Boot on Ultrabay Slim harddrive

[technux]

Hello,

I will soon get a ThinkPad T60p as a work PC (looking forward to that by the way ). I wish to add a second harddrive via an Ultrabay Slim adapter and boot to that for personal usage of the laptop.

My question is simply: Is it possible to boot to a harddrive connected in this way? I know that it's not possible to install/boot to a Windows installation on an external harddrive, therefore my concern.

Is there anything else I should be aware of us running two harddrives simultaneously in this way?

Thank you for any advice.

[ThinkPad]

Yes you can. Setup the bios to boot from that drive at start up first. I have the ultra bay adapter and if I had an OS on the secondary drive I could boot from it instead of the primary one.

[christopher_wolf]

Yup, it should be pretty easy to boot from a 2nd HDD in the Ultrabay Slim; I boot Linux off the 2nd HDD in my T43.

The boot order need not be changed, all that you have to do is hit F12 at boot and select the drive to boot from.

[technux]

That's great news, thanks a lot!

I'm especially pleased that I'm able to boot the drive without changing the bios settings as I'm pretty sure that they will be locked by the company. Is it safe to assume that F12 won't be locked?

Another questions I hope you van help with is which adapter to buy? I believe there are both PATA and SATA versions available. Any advises?

[christopher_wolf]

For the T60? As far as I know, you get PATA only for the 2nd HDD, there was a post here about that. I highly doubt that the BIOS would be locked to disable the F12 boot list feature, that has been on just about every BIOS on all the computers I have had since 2000.

The adapter listed on the IBM/Lenovo site is the one you should buy for your T60.

HTH

[JHEM]

I'm especially pleased that I'm able to boot the drive without changing the bios settings as I'm pretty sure that they will be locked by the company. Is it safe to assume that F12 won't be locked?

Not if your employer is serious about security.

The F12 function can be turned off in the BIOS, so you won't know if you have that ability or not until you get the unit, BOOT it and watch for the "Press F12....) prompt.

Regards,

James

[technux]

The company does care about security so chances are that the F12 will be locked. Is there a work around I can use? I'm thinking something a long the lines of booting to a USB floppy that has some kind of boot loader where I can select the boot device (hoping that it's at least possible to boot from a floppy).

Looking at accessories on IBM's website I see two different adapters:

http://www5.pc.ibm.com/dk/products.nsf/ ... enDocument
http://www5.pc.ibm.com/dk/products.nsf/ ... enDocument

I assume I should buy the second one? It doesn't say anything about the interface, though (PATA/SATA). Is it safe to buy another harddrive than IBM's? There are quite a few bucks to save, so I would appreciate any advice on the matter.

Thank you again for your help so far.