 installed.
The ultrabay caddy has a WD 1 TB disk for all my data.

Problem: When I insert the caddy, windows 7 recognizes it and I can access the files as usual. After a random amount of time, say 1 hour, or 6 hours, suddenly the disk is no longer visible in Windows, and the caddy's disk light is stuck on. All I can do is eject the caddy and slide it back in. Sometimes windows sees the disk and assigns it a drive letter, and it works immediately...other times I must remove and insert the caddy several times before it works again.

It also stops working when the computer comes out of sleep mode.

I noticed in device manager that there is an "other devices" -> "unknown device" entry that probably corresponds to my caddy... I allowed windows to search but no driver is available.

Does anyone have experience in dealing with symptoms like this?
Thanks. I want my favorite thinkpad back working again!

[automobus]

That adapter contains a SATA to PATA bridge. Every bridge which I am aware of, of this sort (transparent, SATA-PATA or PATA-SATA), is not perfect. Even the original Ultrabay option, although better than many aftermarket trays, is imperfect (a small number of not compatible drives were found by users).

If you are curious, then you might disassemble your tray. You can check which bridge chip is used, and find which side (parallel, serial) is represented by activity LED. Lenovo Ultrabay Slim SATA HDD Adapter contains Marvell 88SA8052.

edit: I never encountered this part, I cannot confirm it contains 88SA8052; I read that in ThinkWiki.

[excelsior]

So it sounds like my best option would be to get an original part. Something tells me it won't be easy to find the original from the after-market products.

[excelsior]

After further testing, I think the failure is occurring when (1) the computer is powered on for the first time, or (2) when the computer comes out of sleep.

When the computer comes out of sleep mode, is it possible that the ultrabay drive is not initializing fast enough, or that more time is needed so that the system recognizes the drive again (after waking up) ?

Another issue is that the ultrabay caddy is showing up on Device Manager as "unknown device". Am I missing a driver for this device? I looked but cannot find one. I looked around Device Manager, and this is the only problematic item in the list.

[excelsior]

I'm posting again to ask if anyone might have suggestions for how to help my ultrabay hdd come out of sleep properly...?
Thanks....

[denkpfad]

The problems might have to do with the caddy itself as well as with the particular caddy/HDD combination. The LQE caddy I have doesn't cooperate well with a certain 500GB Seagate drive - it is detected successfully only on a cold boot, if resetting the machine or hotswapping the caddy, the caddy LEDs just remain lit and the HDD isn't detected. What specific brand is the caddy you purchased?

As for the unknown device, it's rather unlikely it would have to do with the caddy, as the caddy normally is transparent, and the disk in it is visible as simply connected to the ATA controller (when in the device manager's "devices by connection" view). You can look up the vendor/device IDs of the unknown device and post them to find out what it actually is. To do this, right-click the unknown device in device manager, select "properties", and go to the "details" tab - the default visible parameter is the "device instance id", and the identifying code that's needed is "VEN_xxxx&DEV_xxxx" (where the 'x's are hexadecimal digits).


(PS If possible, it would be excellent if you could benchmark your ultrabay drive performance with the HDTune utility (version 2.55 is free). Personally I have an LQE caddy and under Windows I get only a speed of ~75MiB/s with drives that are capable of a speed well in excess of 100MiB/s. I haven't been able to find out thus far whether this is specific to the particular brand of caddy I happen to have, or if the ultrabay HDDs are generally limited in speed even with a genuine Lenovo caddy. If you'd be willing to benchmark yours, it might help shed some light on this matter.)

[excelsior]

I cannot find the OEM manufacturer's name anywhere. I've contacted the ebay seller to ask, and I will post that information as soon as I get it.

My HDD is a Western Digital 1TB drive, WDC WD10JPVX-22JC3T0

In Device Manager, the WD hard drive shows up under: Intel ICH7 Family Ultra ATA Storage Controllers -> ATA Channel 0 -> WD10JPVX ATA Device

I will try to get a benchmark on the ultrabay hdd performance. My general feeling is that the speed seems appropriate for a PATA interface, however.

[KrypteX]

That adapter contains a SATA to PATA bridge. Every bridge which I am aware of, of this sort (transparent, SATA-PATA or PATA-SATA), is not perfect. Even the original Ultrabay option, although better than many aftermarket trays, is imperfect (a small number of not compatible drives were found by users).

If you are curious, then you might disassemble your tray. You can check which bridge chip is used, and find which side (parallel, serial) is represented by activity LED. Lenovo Ultrabay Slim SATA HDD Adapter contains Marvell 88SA8052.

automobus, could you please give me a link or photos of the Lenovo Ultrabay Slim SATA HDD Adapter that you know contains the Marvell 88SA8052 (and not 88SA8040) chip ?