Knockoff hard drive caddy might be hosing my data. Anyone else experienced this?

Hey guys, I may have made a poor decision trying to save a few bucks. I'd never buy a knockoff ThinkPad battery, but I decided to risk it when adding a second hard drive to my machine and I bought this random eBay PATA->SATA caddy for my ThinkPad T61 because I figured "oh it's just a caddy, I'm sure anything's fine." I've got it installed and a 500GB Western Digital drive in it.

Last week I noticed that a few video files I copied over to it had some weird scrambling issues going on but I didn't think too much about it because I hadn't ever viewed them on another machine. This week it's gotten a lot more personal, because I noticed that a bunch of my music (ripped from CD in v0 mp3) has a bunch of random skips and pops in it that I didn't remember being there before.

The skips and pops persisted across a sync to my iPod (which is where I really started noticing them). So I did a test of a few songs that had pops in them. I listened to them:

-- on my iPod (synced from hard drive connected via cheap eBay caddy) and they had pops
-- on my laptop itself (playing from hard drive connected via caddy) and they had pops
-- on my file server (the original files) and much to my horror, the originals never had any problems (just as I suspected).

This means that either my drive caddy or the hard drive itself is randomly hosing files as I copy them to my ThinkPad which is especially alarming because CrystalDiskInfo seems to show no problem:



...unless I'm missing something really obvious in that screenshot.

So this pretty much sucks. I'm going to hunt up my SATA->USB converter and try to pin down whether the drive is alright when I get the caddy out of the picture.

Have any of you guys bought cheap drive caddies and experienced anything like this? Am I going crazy?

Advice much appreciated.

 

i have heard of cases where al cheapo knock off caddies doing this, this is another reason of not getting these cheap knockoffs.

Some people over at 51nb.com (a chinese version of the nbr) says either the soldering (some alcheapo one, all the soldering is done by hand) in the drive was bad or the SATA-PATA converter chip is bad (many use rejected or recycled parts).

 

Man, that's horrible. The weird thing is that if you search eBay for "thinkpad t61 2nd hdd" a ton of knockoff caddies come up, but if you add the word "genuine" to your search you get nothing. I just figured plenty of people were using the knockoffs with no problem -- maybe they are and I just got a bad one.

When you search for replacement batteries and add "genuine" to the search it's really easy to find actual Lenovo batteries for sale, at least.

 

Everyone has to use a Thinkpad battery with their Thinkpad, but not everyone requires a caddy, so there are always someone whom would sell their actual new battery. Selling these knockoff Thinkpad parts are extremely lucrative business, since they can get these parts from factories for little over 1 to 2 USD if they get 1000 units or more in one go (fake packaging and documentation add 0.50 USD).

The quality control of these knock-offs caddy is pretty poor (not a surprise), just like fake Lenovo/IBM external slimline dvd burner.

 

Yeah, jesus. Let that be a lesson to me for the future I guess. I spent like 5 hours this weekend fixing the ID3 tags and meticulously embedding 500x500 album arts (from GIS, Amazon, AlbumArt.org, etc.) into my music and for all I know every single file I edited is contaminated and I have to start over. This isn't even something that backing up would have solved, which really blows.

I guess I need to find the part number for the genuine Lenovo part.

 

I was thinking of buying on the knockoff when I get my t510, guess I will have to buy the real version for a premium.

 

Yeah I mean for all I know I just got a bad one, but I'll be damned if I want to sit around testing replacements for hours and hours trying to determine if they've got phantom problems.

 

Ouch! Okay this is mostly off-topic, but I have pretty good luck with albumartexchange.com for album art. They don't always have the album(s) you're looking for (at which point you can try Amazon or google's image search), but when they do have it, they're very good quality scans and 600x600 or larger.

 

Thanks for the heads-up about AlbumArtExchange, I'll check them out.

So I've discovered that the IBM part number for the legit (PATA->SATA) caddy is 40Y8725, but I can't find it on IBM Parts or Lenovo Outlet, and all searches for that part number on eBay bring up Chinese knockoffs.

What caddy are most folks here who add a second drive buying?

 

try marketplace at forum.thinkpads.com post a want to buy message.

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000E0KGU0/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new

not sure if it is geniue lenovo part.

http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/...1FB0B45CBB39F45EB5B2B986E&&hide_menu_area=yes

from lenovo main site.

 

Heh, that's uncanny -- I actually just sent that seller a message asking if he/she could verify that's an authentic IBM/Lenovo part.

It's pretty humorous that it's this difficult to get the part, but I'm hoping that at least buying the genuine part will prevent these crazy problems I'm having now. Not sure what I'll do if the genuine part has the same problems, short of buying a new laptop.

I'm half-tempted to just eBay the T61 and get something modern with dual SATA slots, but I promised myself I'd stretch this machine for a few months until there's a deal to be had on the 2010 VAIO Z or until the Latitude E6410 shows up dirt-cheap on Outlet.

