seeking advice for hdd caddy for t40p

[Ogg]

The USB ports on my t40p have recently changed gears to USB 1.1 only. I used to use an external USB drive for backups. But USB 1.1 is impractical. Now... considering getting a UltraBay Slim adapter. But I am wondering if these adapters have a beveled front plate? I'd like to maintain the proper design look of the t40p.

Also... wondering if there is a preferred hdd size/model that I should acquire for this purpose.

Any advice would be appreciated.

[RealBlackStuff]

Bad news: you'll have to prepare for your laptop to be in sickbay shortly.
Change from USB2.0 to USB1.1 indicates a failing SouthBridge chip (big Intel chip under the WiFi card).
Start backing up, and prepare to either have your motherboard's SB chip reballed, or replace the motherboard, before worse things are (guaranteed) going to happen.

The Ultrabay Slim adapter is available for 2.5" wide, 9mm high PATA or SATA disks.
If you select SATA, the largest HD is around 750GB - 1TB.
You'll need to make sure the HD is SATA 1 (150Mbits) compatible, if not it won't work.
Largest PATA is the WD Scorpio Blue at 320GB.

With your planned investment, you may as well start looking for a more modern T60 or similar.

[Ogg]

I already have a T60 from about a year ago, but the T40p has still remained my primary work machine. I recognize that I need to migrate my activities to the T60, but it's a tedious task. It *will* get accomplished.

I have investigated the reballing or mobo replacement options at TheBoardRoom. But I was told that the specific mobo for my model is not available.

The Ultrabay Slim adapter is available for 2.5" wide, 9mm high PATA or SATA disks. If you select SATA, the largest HD is around 750GB - 1TB.
You'll need to make sure the HD is SATA 1 (150Mbits) compatible, if not it won't work.
Largest PATA is the WD Scorpio Blue at 320GB.

The SATA version seems to make more sense, since SATA drives are newer and cheaper and I could then use the hdd with the T60 at a later time if required. But from other discussions in these forums it seemed that a SATA caddy compatible for the T40p did not exist. However, there seems to be a lot of them available on ebay (eg. Item #260693187468). But will a SATA version actually work with my T40p even if I want to boot from the SATA drive in the caddy?

Thanks for the tip on needing the 150Mbits requirement.

I've been using a PATA Scorpio in an external case for backups. Perhaps I should simply go for the PATA caddy and just transfer the hdd to it.