T23 - Problem upgrading Hard Drive

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KelloggKid · #1 Post by **KelloggKid** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 6:45 pm

I've maxed out the 40g HD that came with my T23. Two different shops have tried to install a 100g drive (a Seagate and a Toshiba) to no avail. They've imaged my old drive to the new drive but were unable to get the bios to recognize the new drive. Any ideas where they are going wrong? I'd really like to get past this.

Thanks for your comments - Dale

Website · #2 Post by **tfflivemb2** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 12:50 am

Do you have the latest BIOS version?

KelloggKid · #3 Post by **KelloggKid** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 11:57 am

I'm not certain. I do not have the machine at present as it is still in shop #2 so I have no way to check which version BIOS is in it. This is a highend shop so I would have expected them to check into that however. I've been to the IBM site and didn't see anything that indicated a BIOS change was necessary to recognize a larger HD. Did I miss something?

dsvochak · #4 Post by **dsvochak** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 12:45 pm

BIOS Version 1.07, dated 1/11/02, among other things fixed a problem described as "Some HDD partition information causes boot failure.".

There doesn't seem to be a further description of the problem available on the IBM site, but it may be an explanation for your difficulty.

KelloggKid · #5 Post by **KelloggKid** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 2:57 pm

I purchased the T23 from IBM in June of 02 so would hope that it has that version of BIOS. I'll check with the repair shop to be sure. I was kind of hoping that perhaps there was a newer version or someother "gotcha" that is keeping the BIOS from recognizing the hard drive.

dsvochak · #6 Post by **dsvochak** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 3:24 pm

FYI this post at least indicates that a 100gb drive is a T23 is possible:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=15584

KelloggKid · #7 Post by **KelloggKid** » Fri Jan 27, 2006 5:18 pm

Okay - made a little progress but still could use some help. I had the shop download the latest BIOS and now the machine can SEE the new HD. As a test, the tech loaded Win98 onto the HD and she booted up just fine. Since then he has tried every way he can think of to image my old drive over to the new one and get it to boot. It simply will not boot off of the new drive if the new drive is an image of the old one. He has tried three different imaging programs, etc. but he still can't get it to work.

I really need to get this machine but up and running, hopefully with the larger drive. Any ideas???

Tnx - Dale

Nolonemo · #8 Post by **Nolonemo** » Fri Jan 27, 2006 5:48 pm

There are threads about a switch you need to use in some situations when imaging with Ghost. Search the forum and you'll find it. You might have to reimage your old drive. I would expect the tech to know about this, but I find that I know more about some aspects of computer stuff that the IT guys at work, go figure.

Alternatively, you could try this, just a wild-assed idea. I'm assuming the OS on the drive is win2k or XP. Try booting from the Windows CD and doing a repair install. Since you have an image you have nothing to lose.

mysbca · #9 Post by **mysbca** » Fri Jan 27, 2006 5:50 pm

Also, take a look at this thread:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=19576

It might contain some info that can help.

Nolonemo · #10 Post by **Nolonemo** » Fri Jan 27, 2006 7:04 pm

mysbca wrote:Also, take a look at this thread:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=19576

It might contain some info that can help.

Yeah, that s**t with the hidden IBM partition is one reason why the first thing I did with my T22 was to image the drive, so I could get to whatever I might want on it later, and then delete all partitions, reformat and do a clean install of my OS.

ianf · #11 Post by **ianf** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 7:43 am

i did the same using 80g 8mb cache 5400 samsung in my t22

stuartf · #12 Post by **stuartf** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 9:09 pm

I have just finished swapping in an Hitachi 80 gb, 5400 drive into my wife's T23; except for the [censored] hard drive cover it all went fine.

I used Acronis' True Image; put the new drive in an external USB enclosure, cloned it, and put it in the machine (I did get to resize the hidden IBM partition).

