Upgrading T43P to PATA IDE SSD--Need Some Advice

[bigshot90210]

I have a corporate-issued T43P laptop and am at least 6 months away from an upgrade, so I'm was planning to update the HDD with a faster SSD. Basic rundown of my system:

T43P w/ 15" Screen
WinXP Professional SP3
Intel PentiumM 750 (1.86GHz)
2GB System memory
BIOS revision 1.29 (latest version)

I purchased a 128GB SSD (PhotoFast G-Monster-IDE V2) and attempted to copy the contents of my existing 80GB drive over. I plugged the SSD into the device bay adaptor and formated the drive (NTSF) using the standard WinXP HDD manager tool. Using MyComputer, I verified that the drive was accessible (wrote and read file), then proceeded to full disk clone.

After a couple of cloning attempts (first w/ Norton Ghost 10.0, which wouldn't install; then with Ghost 2003 which installed, but didn't copy over some of the OS image; then finally with a program called Casper which seems to have worked), the image appeared to have copied correctly onto the SSD. With the SSD in the Device Bay, I was able to open and read files.

So, I moved the SSD over to the main drive slot and attempted to boot. The first boot attempt, I ran into the 2010 error. Entered BIOS and disabled the required <esc> press. Boot proceeded to the 2010 screen and held there for some time. After a while, I received an error 0200: Failure Fixed Disk 0.

I then moved the SSD back to the device bay and changed the boot sequence to hit the SSD first. Guess what? The system booted up great. The performance was quite snappy, boot time was about half the boot time of my old drive.

The problem is that I need the device bay for my optical disk! Any recommendations on how I can get this disk to work in the normal HDD slot?

[sjthinkpader]

Welcome to the forum.

During cloning operation, the SSD needs to be in the HDD bay and the old HDD in the Ultrabay drive tray or a USB-IDE adapter.

[bigshot90210]

Thanks for the idea.

I moved the SSD to the primary HDD slot and the original HDD to the Ultrabay. The system boots from the original HDD / Ultrabay (as expected since that is my boot order), however, I still get a 0200 error during boot and WinXP doesn't see the SSD. How do I get the system to recognize the drive?

[sjthinkpader]

Is the SSD mounted in a caddy with screws?

SSD is sometime thinner than HDD and need the caddy and screws to be inserted correctly. Without the caddy, try inserting the SSD with your computer bottoms up, SSD label face up.

[bigshot90210]

It appears that the SSD is the same physical size as my original drive and it seats into the drive slot firmly. I was playing with the boot ordering in BIOS setup and found that the SSD is named (the complete name of the drive), so it must be connected properly. Still can't see the drive once I'm in WinXP.

[sjthinkpader]

In order to write the MBR correctly on your new drive, it needs to be in the HDD slot during cloning, the old drive in the Ultrabay tray or USB-IDE adapter.

[bigshot90210]

Well, I'm getting close to giving up.

I downloaded rnr31_rrd.exe from Lenovo's website, which I believe is suppose to repair the MBR. I ran this with the SSD in the primary HDD slot. The program indicated that the MBR repair worked. I then plugged in the old HDD into the Ultrabay and attempted to run the clone, however, the system still didn't recognize the SSD.

I'm completely stumped...

[sjthinkpader]

When I bought my Transcend SSD, it had a somewhat odd master/slave jumper arrangement. Have you checked that on your SSD?