T61P 500GB in Ultrabay issues

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jmp917 · #1 Post by **jmp917** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 9:51 am

I recently have attempted to use a Seagate 500GB drive in my Ultrabay with issues. Sometimes during post an error will display and then the drive will not be seen. At other times no problems at all.
Has anyone experienced this issue or know of a resolution?
Thanks for any help!

A.K.A · #2 Post by **A.K.A** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 12:25 pm

This is only a tangential benchmark and some ideas to get you started.

I have a 500GB WD Scorpio Blue, and when it's in the Ultrabay Slim, it gives me no trouble whatsoever.

Have you done any S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics on your HDD to see if it's a bad piece of hardware? I'm going to be trying two different freeware programs for that purpose on an aging HDD to see how badly it's going.

The two that seem to be most versatile according to Wikipedia are

PanteraSoft – HDD Health
http://www.panterasoft.com/

Passmark – DiskCheckup
http://www.passmark.com/

Obviously, it sounds likely to be a mechanical problem (or a driver problem? or bad BIOS?), not a storage defect per se, because bad platters are silent killers.

More generally, you can check out this excellent article in the ACM's magazine, which tells you more about how to think about what may be going wrong. The article is "Hard drives: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly."
http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1317403

jmp917 · #3 Post by **jmp917** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 12:49 pm

Thank you for the recommendations, I will give them a try. This is a new drive that will perform flawlessly attached via USB, but sometimes on post I do get the error, I generally just hit escape and boot with out the availability of the drive. Thanks again

basketb · #4 Post by **basketb** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 1:58 pm

Do you have a genuine Lenovo/IBM ultrabay adapter or a Chinese knock-off? In either case it could be defective. The latter would make it a little bit more probable.

#5 Post by **richk** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 2:07 pm

USB drives can sometimes work fine when they are starting to fail and don't respond fast enough to work when attached to an IDE channel. When I have a failing drive and I need to get the data off, I try USB adapters.

jmp917 · #6 Post by **jmp917** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 2:26 pm

The UltraBay was purchased with the notebook from the Lenovo web site. I can only presume it to be real.

jmp917 · #7 Post by **jmp917** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 10:45 pm

After using the two recommended testing softwares and the system toolbox, the 500GB drive in the UltraBay shows no errors. I think this is a BIOS related issue. It is unfortunate that no replies from Lenovo have been posted.

#8 Post by **bill bolton** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 5:51 pm

jmp917 wrote:It is unfortunate that no replies from Lenovo have been posted.

If you are expecting replies from Lenovo here, you are on the wrong web site.

ThinkPads.com is a user self help forum!

Cheers,

Bill B.

T61P 500GB in Ultrabay issues

T61P 500GB in Ultrabay issues

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