ATA-3/ATA-4 Hard Drives - Will work in Thinkpads?

[Tasurinchi]

Dear forum experts

I was following prices for a Toshiba MK1231GAL (1.8" PATA drive) in Ebay for my X40, but I read that several sellers stated that it will only work in iPod or Zunes and not on a laptop/desktop.

I found this quite strange, but after lurking several hardware forums looks like many people that bought that drive could not install them into their respectives machines. Most of the drives would be recognized in the BIOS, but could not be formated. Apparently due to the fact that the drives supports only ATA-3/ATA-4.

These are the specs for the MKxx31GAL familiy link

Looks like drives supporting ATA-5/6/7 will do work. I bought several weeks ago a Thosiba MK8025GAL that could be installed without any issues. Specs here: link

Now my questions:

- Could it be that I'll need a drive supporting ATA-5/6/7 to make it work on my TP? (or any other laptop). Or will ATA-3/ATA-4 be enough?
- Or could be that the drives were pulled out from iPods and that they're locked via firmware or some proprietary software?

I would live to try but I don't want to spend around 100USD for the sake of trying...

Thanks a lot in advance!

Cheers

[richk]

The drive you talk about attaches to a zif socket. You need one with a 44-pin connector. They are easy to recognize, because they are slow, small and expensive.

[Tasurinchi]

The drive you talk about attaches to a zif socket. You need one with a 44-pin connector. They are easy to recognize, because they are slow, small and expensive.

I know that and I have the proper ZIF/IDE connector. As I told in my OP post I have one of those in my X40. I'm familiar with available drives in 1.8" format but I would like to try the MK1231GAL in my X41.

I'm specially curious about how it will perform (provided my questions above are clarified) as it is a 4k sector drive.

[Tasurinchi]

Nobody???

I was reading this wikipedia link but I still don't get why an ATA-3/4 won't work, the german version of the wiki says that the newer ATA protocolls should be faster... But I don't know how much faster they could be in real life...