True Imgae is available as a 15 trial free downlaod, no complaints here.

stuartf

KelloggKid · #13 Post by **KelloggKid** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 7:20 pm

I'm really getting frustrated. The first place I took my T23 was unable to get a Seagate 100g to work so I took it to another shop. They've been at it now for two weeks and are also unable to image my old drive over and get the new one (Toshiba 100g) to boot. I've copied the contents of these posts to them hoping that would help. Here is an email I just got from the shop:

"We started with Acronis 8.0 to first clone the drive. Then we used the latest Acronis 9.0. It still didn’t work.

I noticed in the posts you sent and others that we found that everyone used the USB bay in the docking station or a USB 2.0 external hard drive enclosure. I can’t think why this might make a difference, but can you bring in your docking station so we can use the USB bay? We don’t use external USB drives in our shop (haven’t had any need…we back up our own data on tape and DVD disks and do disk to disk for data transfers). We do have an external USB enclosure for sale for $29.95, which you could purchase if you don’t have a docking station. But there is no guarantee that the procedure will work. We’ve never experienced this problem before. It is possible that the problem has to do with your system being upgraded from 2000 to XP, and it’s an OS issue that can’t be easily resolved."

I no longer have any faith in their capabilities and am going to go pick the machine up. Unfortunately that leaves me with a machine that is pretty much worthless. I'm hesitant to take it to yet another shop and spend yet more money on folks who can't figure out how to do this.

Any suggestions?

Nolonemo · #14 Post by **Nolonemo** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 9:22 pm

It's difficult for anyone here to really help you because the only information is that the shop can't get it to work.

A couple questions would help focus the forum. After the drive is cloned and put in the TP and started up, what happens? Does it get past the IBM start screen? Does it BSOD, does it just hang with a blinking cursor, does it give a DOS error message, or what?

I still think the thing to try is to take the cloned drive put, it in the machine, boot from the XP CD and do an XP repair install. Since the drive is a clone, you have nothing to lose. Did the shop try this?

Alternatively, don't clone the drive, simple format the new drive and copy everything over to it. When you install the new drive and fire it up you'll get a boot sector error. But that should be pretty easy to fix. (It's sort of like the test pilot in a tumbling or a pancake spin -- the first thing he wants to do is to get into a normal spin, because that he can get out of.) You will lose the IBM hidden partition, but as far as I'm concerned, that's more trouble than it's worth anyway.

Alternatively, take your original drive, use a partitioning utlity to delete the IBM partition and merge it with the C: partition, make sure the drive works, and then partition that. I bet it will work, but the danger is that you might screw up the original drive messing with the IBM partition. If you try this, get advice from people who have successfully removed the IBM partition.

andyP · #15 Post by **andyP** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 7:39 am

Here's a solution that should work, however it will not transfer the hidden partition.

1. back up all files to another medium to reduce the size of the image to be created, this will save time. Do not de-install any programs as you can later create an hidden partition with the current config. In other words the old hard drive should be OS + other installed software.

2. download and install Rapid Restore v.2.04.0182 RRPC1182. (warning it's over 400MB). Here's where to get it:
http://www-3.ibm.com/pc/support/site.ws ... 20ThinkPad

3. installing RRPC can take some time and often looks as though nothing is happening - be patient. If you get an error message regarding the boot sector and RRPC cannot be installed, send a pm with e-mail address, I have a tool to fix it.

4. using RRPC create an image of the hard drive onto cds or better over network. If you create an image over network you will need to create a boot cd, instructions are there.

5. swap the hard drives and re-install the image from cds or network. If possible the hard drive should be blanko with nothing on it and unformatted.

6. when finished turn the thinkpad off and then on. After it has booted, (now there's confidence for you), you can create you own hidden partition locally with RRPC.

I think I've covered everything - good luck

dsvochak · #16 Post by **dsvochak** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 1:30 pm

My 2 cents. Nolonemo's questions would provide useful information. I'd like to know what OS is on the old 40g drive. Also, is there an IBM Service Partition on that drive (F11 restore).

I had the shop download the latest BIOS and now the machine can SEE the new HD. As a test, the tech loaded Win98 onto the HD and she booted up just fine.

