ultrabay slim HDD

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christopher_wolf · #31 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 8:28 pm

pae77 wrote:If you happen to have a floppy disc drive and a cable adapter so you can connect the floppy drive to the TP without using the ultrabay, the EZ Gig software on the floppy that Lenovo ships with 2nd HD adapter works great and is simpler & easier to use than most other programs for cloning. (I use Acronis TI as well so I know of what I speak, but Acronis is more flexible with more options and features.) Anyway, no dos or OS is required for EZ Gig. You simply boot from the EZ Gig floppy with the target hard drive in the ultrabay, hit two or three keys and the cloning begins. I find it very convenient for routinely backing up my entire hard drive to a drive I can just swap into the primary slot if ever needed.

The EZ Gig floppy only has 10 licenses (will only clone 10 different drives) though. Still I think it's pretty nice they throw it in as a free extra with the 2nd HD adapter.

Yes, but that involves getting the floppy disk drive accessory from IBM, even more stuff?

I tried it out and it is pretty nice.

XCoalMiner · #32 Post by **XCoalMiner** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 9:55 pm

pae77 wrote:The EZ Gig floppy only has 10 licenses (will only clone 10 different drives) though. Still I think it's pretty nice they throw it in as a free extra with the 2nd HD adapter.

Do you mean you can only get ten uses out of it (ten clonings), or it will only clone clone 10 different drives an infinite number of times?

JHEM · #33 Post by **JHEM** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 10:19 pm

10 uses in total.

Regards,

James

#34 Post by **GomJabbar** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 11:48 pm

JHEM wrote:10 uses in total.

Regards,

James

What? I just ordered one yesterday!

JHEM · #35 Post by **JHEM** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 12:16 am

GomJabbar wrote:What? I just ordered one yesterday!

What did you order?

A 2nd HD adapter?

What's the problem? You can use the diskette that comes with the adapter to perform 10 clones. E.g., clone 10 different HDs, or clone 1 HD and perform 9 backups.

BTW, you've got an important PM.

Regards,

James

#36 Post by **GomJabbar** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 8:39 am

I ordered the 2nd HD adapter. I knew it came with software to mirror or clone the main HD. I did not know about the 10-copy limitation. I wanted to clone my main HD on a regular basis. With the 10-copy limitation, I'll probably use that up in 2 or 3 months. That means I'll have to fork over some more money soon for cloning software. Oh well...........

pae77 · #37 Post by **pae77** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 11:36 am

NO. It's NOT a 10 COPY limitation. It's 10 DIFFERENT drives. Each time you clone to a different drive, the target drive serial is written to the floppy somewhere so the program knows how many different drives it has been used to clone to. You get to use it with up to 10 DIFFERENT drives. But once the drive is "licensed" you can use it an unlimited number of times with that drive.

I have been using the program to make weekly backups to the same drive for many months. Each time I start a cloning operation the program reports "Drive already licensed, 9 licenses remaining."

Re the floppy drive cable adapter, yes, unfortunately it is one more thing to buy, but I have had mine for several years and used it with several different TP's and have found it a worthwhile investment, especially since I already had an Ultrabay 2000 floppy drive from my original ancient T21 (my first TP still working btw). Can't remember how much the cable cost from IBM but it wasn't much. (Maybe the EZ Gig floppy disc would boot from a USB floppy?)

#38 Post by **GomJabbar** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 12:06 pm

Thanks for the reply, pae77. I already have an IBM USB floppy drive, so that's no problem.

davidspalding · #39 Post by **davidspalding** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 12:30 pm

pae77 wrote:If you happen to have a floppy disc drive and a cable adapter so you can connect the floppy drive to the TP without using the ultrabay,...

Since floppies aren't standard equipment, it's a rather arcane extra.

I can hear the PM on this one. "Hey, we've got this old cloning software, we could use some of our excess 3.5" floppies to include it..." But boss, we don't include floppy drives with laptops anymore. We haven't done so for years. "No big deal, we sell those. If we link it to the HDD adapter page, the consumer can buy one to use the floppy." Or they could buy one at Best Buy, use it over the weekend, and return it. "What, people DO that??" Or they'll just save the money of a $30 USB floppy, and buy Acronis or Ghost and use a USB hard drive they already have. "Why would someone use a USB hard drive when they just bought a HDD internal adapter. We're giving them the software. I don't get it...." (groan) Listen, we sell $2000+ laptops with cutting edge technology, but we don't provide floppy drives. Why don't we distribute the clonining software on a mini-CD they can boot from, since WE DO provide fast CD/DVD drives in our laptops. "What?? Burn CDs, when we have five palettes of 3.5" floppies waiting to be used in our Atlanta warehouse? Are you CRAZY?" Somebody is. I don't think it's our customers, though....

