Hard drive maximum size.

Message

Lloyd Gordon · #1 Post by **Lloyd Gordon** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 1:07 pm

IBM told me that the T41 only allows up to 80 gb hard drives. Is this true? Is anybody using a larger one successfully? Thanks.

Website · #2 Post by **tfflivemb2** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 1:16 pm

That cannot be true. There are T2x users that use 100gb+ drives. It might be all that they offered them with though.

#3 Post by **daeojkim** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 1:17 pm

My T41p has 100GB HD. No problem here.

smugiri · #4 Post by **smugiri** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 3:08 pm

True in one sense and not true in another:

IBM offers up to 80gb as an option when you buy a T41 so that is true. On the newer machines (T60, T43 and maybe some T42s), they offer 100GB drives.

Not true in the sense that the maximum addressable size of HD (which is the theorectical limit of how big a hard drive can go into the PC and thus the Thinkpad) is determined by the combination of the BIOS and the Chipset. I tried looking up information on these . The T40 use the Intel 855 PM while the T41 probably uses Intel 915pm chipset or the Intel 945 PM chipset - I am not sure which. I could not find the maximum addressable HD size with the Intel 855PM chipset on the chipset's download URL here 855 spec sheet. The latest BIOS version on the T40 (which is the same for T41s) is 1RETDNWW (3.19 ). Unfortunately, I was unable to find information about the limits of the BIOS as far max HD size goes.

All this might be moot though, the largest laptop drive size made to date is 120GB and someone on this forum reported that they got it working OK. I will say this though, I have a 100gb drive in a T40p and it works fine.

#5 Post by **draco2527** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 6:14 pm

All this might be moot though, the largest laptop drive size made to date is 120GB

160GB!!!! maybe even bigger now.....

lithium726 · #6 Post by **lithium726** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 10:19 pm

smugiri, the T40, 41, and 42 all use the i855PM chipset. the T43 uses the i915PM/GM, depending on model. the T60 uses the i945PM/GM

T40 - Banias CPU, i855, Wireless-b
T41 - Banias CPU, i855, Wireless-b/g
T42 - Dothan CPU (400mhz), i855, Wireless-a/b/g or b/g
T43 - Dothan CPU (533mhz), i915, Wireless-a/b/g or b/g

T60 - Yonah CPU (667mhz), i945, Wireless a/b/g (m-pcie)

the T40, T41, and T42 all use the same BIOS, so itll support anything the T42 supports, Im willing to bet the 160gb model would work.

the largest current drive is a 160gb, 5400rpm Seagate model.

smugiri · #7 Post by **smugiri** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 11:36 pm

Wow, I have been away for a while: they have 160GB laptop drives?

That is quite something. Thanks for the heads up.

mrpaulin · #8 Post by **mrpaulin** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 12:27 am

I've used the new Seagate 5400RPM 160GB drive in my T41 in both the Ultrabay Slim HDD adapter and also in the internal bay. There are no issues to report with either configuration.

For that matter, it also works fine in an Ultrabay 2000 HDD adapter in my A31P as well as in my Dock and my Dock II.

jflores · #9 Post by **jflores** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 1:05 pm

Sorry to pick up this thread so late but...

I have tried to put a 160gb drive in my A31p (latest BIOS) and it refused to boot on it, I had some message error.

How did you do yours work with it ? I'm very curious !
Thanks,
Joscelyn

PS : that reminds me with an odd problem regarding 127gb (or was it 137Gb ?) size drives a couple of years ago : you could create a partition teh size of the disk, but when the disk was close to be full and crossed the 127/137gb boundary : poof, no more FAT...

had to use a date recovery software to get only some of my files back....

#10 Post by **GomJabbar** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 9:01 pm

Go to the section: The ATA Interface Limit (128 GiB / 137 GB) Barrier in the following page, near the bottom.

Hard Drive Size Limitations and Barriers
In Depth

PanEuropean · #11 Post by **PanEuropean** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 1:39 am

Folks, please help me out here because I am a bit confused now.

I have a T42p (2373HTG) that has an Intel 855PM chipset in it. This same computer also has two 160 gig drives in it, one internal and one in the Ultrabay. The drives are partitioned as follows:

Internal: 113 MB, 35 MB
UltraBay: 109 MB, 29 MB, 9 MB

My questions are -

1) Am I affected by this 'ATA Interface Limit'?
2) Do the sizes referenced in the above discussion of the 'ATA Interface Limit' refer to the physical drive (160 GB), or the size of the partitions?
3) Should I do or change anything? The computer works just fine.

Thanks for any light you can shed on this for me.

PanEuropean · #12 Post by **PanEuropean** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 2:05 am

Ah-ha, I think I may have found the answer to my own question.

At the Seagate website, in the support and downloads section, I found this message:

"In some cases, Service Pack updates are required to support large capacity drives. For example, starting with Windows XP SP1 and Windows 2000 SP3, support for ATA interface hard drives greater than 137 GB in size was added. See the Microsoft Knowledgebase articles at http://support.microsoft.com that explain how to enable large drive support after the Service Packs are installed. For Windows XP SP1, see article Q303013. For Windows 2000 SP3, see article Q305098"

If anyone wants to go directly to that page at the Seagate site, the URL is http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?l ... ee0a0aRCRD

Hard drive maximum size.

Hard drive maximum size.

Seagate 160GB drive works perfectly in T41

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