The quote is pretty good evidence that the problem is in the cloning process not with the machine or drive. The email from the shop says "It is possible that the problem has to do with your system being upgraded from 2000 to XP, and it’s an OS issue that can’t be easily resolved." which may or may not be true. Without knowing exactly what happens anything we say isn't much beyond a WAG.

It might be helpful if someone from the shop could post a description of what they tried and what the various results were.

Also, two things about you: 1) what's your comfort level messing with this stuff and 2) what other equipment/resources do you have access to (cd burner; network; etc).

If you're not comfortable, or don't have much background, some of what we're suggesting may be incomprehensible. If that's the case, we can try to be clearer. If you've got access to a way to back up your data files, there are alternatives to cloning (which may be more effort but accomplish the same result).

LtTPfan · #17 Post by **LtTPfan** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 2:28 pm

dsvochak wrote:If you've got access to a way to back up your data files, there are alternatives to cloning (which may be more effort but accomplish the same result).

That was my thought as well. Although it would take more time and effort an easy and fairly foolproof method would be to backup the original to CD and restore to the new drive. You can likely pick up a used CD-RW for what another shop will charge to "try" cloning. Heck one of the NEC DVD burners for $29 as mentioned in another thread in this forum would certainly fill the bill nicely. Unfortunately, it would require the mounting hardware from an existing drive (CD-ROM or any optical drive) and a little minor cosmetic modification. For that we get back to that comfortability level issue. In this case, I would shy away from any external type setup as that would likely bring on its own issues, better to keep it simple.

KelloggKid · #18 Post by **KelloggKid** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 5:25 pm

Guys - thanks for all the pointers. I'm going to try and answer your questions in a random fashion. I've been around computers since way before PC's so am very comfortable messing around. I chose to try and go the image route to avoid having to reload all of my software. Many of my programs have had multiple updates over the years and I didn't want to have to go back to the original version and a zillion upgrades. I elected to have the shop do this because the last time I tried to image a drive was years ago and it was not pretty.

Anyway, I share your frustration with the lack of info coming from the shop. All they were telling me was that the new drive would not boot. Today I picked up the machine, the new drive, and purchased a USB enclosure and am going to try and do it myself. When I picked up the laptop the shop told me that when it wouldn't boot that they hit the F11 to do a recovery and it loaded Win2K on the machine (I upgraded to XP some time ago) and wiped out all of my programs, etc. Anyway, I've down loaded Acronis True Image 9.0 and am going to try creating an image and then follow up on the suggestion to boot from the XP CD. If that doesn't work I'll try the other avenue suggested, although most of what is on the old 40G drive is software not data so copying stuff off isn't going to reduce the size much.

Stay tuned - I'll report my progress and thanks again for all the help.

Dale

LtTPfan · #19 Post by **LtTPfan** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 5:58 pm

GEEZ!!! Did this "professional" shop offer you any compensation? They darn sure shouldn't have charged you for wiping out all your programs and data. What incompetence!

dsvochak · #20 Post by **dsvochak** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 6:21 pm

When I picked up the laptop the shop told me that when it wouldn't boot that they hit the F11 to do a recovery and it loaded Win2K on the machine (I upgraded to XP some time ago) and wiped out all of my programs, etc.

Does this mean you now have a F11 recovery install on the 100gb drive? If it does, doing it yourself should go relatively easy. If the enclosure didn't come with a power supply, you may have to use the tips found in this thread: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=19781

If the USB enclosure is seen by the T23 the cloning should go okay and when you put the new drive into the machine it should boot.

Also, I want to amend my last post. Assuming your last post is accurate, the problem now appears to have been with the shop rather than the machine, drive, or cloning process.

KelloggKid · #21 Post by **KelloggKid** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 6:45 pm

Not as bad as I made it sound. When they tried to boot off of the new drive and hit F11 it wiped the programs and data off of the new drive. The old drive is still intact. And, no they didn't charge me anything for their efforts.

I don't understand the comment about the USB enclosure needing a power supply. I also don't know why I should be excited about having the recovery data on my new drive when it is apparently loaded with Win2K yet I'm running XP.

