T40 & Hitachi HTS72101G9AT00, does not see drive

[egalvan]

T40 2373-72U
Pentium M 1.5gHz,
2g RAM,
40g HD
BIOS 1RETDPWW (3.2.1) 6/2/2006
running W-XP pro SP1 (original factory load)

Wanting to up-grade the hard drive, I purchased Hitachi HTS72101G9AT00, installed in system, but machine will not see drive; acts as if there is no drive at all.

Tried the following boot cd's;
Darin's Boot-n-Nuke, GParted, Kubuntu 'Fiesty Fawn' Live, Knoppix, W-XP Pro

all complain about no drive installed.

But using an Adaptec USB External case (ACS-100), Win-XP Computer Management program allowed me to initialize this drive.

It works perfect as an external USB, but does not boot at all.

I read many of the posts concerning up-grading the hard drive, and one T40 owner stated he was using his T40 with this same drive.

Fault of mine? Possible drive failure? Possible T40 failure?

[richk]

The drives can be hard to install and get the pins ligned up if you haven't done it much. I assume you know that the top of the drive (the side with the printing) points away from the touchpad. The way to hold the machine to get the drive seated is upside down, with the screen open and the feet pointing up. Gravity keeps the pins on the right side of the slot.

[agarza]

richk is right. Test you have installed it properly (with the laptop upside down) and make sure it's securely fastened in the caddy.

[egalvan]

This is my third ThinkPad (t600x, t23, t40) and I've up-dated hd's, ram, wireless NIC's, modems, etc.. so I've acquired some familiarity with the hard-ware (ask me how I know about bent hd pins, and lost screws':oops:' )

I had tried swapping the new 100gb with the old 40gb several times, and the last three times I made sure I could hear the hd spin up (held the machine up to my ear while powering up)... yep... whiz,whiz,click,click, but no bios happiness.

After you fine folks mentioned the possiblity of the drive being loose, or mis-inserted, I tried again. "wax on, wax off"


Success! Success!

OK, I'm aware that it's possible to fix a machime remotely, using special software to fiddle and twiddle from afar....
but this is going too far....

( you know, I mind a server that has been giving me some BIOS re-set problems.... I should hook it up to this forum...maybe you guys with the magic remote fingers can solve that problem also.....)

Anyway, I don't know what I could have done different... the drive was spinning up the other times; (can it spin up if only one bank of pins is inserted? even though there really isn't much wiggle room in the t40 hd bay, compared with the t23)

I've been lurking in this forum for about a year, and learned a tremendous amount about the thinkpads. I joined to try to solve this problem before downgrading to an 80gb.

Many thanks for the "solution". There is much Linux loading joy in B'ville tonight!!