my t42 has trouble finding second HDD in Ultrabay

[greghoward]

I bought a new Seagate 100 gb drive (5400.2, ST9100824A) and an Ultrabay Slim HDD adapter for my T42. My plan is (was?) to clone the original 40 gb drive to the Seagate 100 gb in the Ultrabay, and then put the Seagate into the internal drive bay. Unfortunately, the drive in the Ultrabay is not always recognized.

If I boot into XP with nothing in the Ultrabay, and then pop in the Seagate, Windows does *not* recognize the drive (either under "disk management" or under "safely remove hardware"). However, I can find it in "add new hardware" under the list of devices which are already connected but not installed. Once I've put the drive in and "added new hardware" -- it simply tells me that the drive is working properly -- it suddenly shows up by model number in "Safely Remove Hardware", and as Disk 1 in "Disk Management". (It seems slightly odd to me that both disks say "location 0 (0)".)

If I reboot, Windows forgets that the drive is there, and in fact any time I boot with the drive already in the Ultrabay, Windows can't find it in "add new hardware" -- I have to remove it and replace it to add it. Naturally, this means that neither EZ-GIG nor Acronis True Image can see the second drive (when booting EZ-GIG from floppy, or when rebooting to start the Acronis cloning process).

Any idea why Windows has trouble seeing this? Is there a BIOS setting I'm not seeing? It almost sounds like a jumper problem, but of course I can't put a jumper on the Seagate if it's in the Ultrabay adapter. I have no problems with swapping the cd-rom drive that usually lives in that bay, so it seems like the Ultrabay is working ok. Something finicky with the IDE controller...?

thanks for any help.

[greghoward]

I found a "solution", almost by accident.

If I turn on "diagnostic" boot-up mode in BIOS, the BIOS can find the second drive in the Ultrabay. I did so, and then was successfully able to clone the drive. When I swapped the new drive into the internal bay, I turned off "diagnostic" mode, and it still sees the new drive fine. (Haven't tried the old drive in the Ultrabay.)

A bizarre solution, but it worked out!

[Dead1nside]

Congrats man, usually when devices aren't recognised on boot up. It can mean two things: 1) Device is broken, 2) Need to mess around in the BIOS. And you got it to work.

[christopher_wolf]

I find it strange you needed to do that as the 2nd HDD Adapter for the Ultrabay Slim should work without having to change a setting in the BIOS like that. You should have been able to pick it up in Windows and begin the process of formatting the drive.

Although I haven't tried this with the 100GB Seagate you mention, so that might present a difference.