I kid you not, I worked with (and saw many more) people around RTP whose cardkeys are 30+ years old. They've never worked anywhere else, never ventured out of that one company, that one site.

BTW, you can buy 2.5" HDDs that come with a USB drive enclosure, and cloning software. All you need in one box. And the enclosure can be used for your old 2.5" drive.

My dining room table doesn't wobble. Thank you, IBM.

davidspalding · #40 Post by **davidspalding** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 12:37 pm

Didn't realize a whole second page of discussion ensued here....

GomJabbar wrote:I ordered the 2nd HD adapter. I knew it came with software to mirror or clone the main HD. I did not know about the 10-copy limitation. I wanted to clone my main HD on a regular basis. With the 10-copy limitation, I'll probably use that up in 2 or 3 months. That means I'll have to fork over some more money soon for cloning software. Oh well...........

And I'm guessing ... no one's ever made a backup copy of the floppy for future use?

Screw it. Use some no-name, unknown software, or commercially available Norton or Acronis software? Easy choice.

XCoalMiner · #41 Post by **XCoalMiner** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 3:35 pm

davidspalding wrote: And I'm guessing ... no one's ever made a backup copy of the floppy for future use?

Was wondering the same thing here.

If the source of your ability to backup data from one drive to another is a floppy, better be copying the floppy, too.

pae77 · #42 Post by **pae77** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 3:51 pm

The EZ Gig floppy is copy protected in some way. I was unable to copy it. If anybody knows how to make a backup copy, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

JHEM · #43 Post by **JHEM** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 4:55 pm

pae77 wrote:I have been using the program to make weekly backups to the same drive for many months. Each time I start a cloning operation the program reports "Drive already licensed, 9 licenses remaining."

DANG! You learn something new every day!

I've got a stack of those puppies around here somewhere. Time to start "tagging" them to specific users and machines for backup purposes.

Regards,

James

XCoalMiner · #44 Post by **XCoalMiner** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 7:21 pm

I was at a computer show and flea market today (Trenton, NJ, ... and scored an IBM USB Floppy drive for $27).

Had I read this beforehand, would have kept an eye out for some of the Ez Gig floppies. Things like that are always in someone's box of junk they are trying to get rid of.

pae77 · #45 Post by **pae77** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 7:48 pm

davidspalding wrote: * * *
Screw it. Use some no-name, unknown software, or commercially available Norton or Acronis software? Easy choice.

Actually Apricorn, the developer of the EZ Gig program, has been around quite a while and I would not characterize them or their products as "no-name" or commercially unavailable.

"Apricorn has been designing and manufacturing PC products and accessories since 1983. Engineered for reliability, all of our products are built with high quality materials and precision workmanship. With over 20 years of experience, we are confident you will be pleased with your new Apricorn product....." http://www.apricorn.com/shopping.php

As I've said, I have used and continue to use Acronis TI for various purposes. It is a great program that has its uses, however, the EZ Gig program has its own niche (albeit a smaller one) as well. If you have the requisite hardware setup, it is very easy to use, particularly for a less sophisticated user. It only does one thing, (sector level disk cloning) but does it extremely well with an almost* foolproof simple interface.

Backing up by cloning to a drive you can simply swap into the primary slot has the advantage of not requiring any restore procedure (aside from physically installing the disk) before you are up and running again.

*I said "almost foolproof" because the one undocumented or poorly documented danger of EZ Gig, is that if you reboot your system after cloning a drive without first removingthe newly cloned drive from the ultrabay, XP may not boot properly thereafter without both drives being present. So for those who are about to start using the program, just make sure you remember to shut down and remove the newly cloned drive from the ultrabay for that first reboot after doing the clone. Once that first reboot with just the primary drive in the system has been completed, you could then boot up with both drives. I'm not sure exactly why this is necessary but I believe it is and better safe than sorry.

davidspalding · #46 Post by **davidspalding** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 1:13 pm

I was rash and curmudgeonly, true. Also, I like the model they have on their web site.

pae77 · #47 Post by **pae77** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 2:24 pm

davidspalding wrote:. . . . Also, I like the model they have on their web site.

