x41 doesn't see my hard drive while doing an install

[ChocoNutDancer]

While experimenting with making a unattended install cd for th X41 I inserted a normal 2.5 inch 9.5mm laptop drive in place of the 1.8 inch drive. the X41 doesn't even see the drive when I display the boot list. I tried three different drives.

yes the drive sticks out a little but it's just for doing experimental installs.

could there be a check in the bios for a particular brand or ID code? that would be really short sighted. I might want to buy a faster replacement drive in the future when one becomes available.

maybe it's a power issue? but the power on the 2.5 inch drives can't be that much more than the 1.8 inch drives.

the pinouts could have changed. but that also seems unlikely. the connector is *identical* to the 2.5 connector except that for the 1.8 it's mounted on the side of the drive (the longest edge). so it would make no sense to change the pinout.

any ideas?

[cromas]

The connector is indeed the same, I used a normal 2.5-3.5" adapter when I was prepping my X41 hard drive. I once tried to insert a 2.5" disk in mine as well...if I remember correctly, it didn't work either, but it did manage to fix whatever problem was causing the computer the disk came from to not see the drive. Funny how that is.

[loyukfai]

The X41T's internal bay uses a SATA to PAPA bridge, which is not compatible with some drives.

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_with_non-ThinkPad_hard_disks

[ChocoNutDancer]

thanks loyukfai. that news is disappointing.

BTW, I also tried installing with the DVD reader on USB and the target hard drive on USB. It booted fine and copied files from the DVD to the hard drive. After the first reboot it said "running windows" for only a few seconds and then blue screened and rebooted.

[loyukfai]

Interesting.

Though IMO it's not gonna to work, would you like to give CF-->IDE/PATA adapters a try?

Have a nice weekend?

[ChocoNutDancer]

loyukfai,
CF to IDE is an interesting idea. I don't think I have one of those. but I doubt it would work since the BIOS is looking for specific features in the HD firmware and those features are not going to be in a CF adapter for sure.

unless the docking station supports SATA I don't see why they put a SATA controller inside the X41 at all if they are not going to use it. worse they then had to add a SATA to PATA bridge. then even worse that bridge requires special firmware in the hard drive in order to even see the HD? it limits the ability of the user (and IBM for that matter) to replace the HD with another. that's really such a *dumb* idea on their part.

BTW, that reminds me of something that a hardware guy at work told me about some IBM machines that a group within our company bought. on this particular model of IBM machine the firmware for the BIOS is stored in a hidden area of hard drive! so if your HD dies you can't even boot your machine. and, as they found out, they can't put in a replacement drive! and IBM would not sell them a replacement drive. they had to have an IBM tech come in to replace the HD with another of these special HD's with the firmware stored in a hidden area of the drive. wow. what and incredibly INCREDIBLY BAD idea! maybe the same bozo who came up with that idea went on to work on the X41 and came up with the idea of requiring the HD manufacturer to add special firmware routines in order to able to be used on Thinkpads.

[loyukfai]

Unless the design team has had some really reasonable reasons behind this move, or remove this restriction later, I would recommend against getting ThinkPads just for this, as you say, incredibly bad idea.

If somebody knows why please enlighten me.

Regarding the special BIOS setup you mentioned, my memory tells me that another company... Likely the then Compaq did it before, but maybe IBM and others adopted such setup as well.

Anyway, have a nice weekend.

[CreativeBR]

I tried to put a 7k100 HD (hts721060g9at00) and booted from a hirens usb pendrive and every software didnt fond anything connected to IDE.

Was anyone lucky replacing the original 1.8 HD from a X41 with an ordinary 2.5 HD?

{}s
CreativeBR