T60 - Hard drive Upgrade to a 320GB problems

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quadrilleus · #1 Post by **quadrilleus** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 9:46 pm

I got a T60 given to me and to make a long story short, i want to switch out the existing 80gb drive for a new 320gb Sata drive. I would like to do a clean install of XP (ie have my XP install cdformat the drive and then do a clean install, etc. My problem is that the Windows boot program only offers a 128GB format option, and upon completing that formating process is still not able to proceed. Please help...it feels like i have some basic issue (like a missing driver) that is preventing me from moving on...

#2 Post by **RonS** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 10:31 pm

Have you set SATA to compatibility mode in the BIOS?

quadrilleus · #3 Post by **quadrilleus** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 10:45 pm

Yes - i have spent 24 hours scouring the web for help and come across this tip already...in fact my default setting was 'compatibility', and changing it to to alternate option the T60 just hung

STC · #4 Post by **STC** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 6:41 am

as far as i know it has something to do with the service packs. Try installing windows on the shown partition and later resize it (if you dont want several partitions which i would recommend anyway.)

stephenaron · #5 Post by **stephenaron** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 11:56 pm

I do believe that you need Service Pack 2 on the CD to install windows on an HD bigger than 128gb.

Truthfinder · #6 Post by **Truthfinder** » Sun Feb 10, 2008 12:34 am

Hello:

My T60 came with a 100gig drive and I recently upgraded it to a 250gig.

I took the new 250gig drive, formatted and made two partitions. I was than able to do a restore from the original R&R. After the R&R I ran in a Ghost backup that I had from several months prior and everything turned out great. No issues what so ever.

Oh, I formated and partitoned the 250gig drive using my regular Dell PC. I just pluged the new drive into the dell and got the drive all ready in the Dell. After that, I placed the drive in my T60 and ran in the R&R and finaly the Ghost restore.

Hope this lends some insight.

Best of luck to you, Steve

XIII · #7 Post by **XIII** » Sun Feb 10, 2008 2:07 am

It might be possible that T60 BIOS does not support more than 250 GB. You can try repartition them into two as suggested and see what happens.

coolsilicon · #8 Post by **coolsilicon** » Sun Feb 10, 2008 10:19 am

It might be possible that T60 BIOS does not support more than 250 GB. You can try repartition them into two as suggested and see what happens.

My T60 with the latest BIOS does support 320 GB (I recently imstalled such a hd). I've never heard of a 250 GB barrier, BTW. To the OP: this sounds indeed like a problem with XP. If you have access to another PC, you could try to slipstream SP2. There are plenty of tutorials on how to do this.

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/wi ... stream.asp

Dale H. Cook · #9 Post by **Dale H. Cook** » Sun Feb 10, 2008 2:14 pm

coolsilicon wrote:My T60 with the latest BIOS does support 320 GB (I recently imstalled such a hd).

It does indeed - I just replaced my 80 GB drive with a WD 320 GB drive and it works fine.

quadrilleus · #10 Post by **quadrilleus** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 10:45 am

Thanks to all for the help and conversation flow.

The root of my issue is that I tried use a Windows XP install cd that did not have a service pack 'upgrade' to it...in other words, blame it on Microsoft

But seriously, the solution was to create a new boot CD with SP2 (actually I went right to SP3) integrated...there are mutliple how-to guides on the net - the key words to use are "Windows XP SP2 slipstreaming".

This is the MS instruction guide: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894949
This is the guide I used: http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/wi ... stream.asp

Once done - everyhting worked super with no hiccups

thanks again to all!!

quadrilleus · #11 Post by **quadrilleus** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 1:11 pm

Mo...Fo....from the files of reasons for hating microsoft

Dont go to SP3 right away, only go with SP2!!! I cant install the UAA driver (because the file says its not necessary for sp3), yet that is eactly what the Lenovo driver requests.

I found a post from a user who had the same issue and overcame it by remvoing the SP3 upgrade, installing UA and reinstalling SP3 - no issues...but for me I am now really screwed because with SP3 slipstreamed I cant find anyway of unistalling. Icant contemplating having to remove everything again...

Any smart ideas?

quadrilleus · #12 Post by **quadrilleus** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 1:54 pm

Hallelujah - found a solution and finally all my drivers have been found and installed - the windows startup theme has never sounded so sweet...look here for SP3 and UAA fix:

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=490

T60 - Hard drive Upgrade to a 320GB problems

T60 - Hard drive Upgrade to a 320GB problems

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