Thinkpad T43 production date, upgrading hard drive method!

[jlingo]

Hi there,

I just bought my T43 2 days ago, after debating very hard whether to get Acer 8104 which sounds really good as well.

My system comes with 80Gb 5400rpm. I already bought a new 60gb 7200rpm and additional 80Gb 5400rpm for backup purposes. I would like to upgrade my t43 to a 60Gb 7200rpm.

I have created the rescue media, and recovery disk. I also did IBM rescue and recovery to backup all partitions into a second temporary 80gb harddrive.

I'm planning to put the 60GB 7200RPM into T43, and then run rescue and recovery CD to restore my empty 60gb 7200rpm harddrive into factory default. And then I'm planning to use the second bay to insert my 80gb HDD(already contains all partitions backup information), and then do restore into 60GB 7200rpm.

Did I do everything correctly? I'm very new to thinkpad. I'm planning to work on it tonight.

Thank you very much for the help.

Any update with noise and heat problem? where can I find my T43 production date? mine is 2668-CA1 based in Singapore.

[pphilipko]

Are you happy with your thinkpad? I've heard a plethora of complaints with the T43 series...

Your production date is located on the back of the laptop. And yes, you seem to be doing everything correctly.

[jlingo]

Hi pphilipko,

I have been very busy during the week didn't have the time to play around with the thinkpad. I will try to set up my thinkpad today and play around with it all day, test it in a quiet room, and do some heavy tasks, to test out the heat. I was previously on Acer Travelmate 800 centrino 1.3Ghz which I find very powerful, but bulky and heavy, and built quality is not as good as the T43.
I'm doing a lot of photo editting at work, sometime, quite a big file 300mb/file, and rendering, or printing from coreldraw could take quite sometime with my acer. Print Spooling 1Gb data is also very slow with my Acer. That's why I'm upgrading to a much faster harddrive, and T43 hopefully it helps performance wise.

I have tried to use Ghost to clone to a new harddrive. But for some reason the hidden partition is detected but ghost cannot copy all the partitions into the new harddrive . :/

[BillMorrow]

i think the latest version of ghost will work..

but i KNOW that acronis true image works..

[jlingo]

Hicks what to do I have upgraded the hard drive but it is now giving me the followin g message everytime I boot:
IBM:
Error 2010: Warning: your internal hard disk drive ( HDD) may not funtion correctly on this system. Ensure that your HDD is supported on this system and that the latest HDD firmware is installed.
Press(esc) to continue

[jlingo]

Darn, I don't even have a diskette for my T43p.
The firmware stated that I need a diskette. Any work around?

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-41008

[ruthlessbrad]

You will have some problems installing the firmware on non-IBM drives. Please see these two threads:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=13113

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=11059

I also do not have a floppy, but I have one at work. I created the floppy, then I made a bootable CD using Bart's method: http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/

Hope that helps.

[jlingo]

Now What!! I got the diskette try to update firmware it says the harddrive has latest firmware

[jlingo]

I'm using HTS726060M9AT00, 60Gb Hitachi 7200rpm harddrive with firmware MH40A68A

[jlingo]

Thanks ruthlessbrad,

It says I already have the latest firmware of harddrive. but yet, the bios still mentioning that the HDD firmware is out of date.
I don't know what would be the effect if I keep using this harddrive.

But thanks a lot for the link. it is very helpful. I bought this hitachi harddrive over a year ago so maybe the firmware cannot be updated.

many thanks to the people here.

[ruthlessbrad]

Thanks ruthlessbrad,

It says I already have the latest firmware of harddrive. but yet, the bios still mentioning that the HDD firmware is out of date.
I don't know what would be the effect if I keep using this harddrive.

But thanks a lot for the link. it is very helpful. I bought this hitachi harddrive over a year ago so maybe the firmware cannot be updated.

many thanks to the people here.

The firmware version that the thinkpad wants to see ends in A6GA, and yours ends in A68A. You have to force the update on the drive because the firmware updater will not want to do it. The two threads I linked earlier describe the process which worked for me and a couple other people.