600E 2645-5AU: Hard Disk Upgrade Questions

[agcook]

I'd like to upgrade my wife's 600E to WinXP and bought a 40GB Hitachi Travelstar (IC25N040ATCS05-0) to replace the original 6.4GB drive. There are no jumpers so it should be defaulting to master and I'm sure that I am seating it correctly but upon rebooting, the HD is not recognized. In Easy Setup, the icon for HD1 is greyed out. I put the 6.4GB drive back in and everything boots just fine. Now, the 5AU has Win98 bumped up to Second Edition and I've put in 2 X 128mb of memory but the BIOS is still INET25WW. Since the IBM/Lenovo site only shows an maximum 18GB HD option, was there a HD limitation on the original 600E's? I'm hoping that a BIOS update (which I need for XP anyway) will also eliminate this HD recognition problem. I just envisioned swapping the HD, powering up, booting with my WinXP Pro CD in the CD drive and formatting and installing like I've done countless times with desktops at work. Is there anything, besides the BIOS update, anyone can think that I'm doing wrong?
Thanks,
Alex

[whizkid]

The BIOS update may help. But the BIOS limitations on disk size are 8GB and 128GB, so if 18GB works, so should 40GB.

The icon may be grayed out because there is no partition table. Go ahead and try to boot your CD... AFTER you update the BIOS. IIRC, that update is required for XP to work properly.

Get the instructions for installing XP from Lenovo's support site.

[agcook]

Well, I did the BIOS update but still no hard drive recognition. I suppose the drive could be a DOA from the retailer. I can hear it trying to start - kind of like a chugging/clicking sound 9 or 10 times and then it times out. When I reinstall the 6.4GB, everything is back to honkey-doreyville. I probably should hook it up to my desktop machine to see if it is working before I try to get an RMA from the retailer.

When I check out systems info, it correctly identifies 288MB RAM but when I get into the system diags, the motherboard checks out fine and the 2nd test, the memory test, begins, completes one segment with a beep, does another with a second beep, and then the whole diangostics program hangs and I need to power down for a restart. The machine boots with all the memory showing and it is definitely faster than it was with just the 64MB (32MB internal + 32MB insert). This is pretty frustrating.

If anybody out there has any ideas, I sure would like to hear them.
Thanks,
Alex

[whizkid]

The BIOS memory test can take an hour or more. It doesn't appear to be doing anything for a long time. Just wait it out.

Or try memtest86+ here: http://www.memtest86.com/

It's more "fun" to watch.

[whizkid]

You can also try Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test: http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT

[agcook]

This time I started the diagnostics and went into the living room to watch the news and eat dinner. It worked. Everything tested out just fine. Of course, I was using the old 6.4GB HD.

I went to the Lenovo site and found "Operating System Installation" for WinXP but it didn't find anything - "No documents found. Please select another document type."

Now that I'm trying to think of everything that happens when I try to boot, I think I'm over-thinking this process. I can't remember if the HD has already been formatted when I install the OS on machines at work. Doesn't the install program tell you it is going to format the disk? When does it set up the file system or create and set the active partition? Should I create a Win98 startup diskette, swap out the HD, reboot with the floppy, FDISK the new 40GB drive, then try to reboot with the XP CD?

Whizkid, I appreciate your help with all of this. When I first entered this forum I was impressed with the amount of knowledge that was freely passed out now I'm getting the benefit of it. Thanks.

Alex

[whizkid]

I would use Ranish Partition Manager (ranish.com) and delete any partitions on the new drive. Then boot your XP CD. The 98 boot floppy doesn't have fdisk or format on it (the one that XP makes, anyway).

Any boot floppy (or maybe a Linux LiveCD) that has an fdisk on it will let you delete partitions.

XP will gladly make a partition it can use.

[unrortit]

whiz i forgot
if i format the harddrive in xp fat32
then do a backup of os files xp ,xps1(not sp2 dammen micro'')
with the laptop detect and boot ok?

[agcook]

Well, I borrowed a USB based 2.5" adapter from the office and hooked up the 40GB Hitachi to my desktop last night. The machine recognized a new USB device and under DEVICE MANAGER a new hard drive appeared as a USB device. However, no new drive showed up in Windows Explorer nor in COMPUTER MANAGEMENT /DISK MANAGEMENT. I had no way to access the drive to partition or anything. So, I brought it in to my office this morning, used the same USB/2.5" adapter (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20 ... U2NVSPATA/) and brought it up in from of one of our tech guys. First thing he noticed was the clicking/chugging sound of the heads. He didn't like that and then we couldn't find the drive, other than as a new USB storage device under DEVICE MANAGER. His opinion was that it was DOA, so now I'll try to contact the retailer and get an RMA or a refund.

I appreciate your help. I've joined other forums for other hardware/software needs and have really been turned off by members who have forgotten that they, too, were once newbies and flame on anybody who asks a question they deem to be "stupid". I was really struck by the absence of those attitudes here in this forum. I sure hope IBM/Lenovo is aware of the good will you guys are creating by helping take care of their older model computers.

Thanks,
Alex