So do I. She's a honey.

#48 Post by **GomJabbar** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 11:13 pm

I have another couple of questions.

When you clone the hard drive to the drive in the Ultrabay Slim adapter with the included software, is the Rescue and Recovery partition also cloned?

Is there any need to partition (and possibly format) the hard drive before using the cloning software? If so, does this need to be done in the belly of the ThinkPad (as opposed to in the Ultrabay Slim adapter)?

pae77 · #49 Post by **pae77** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 1:35 pm

GomJabbar wrote:I have another couple of questions.

When you clone the hard drive to the drive in the Ultrabay Slim adapter with the included software, is the Rescue and Recovery partition also cloned? Yes. EZ Gig does a sector level clone. It is not even aware of partitions.

Is there any need to partition (and possibly format) the hard drive before using the cloning software? If so, does this need to be done in the belly of the ThinkPad (as opposed to in the Ultrabay Slim adapter)?

No. When you boot with EZ GIG and both drives in the system, EZ Gig should be able to see the drive in the ultrabay and it will just copy the entire primary drive to the target sector by sector.

#50 Post by **GomJabbar** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 7:16 pm

pae77 wrote:The EZ Gig floppy is copy protected in some way. I was unable to copy it. If anybody knows how to make a backup copy, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

You're right. I tried diskcopy in Windows XP, I tried diskcopy using the command prompt in XP, and I tried booting into DOS 5.0 from a floppy and using diskcopy with it. In each case diskcopy failed.

I did manage to clone my existing hard drive OK. For a test I put it in the main hard drive slot, and I could boot into Windows and into the Predesktop Area. As pae77 said, it's almost foolproof.

davidspalding · #51 Post by **davidspalding** » Sun Apr 30, 2006 11:33 am

For others wondering the answer to this...

davidspalding wrote:... Here's a crazy one ... would the UltraBay Slim HDD adapter fit into my Dock II UltraBay 2000 adapter for Slim optical drives? (Both the Slim HDD adapter and 2000 HDD adapter are about the same price through my purchase channel.) Anyone ever done this?

A: the connectors work fine, but the Ultrabay 2000 adapter has a little pin in the side, matching a pinhole in my Multiburner+ optical drive. The Ultrabay Slim HDD adapter has no such pinhole, so ... though you can put it in the UB2000 adapter, and might be able to force both into the Dock II, I wouldn't.

Not great loss. I have USB external drives, so another drive on the dock is NBD. A second drive for multimedia editing in the TP on the go is a Very Big Deal.

Yes, Premiere Elements 2.0 picked up noticeable performance gains using a second HDD for working files and scratch. Happy camper me.

suaveguyc · #52 Post by **suaveguyc** » Tue May 02, 2006 10:25 pm

Quick question about the SATA Ultrabay Slim adapter (I assume only for the T60)-

If this adapter fit in a T43 (again, I'm assuming not), wouldn't a SATA drive work in a T43? Would the SATA/PATA emulation for the main drive interfere with this?

Just a random thought; it would be nice if they released a SATA adapter for T43 users, simply for newer drives seeing as the gain in speed as far as laptops is concerned is really null.

suaveguyc · #53 Post by **suaveguyc** » Tue May 02, 2006 10:25 pm

Quick question about the SATA Ultrabay Slim adapter (I assume only for the T60)-

If this adapter fit in a T43 (again, I'm assuming not), wouldn't a SATA drive work in a T43? Would the SATA/PATA emulation for the main drive interfere with this?

Just a random thought; it would be nice if they released a SATA adapter for T43 users, simply for newer drives seeing as the gain in speed as far as laptops is concerned is really null.

christopher_wolf · #54 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Tue May 02, 2006 10:41 pm

No, the T43 has a SATA-PATA bridge for the primary HDD and a SATA controller; the disk is PATA, but it is "seen" by the system as a SATA disk.

If it did fit, it probably still wouldn't work because you can't actually handle a SATA drive in a T43 to begin with, the hardware that is required on the drive is still PATA; even if you manage to adapt it to the bay successfully, you would still have to deal with the controller for it. If it is a bridge type, like on the primary, it will still be expecting PATA and will most likely cause trouble when it encounters a SATA device instead.

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