T43 Hard drive in the dvd bay

[Erakon]

Hello fellow Thinkpad users. I just purchased a t43, and so far I am pretty happy with its performance. I am using it as back up device for Video I shoot in the field. The problem is there is no storage on the puny 30gb hard drive. I understand that I can buy a harddrive bay and slap that in the dvd bay, and hence have a second drive. I would like to know if this is possible and how much it will cost. I have also been reading about drive compatibility issues, do I need to worry about what drive to buy to put in this harddrive bay? Ideally I would put something like 320gb drive in there.

Any ideas on where to buy a harddrive bay, new or used, and any tips on what I can put in there would be most helpful.

Thanks,

Erakon

[Harryc]

No limits on the hard drive in the Ultrabay, but it must be an IDE drive. You can get Ultrabay slim 2nd HDD adapters on EBay.
http://cgi.ebay.com/IBM-ThinkPad-2nd-Ha ... 0313292626

[FTC]

Hi,

30GB seems too small for a T43. Are you sure you don't have some unformatted space / other partitions in your disk ?. If your current hd is really only 30GB I wouldn't really care about the ultrabay adapter. Just buy a bigger one and substitute it as the main drive..

[Nameless]

30GB seems too small for a T43. Are you sure you don't have some unformatted space / other partitions in your disk ?. If your current hd is really only 30GB I wouldn't really care about the ultrabay adapter. Just buy a bigger one and substitute it as the main drive..

Beware of the 2010 error on T43/p machines. It's just an annoyance but it's pretty good at being an annoyance.

[Johan]

Welcome to the forum, Erakon!

As suggested above, I would probably also consider getting a larger HDD as the primary drive if I were you - but as also noticed, T43's have the "problem" with only certain HDD's being recognized by the BIOS. Those HDD's which are not recognized by the T43 BIOS will work, but during bootup a "2010"-error will be reported, but this error can be set for being automatically bypassed... the only thing that happen in such case is that there will be an approx. 5 sec. delay in boot (see the thread T43 2010 HD Problem). The largest HDD for T43's that will not exhibit the "2010"-error is the Fujitsu MHV2120AH which is a 120 GB/5400 rpm; see e.g. the thread NEW Fujitsu MHV2120AH 120GB Hard Drive PATA, no 2010 errors. Note that this is either on the way out-of-production, or has already been discontinued - so get one while you can!

Alternatively, you could do as suggested by yourself; get the "UltraBay 2nd HDD Slim Adapter" and mount a HDD in that. Notice however that there are two types of "UltraBay 2nd HDD Slim Adapters"; one intended for T4x's ThinkPad's (incl. T43's), and using PATA HDD's and one intended for T6x's ThinkPad's, intended for SATA HDD's. The T6x (SATA) "UltraBay 2nd HDD Slim Adapters" can however be modified for use in T4x's as e.g. discussed in the thread T43p and single drive in SATA ultrabay slim enclosure - more specificly the second part of this post. The PATA "UltraBay 2nd HDD Slim Adapter" is P/N 62P4554 or P/N 41N5661 or FRU 41N5660 or FRU 62P4553 (yes, very confusing, I quite agree!), and the the T6x SATA "UltraBay 2nd HDD Slim Adapter" is P/N 40Y8725 or FRU 26R9246 (see e.g. SATA HDD in Ultrabay drive or Where can I buy an ultrabay slim hdd adaptor?).

As PATA HDD's are "only" available with up to 320 GB capacity (and these PATA HDD's are "only" running 5400 rpm), and are a bit more expensive than SATA HDD's, you might want to consider the modified T6x-solution with a newer/bigger/faster SATA HDD... since up to 500 GB/7200 rpm SATA HDD's are available. Check e.g. Newegg for prices and user reviews. Beware that 5400 rpm HDD's consume a bit less power than the faster 7200 rpm HDD's, so if you need to run off battery for long periods of time, the 5400's will "last longer" on each charging. The 7200 rpm's obviously run a bit faster but also exhibit a bit more noise than 5400 rpm's, so if low-noise is yur prime objective, you might want to stick to the 5400 rpm's (although latest-generation 7200 rpm's are very low-noise, too).

PS: Have a look in the threads Thinkpad Fan Noise Problem: Light at the End of the Tunnel (start reading the last pages first, as much of the first is historical) or alternatively NHC 2 is out! - start e.g. reading from this post. I believe that one of these free programs would make you like your T43 even more!

Good luck with your new T43!

Johan

[Nameless]

Hey Johan, what was that "modified T6x-solution" you mentioned? I just did an end-of-life stock-up on 7K100 drives, but knowing how to hook up a SATA drive to a T43/p, if possible, might prove useful in the future.

[schen]

Hey Johan, what was that "modified T6x-solution" you mentioned? I just did an end-of-life stock-up on 7K100 drives, but knowing how to hook up a SATA drive to a T43/p, if possible, might prove useful in the future.

The OEM IBM/Lenovo SATA UltraBay-Slim adapters have a pin molded on to it that keep it from seating properly in the bay. There are 2 ways to resolve this: some folks grind down the pin, but many (like me) buy an "after-market" one that doesn't have the "pin" altogether and therefore poses no problems regardless of which machine you want to use it in.

If you go ahead and replace the smallish HDD that's in your T43, even with something of just 100Gb to 120Gb and then add a SATA HDD adapter holding another drive of between 320 and 500Gb, I should think that that would resolve most anyone's storage problem!

[Xenomorph]

I had no idea the Hard Drive UltraBay adapters were so cheap.

It looks like there are a bunch on eBay for under $15 shipped.

They are hot-swappable too, right?

And did I read that right, the non-IBM ones are better than the IBM ones??

[davidspalding]

I run a second hard drive in my Ultrabay slim regularly. It's not necessarily hot-swappable, depending on how you have Windows treat the drive. I prefer the performance of it with write caching and a second pagefile on the drive, so I can't hot-swap. Then I use it for Photoshop (disk swapping, editing files), Premiere Elements, disc-burning (temp file directory) etc. Works great.

You can also upgrade your system drive with a bigger, faster one and use the slower 30GB for your 2nd drive. Pay attention to what others say about acceptable hard drives. (I bought a Hitachi Travelstar for the second, and it's lickety split. Haven't swapped around yet. Lazy.)

Concur with others that you examine your drive in diskmgmt.msc or something like Partition Magic. You may have unclaimed space on it. ... According to the LTWbook.pdf (IBM/Lenovo reference), none of the T43s came with 30GB drives, so suspect you've got the drive partitioned wrong (or you're misreading the drive with a HPA recovery partition on it) or the seller swapped drives. (If you post the MTM "model number" from the bottom that would help.)

[Erakon]

Wow,

Thanks for all your help guys! I will let you know how my Pimped T43 works when this HDD bay arrives.

Erakon