Where to buy second HDD bay for R61

[ithinkbad]

I have R61 -7733 model. 14 inch wide screen, with Card reader and firewire.It came with a DVD drive in ultrabay. Need to add a seond hard drive. Could some one let me know how I add a sata hard drive to its ultrabay. need pointers to product pages. I searched a few places but I am not sure if it will be compatible. Kindly, help me out. Any help will be appreciated.

[schen]

You can find an adapter via Lenovo for the UltraBay Enhanced/UltraSlimBay, but they are very pricey. I've used various ones over the years dating back to the UltraBay2000 with good success, but I bought a couple off of eBay of the "new" type that fit the UltraSlimBay on my T4x machines which also fit the R5/6x series as well. I don't remember which vendor I used, but my impression is that they are pretty similar. I've enclosed a link below of just one of these products, but if you'll do a simple eBay search, you'll find many. These things are really very simple devices so there's probably little to give between the various ones other than seeing which vendor has the better feedback on their products.

http://cgi.ebay.com/26R9247-IBM-ThinkPa ... 4aa45f1d0f

Good luck with your search.

[rkawakami]

The R61 has what's called the Ultrabay Enhanced slot. Here is a good resource for checking on the compatibility of the various Ultrabay systems: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/UltraBay

Under the Ultrabay Enhanced column, there's two Ultrabay devices which will work: Ultrabay Slim and Ultrabay Enhanced. Either one of those two will operate when installed in the R61.

The TABOOK series of documents that IBM and Lenovo have published, contains information about the various options that are available for the systems. It is sometimes hard to determine exactly which "book" you need as there are both active and obsolete files for each major product line. Here's the one for the R61:

http://www.lenovo.com/psref/pdf/ltwbook.pdf (26.5MB)

If you look on any of the pages that lists the R61, near the bottom of the page you will see "Serial Hard Drive Ultrabay Slim Adapter (flat)", followed by "40Y8725". That's the FRU or part number for the adapter. The "flat" in the description means that it has a flat (rather than a curved) front bezel. Either type will work but the flat bezel better matches the lines of the laptop.

So now that you have a part number to reference, you can start searching to see who offers the best deal for your area. eBay usually has a supply of these adapter. The original IBM/Lenovo part usually commands a higher price than the "knock-offs" (cheaper copies) that are sold but generally they are functionally equivalent. You can identify the cheaper copies as they either don't have the metal plate where the hard drive is inserted, are made of plastic instead of metal or don't have an official IBM/Lenovo/ThinkPad logo. Here's some references:

http://cgi.ebay.com/350203976428 (Knock-off; made of metal but does not have IBM/Lenovo logo)
http://cgi.ebay.com/400092128299 (Possibly a knock-off as the pictures go to great lengths to avoid showing a logo)
http://cgi.ebay.com/120628731907 (Definitely a knock-off; has a brand name of 'Fenvi')
http://cgi.ebay.com/180535106691 (Appears to be a genuine Lenovo part; has a ThinkPad logo)

Also, the Hardware Maintenance Manual (HMM) for the R61 is here: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-67760 This document contains instructions on how to take the system apart and has a parts list.

[ithinkbad]

Hey Guys,

You have been kind to me. Thank you so much. I will try locate one and will let you know. how it goes.

Know what, I bought a used R61 form buy.com only after I saw thinkpads.com. I was 10000% sure that you guys will help me out if I have any doubts. Will want to buy more thinkpads and recommend more for others just because thinkpads.com exists.

Could not thank you guys enough.

[Harryc]

Thanks for taking the time to comment on this site, we appreciate it.