I have the USP enclosure (and no it doesn't have it's own power supply) hooked up and am going through the imaging process right now. The first operation is about 14% complete. When the imaging is complete I figured I'd put it in the machine, boot from the XP CD, and do an OS restore/recover off of the CD.

One thing I noticed that might be a clue is that before it started creating the image, Acronis gave a summary of what it was going to do. I noticed that the main partition is NTFS and the recovery partition is FAT32.

dsvochak · #22 Post by **dsvochak** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 7:00 pm

If you clone to the new drive, Acronis will copy everything on the old drive. You shouldn't have to boot using an XP CD. All you should have to do is put the new drive in the machine and start it up. If may give you a message that it's updating drivers and ask you to reboot, but it should work fine after that.

You shouldn't have to do an OS restore/recover off of the CD.

KelloggKid · #23 Post by **KelloggKid** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 7:12 pm

But that is what the shop did and couldn't get it to work. They cloned from the old drive to the new one with Acronis, put the new drive in the machine and it wouldn't boot. On a subsequent attempt they hit F11 and that's when the programs and data got wiped off of the new drive. It did restore the new drive (unfortunately to Win2k) and then booted, just without any programs or data.

Nolonemo · #24 Post by **Nolonemo** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 9:05 pm

If you run into problems, take a look in the Acronis forums, here's a link with the search you want pre-run. I didn't read much, but there are a bunch of posts.

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/search.p ... hid=726415

If the link is dead, I used the search terms: IBM thinkpad clone

Good luck!

dsvochak · #25 Post by **dsvochak** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 10:09 pm

Here's a link with an explanation for a lot of the failure to boot after cloning problems, along with suggestions to prevent/correct the problem: http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm

I never had this problem using True Image in Windows, but as an extra precaution I do cloning by booting the machine from a TI bootable CD or floppy disks and cloning from the Acronis DOS environment. I've cloned or created images and restored probably 50 times and have only had a problem 1 time when trying to go from a larger disk to a smaller disk with W2K as the OS. Going from a smaller to a larger disk has always worked.

Nolonemo · #26 Post by **Nolonemo** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 12:47 am

I don't think that what is described in goodells.net is really cloning. It sounds like file copying to me. Anyway, unless I'm missing something, the drive letter assignment problem he descibes should not be a factor when doing a full HD clone from disk to disk.

dsvochak · #27 Post by **dsvochak** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 10:07 am

See these two threads, in particular Marc_G's posts, for a more detailed description of the problem/solution described in the goodalls.net article:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=10126
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=9270

Nolonemo · #28 Post by **Nolonemo** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 11:26 am

Except that I have cloned close a good half dozen XP HDs with the the target drive in the pc with Acronis, and have never run into the problem described. In each case the drive has fired right up when the original drive is replaced with it. I'm totally confused now. (Fortunately it doesn't matter, because I don't have cloning problems).

dsvochak · #29 Post by **dsvochak** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 1:37 pm

I remember that I was able to duplicate the booting problem described but it's been awhile and I didn't take notes. My recollection is that you had to make a couple "wrong" choices in the True Image sequence of choices in order to screw it up.

When I get some time, I'll try to duplicate the problem and report back.

KelloggKid · #30 Post by **KelloggKid** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 3:40 pm

Yahoo! It works! I have no clue what that shop was doing wrong but I didn't have any problems. I simply put the new drive into the USB enclosure, used Acronis in automatic mode, cloned the old drive over, put the new drive in the machine, and it booted right up. No having to boot from CD or any other "tricks". And to think those folks at the shop are recognized by the local courts as "computer forensic experts". Kind of a scary thought.

Guys I really appreciate all of the time and thought you've put into helping me out. I should probably quite while I'm ahead but, oh what the heck...........how hard is it to blow off the IBM recovery partition. I'm running XP so have no use for a Win2K recovery. I'd really prefer to regain that 10g of space and put it to better use.

Thanks Again - - Dale

T23 - Problem upgrading Hard Drive

T23 - Problem upgrading Hard Drive

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