Need a new Hard Drive my Toshiba died!!!

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Hans Gruber · #1 Post by **Hans Gruber** » Mon Dec 18, 2006 5:29 am

My 15 month old T43P's hard drive died. That's ok because it was only 40GB and I was planning on replacing it anyway. Kind of pathetic that it died with little warning and only after 15 months. I pulled the hard drive out several times and reinserted to no avail. Now is also a good time for me to return my fire prone 9 cell sony battery bomb too.

What's this I'm hearing about compatability issues with non IBM authorized Hard Drives?

I'm not buying direct from Lenovo. I can get a new Seagate Momentus 5400.3 ST980815A Hard Drive - 80GB - 5400rpm with shipping for $55. The above drive is a perpendicular drive. Do I want SATA instead the ATA-6? Do the SATA models slide in the same way or do I need a new connector?

I have the newest bios and I backed up everything so not too big of a deal. Bios is 1.23 I think. Whatever is newest. I'm hearing rumors about some special firmware IBM was supplying with their drives. Unapproved drives supposedly have a bunch of errors. What's the deal with that?

Please advise me on which drives are good to go. I would prefer Seagate and their 5 year warranty. I want a 5400rpm drive because 7200rpm isn't worth double the price. Do I want ATA-6 or a SATA drive?

Thank you

#2 Post by **GomJabbar** » Mon Dec 18, 2006 6:32 am

Here is some information on this. I did have a link regarding this on an IBM/Lenovo page, but that link isn't currently working.

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_w ... hard_disks

danage · #3 Post by **danage** » Mon Dec 18, 2006 9:52 am

i recommend you verify your hard drive is broken first. the no os installed message doesnt necessarily mean that the harddrive is bricked. it might also be a software problem.

you could do two things: boot from a live cd (windows is best as linux doesnt automatically mount ntfs by default) and try accessing your hard drive.

or, try it as a second hard drive in another machine. usb -> ata adapters are available for cheap on ebay.

of course, if the drive is making funny noises or doesnt spin up at all, thats a different story. but my guess is that in this case you would get a different error message.

good luck.

Hans Gruber · #4 Post by **Hans Gruber** » Mon Dec 18, 2006 8:08 pm

I can confirm that my hard drive is indeed dead. I tried to run the recovery CD's and the drive would not answer the request to write.

Is the Momentus 5400.3 80GB compatable with the latest T43 bios. I believe the bios is 1.27 (September 2006 bios)??

This is a perpendicular drive.

Need a new Hard Drive my Toshiba died!!!

Need a new Hard Drive my Toshiba died!!!

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