Non-IBM drives

[SAE140]

I've just taken delivery of an eBay 'take a chance' Thinkpad with no HDD. It's a 2645-850 with a P2-300 and a floppy in the bay. No CD/DVD. I'm currently running it from a 14v stabilised supply as the battery is stone dead.

Although this 600 will boot and run Win98 ok from a spare Hitachi drive (ex Compaq) I had lying around, I can't get it to boot from either of 2 Toshiba HDDs I'd intended to use.

We're talking low-end stuff here: the HDDs concerned are only 4 & 6Gb, so their cash value is insignificant - but I'd like to figure out exactly why they won't boot - partly for educational reasons, but mainly because after 2 days of frustration I'm becoming somewhat bloody-minded ... (!)

The 6 Gb Toshiba is probably the best candidate to start with, as it will load Win95 (having intially booted from a floppy) right up until the installation re-boot - when it falls over. No error codes or anything - just a blank screen with flashing cursor, and nothing else happening. I'm thinking this must be a boot geometry issue ?

Having Googled around on the non-IBM drive issue and having searched this forum's archives, I'd add that this drive was partitioned/prepared with DM while in the TP600, then removed and the Win95 CAB files copied into the 2Gb primary FAT16 bootable partition from a desktop.

I'm plumb out of ideas, so would appreciate advice on whether using this Toshiba drive is a viable option on the TP600 ? Could this be a 'protected area/IBM translation' issue and if so, is there a work-around ? Regret no install or recovery disks at hand.

Thanks
Colin

[pkiff]

Having Googled around on the non-IBM drive issue and having searched this forum's archives, I'd add that this drive was partitioned/prepared with DM while in the TP600[...]

DM? What's that? Disk Management? under which OS?

I'd try booting from floppy and using a DOS version of fdisk to remove all partitions and start fresh. But maybe you tried that already?

Phil.

[SAE140]

Having Googled around on the non-IBM drive issue and having searched this forum's archives, I'd add that this drive was partitioned/prepared with DM while in the TP600[...]

DM? What's that? Disk Management? under which OS?

I'd try booting from floppy and using a DOS version of fdisk to remove all partitions and start fresh. But maybe you tried that already?

Phil.

Hi Phil,

DM = Ontrack's Disk Manager. Recommended by IBM/Lenovo in their blurb. Runs under MS-DOS, although there are later Win9X versions. My favourite is DM 5.10 with MS-DOS 6.22 booting from a floppy. No problems with using that set-up - until now.

I guess what I'm really asking is whether a TP600 should boot and run ok on any standard IDE hard drive of any make ?

On my various searches around the web there are frequent reports of Thinkpads 'hanging' during a new Windows install re-boot - didn't know whether this is such a case, or whether there is something 'dodgy' about using non-IBM-approved HDDs - so thought I'd ask the forum rather than keep tearing my hair out ...

Regards, Colin

[SMA]

I do find it rather unlikely that your problem is hardware related.

It is much more likely that there is something wrong with the way windows is being installed.
Go through the installation procedure you are using. Look for installation instructions (a readme file) on the windows cd.
Use Google or search www.microsoft.com or this forum, for something like "win9x floppy install".

With the drive sizes in question, there should be no need to use OnTrack - it just complicates things.
The purpose of OnTrack is to implement support for drives with larger capacities.

The correct tool to use when formatting the hard drive would be on a win9x start diskette,
but a such, would have to be created by the same or an earlier win9x version, as the one being installed.
A diskette can also be created from the windows installation cd.
Believe that it would be better to use a dos boot disk.
Also I do remember having heard that installing dos before installing win95 does make things easier.

Finally, you may have a virus on one or more of the floppy disks being used.
I have tried that. It took me weeks to figure out what was going on.

[pkiff]

DM = Ontrack's Disk Manager.[...]

OK, thanks. Didn't know about that one.

I guess what I'm really asking is whether a TP600 should boot and run ok on any standard IDE hard drive of any make ?

Yes. That's basically true, though some very old IDE drives (older than the 600 series) have strange pinouts that don't work in any standard systems.

On my various searches around the web there are frequent reports of Thinkpads 'hanging' during a new Windows install re-boot - didn't know whether this is such a case, or whether there is something 'dodgy' about using non-IBM-approved HDDs

This shouldn't be a common problem, and I wouldn't think it is any more common in Thinkpads than in other machines. However, people have run into problems with Thinkpads when installing hard drives that have been formatted in other machines (for e.g. on their desktops). Apparently, the drive geometry that Thinkpads use has a few of its own tiny quirks that can affect whether or not a drive functions or is recognized correctly. This is not specific to IBM drives, but applies to all drives in Thinkpads. The usual recommendation is to always format your Thinkpad hard drive in the Thinkpad you intend to use it in, but it sounds like you have already tried that.

Have you double-checked that your Thinkpad BIOS is set to correctly boot from the hard drive and not from other boot devices? You could get a freeze on reboot during install if your Thinkpad is trying to boot from a non-bootable, or non-existent drive. The standard boot order is Floppy, CD, HDD, but if I were having problems with booting, then I'd be tempted to change the boot order to only HDD and remove all other devices during testing.

Phil.

[vanaya]

I do recommend formatting the HDD in the system you are going to place it in as posted above. I have successfully used the following drives in the 600/600e.
-Hitachi 10gb
-Hitachi 20gb
-Toshiba 10gb
-Toshiba 6gb
-Fujitsu 60gb
-WD 40gb and a few others that I can't remember.
Another suggestion is to use DBAN to format the drive and start from scratch.
On a side note I have had a 600e that during an XP PRO install I would get a BSOD after the files copy, but before Windows start up. The only solution was to install the OS on a similar 600e and swap the drives. Hope this helps...

[SAE140]

Sorted.

It turned out to be something of an 'egg-on-the-face-job', with the problem being down to Ontrack's Disk Manager having shifted the boot sector bytes. I used 'FDISK /MBR' to re-write the boot area and now all is well.

Have decided to retire Disk Manager from regular use. I started using it back in the ol' 286/386 days (when it WAS needed) and it seems I just got into the habit of using it as a lazy way of setting up hard drives. Has never given a problem on desktops - but the TP doesn't like it one bit.

Thanks for the constructive comments and advice - helpful and VERY much appreciated.

Colin