Ultrabay hardrive upgrade

[kerryh8er04]

So my wonderful T43p's hardrive is almost full and I can't really get ride of anything to clean it up... Also I don't have a way to backup or clone my hardrive right now and I can't have my computer down...

Now I have and still might consider just getting an external hardrive however I looked on ebay and found lots of ultrabay hardrive caddy's Like this and I figured that since I rarely use my dvd drive that I could just buy one of these and then put in a WD Scorpio Blue.

So what I am needing are some opinions as to weather this is a good idea or not.

Note: the reason I don't want an external HD is because I am on the go all the time and I don't want to deal with the hassle of carrying another thing for my computer with me all the time. Also I only have two usb ports and I need those for my printer and mouse when I am at work.

[Johan]

Welcome to the forum!

I suggest you review the threads T43 Hard drive in the dvd bay and t43p and single drive in SATA ultrabay slim enclosure - more specificly this post (the part staring "About using a SATA (not PATA!) HDD in the 2nd UltraBay Slim HDD adapter") and finally the thread T61p - 2nd HDD in UltraBay pointing you to the cheapest solution.

The WD drive you link to is a SATA.

Johan

[kerryh8er04]

Thank you.

Now after reading through some, and looking around on Ebay some more I came across this.

I am guessing that this will work right out of the box for SATA?

[91011]

I just got the exact adapter you're looking at. It works fine but the fit is a bit tight. I found it works better taking the drive out of it's normal caddy. Be sure to put something below the drive to prevent contact with the metal floor. Two Post-Its worked well. Be prepared to wait awhile, this seller ships fast but it must travel by a slow boat - about 3 weeks for me.

John

[kuma]

Ok so I go the eBay caddy mentioned, and a SATA hard drive as mentioned above as well. But I don't see it in "my computer" it says new hard ware added when I inserted it. But it doesn't show up anywhere. Help please
I have a T42.
I can click on the remove hardware icon, and it says that the hard drive is working but in location 0. Any help

[mgo]

Ok so I go the eBay caddy mentioned, and a SATA hard drive as mentioned above as well. But I don't see it in "my computer" it says new hard ware added when I inserted it. But it doesn't show up anywhere. Help please
I have a T42.
I can click on the remove hardware icon, and it says that the hard drive is working but in location 0. Any help

The drive must be formatted in order for the operating system to see it.

[kuma]

Thanks for your reply. How do I format it?

[mgo]

Thanks for your reply. How do I format it?

Use the Disk Management utility.

[yak]

How do I format it?

Assuming you're using XP, try this description:
http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-ti ... ve-easily/
Skip the FDISK part and go straight to formatting under 2000/XP.

[kuma]

Thank you. I am now in Computer management and I see the drive but it is "unallocated", but "online".

[ZaZ]

Did you set the drive up in disk manager, i.e. make a partition and format it? If you did it should show up in explorer.

[yak]

Thank you. I am now in Computer management and I see the drive but it is "unallocated", but "online".

Good. Follow the tutorial. Right click on the unallocated space and select New partition.

[kuma]

You rock, ok I right clicked on it now should I use it as a primary partition or extended? I plan to put all my photos, mp3s, movies and files on it.
THanks a million.


Allocation unit size? I should just keep it at Default correct?

You completely rock. Thank you so much for the help.

[kuma]

Any way to format it so I get the full 320gb instead of 209.09gb?

[yak]

Any way to format it so I get the full 320gb instead of 209.09gb?

Your drive has 320 000 000 000 bytes. For hard disk manufacturers this equals to 320 GB.

However, usually (and this includes what Windows shows you), 320 000 000 000 bytes equal to ~298 GB. This is because 1 KB is usually treated as 1024 bytes, not 1000 as the HDD makers do.

This is a long lasting problem described by many sites, google for more info if you want. The bottom line is, you should be able to create a partition of 298 GB in size. You say your limit is 209.09, are you sure it isn't a typo?

EDIT:
Here, found a Wikipedia article describing the prefixes problem:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefixes

[kuma]

Humble Pie.
Yes that was a typo 298gb. but still not 320. Thanks for the article.