EDIT: Thanks for the Lenovo link, I suck at navigating their site. I searched a few times and couldn't find that.

 

Yeah but the weird thing is that a lot of folks here claim they bought drive caddies from eBay. nando4 happily recommends the knockoffs (even specifically for T61 owners) and he really knows his crap.

I just feel like I'm missing something.

 

The problem with knockoffs on ebay, is that the quality of product varies and not everything is the same (not everything is made by the same factory)..... so the experience can vary a lot between users of different drive from different suppliers.

While, Nando4 knows the alot about computers and stuffs, he doesn't have a Thinkpad T61. It would be best that you ask him the actual ebay sellers whom sells a good known working batch of these caddy.

Also, it would be advisable that you get in contact with the seller whom sold you the caddy in the first place.

 

It's more expensive, but you can never go wrong with authentic parts. I have to agree with k2001's link, it's best to go authentic and not take any chances.

 

My knock off UltraBay is doing just fine, but then I have a W500. The current UltraBays are native SATA so there's no SATA to PATA converter chip

 

I think the current pure SATA one is much more expensive than the old SATA<->PATA one the OP needs (that is, the original part from lenovo of course).

 

i have seen a couple of fake one with those stickers on the box, i almost fell for it, until i inspected the actual product, which was a definite fake.

 

My understanding is that it's actually the reverse of this, with PATA->SATA being the more expensive part than a straight SATA->SATA caddy.

No response from the Amazon seller, so I'm assuming they either don't give a damn about selling stuff, or the part's a fake. Time to pony up for Lenovo's $60 genuine part, I suppose.

Normally I'm very diligent about buying genuine products where it counts, but the amount of goodwill toward eBay knockoff caddies here on NBR (and not any one specific knockoff, just knockoffs in general) coupled with the apparent "simplicity" of the plug itself (really, how much does a PATA->SATA converter for a desktop PC cost?) led me to believe it wasn't going to be a problem.

The weirder part is that I've never seen this behavior from a hard drive before -- CrystalDiskInfo indicates it's fine, the drive spins up with no problem, and I'm able to copy files to it and generally use it with no signs of bad behavior. Literally the only problem (and it's a nightmare, believe me) is that it apparently corrupts files as soon as they land on it. It peppers music with pops and skips, videos with missing frames, and presumably other files with garbage that I haven't even discovered yet. The worst part is that it doesn't even affect every file, so I don't know of a reliable way to test a new caddy for the same crap.

Lenovo seems to encourage the production of this junk by asking 60 bucks for the official part, though. I'm happy to pay it at this point because I've now "learned the hard way," but they should really work on bringing the price down to put the screws to these retarded knockoff (and sometimes) data-destroying caddies.

 

Ah, now I know why I couldn't find k2001's link on Lenovo's site -- it's the T400/T500 part. I'm looking (still unsuccessfully) for Lenovo PN 40Y8725.

EDIT: Just ordered it from these guys. $62.10 after tax and shipping (lol tax).

A bitter pill, but worth it if it's genuine and works right.

 

Yeah... these caddies from the OEM are expensive, but I feel they're worth it. I just bought one off of Ebay, but from a US-based seller with the genuine OEM article. I paid about $50 for my caddy, but it definitely is genuine OEM and hasn't messed up on me.

That said, I tend to shy away from any parts coming out of Hong Kong, unless they are guaranteed OEM. The shipping takes ages, and while the prices are low sometimes you just get what you pay for.

 

The problem is that it's getting nearly impossible to find the genuine Lenovo caddies on eBay anymore, presumably due to the age of the product and Lenovo not caring enough to keep accessories supplied for an end-of-life laptop. The Chinese knockoffs (in addition to being cheaper) are literally stepping in to fill a need that Lenovo's ignoring.

I cannot express how tempted I am to just eBay this stupid laptop with its moronic accessory ecosystem, collect my 400 bucks, and buy something I don't hate. If the caddy I just ordered from Insight turns out to be fake, I'm really going to lose my sh!t.

The i5/i7 Dell Latitudes need to hurry up and hit Outlet already.

 

as i have said before try marketplace on forum.thinkpads.com, they are a few sellers there and they can give you a few good pointers regarding where you can purchase the real article.

 

Yeah that'll be my next step if the one I ordered from Insight.com turns out to be a problem.

It's really mindblowing how much effort I've put into this already.

 

This is like gold hunting.... but you will be an expert on this issue when you finally get your genuine article. Then treasure it like if your life depends on it.

 

My point is that it shouldn't be like this. Newegg used to carry the legit caddy, but they stopped. Clearly Lenovo thinks you're a crazy person if you're using a T61 in 2010.

I have no intention of "treasuring" it -- like I said, I'm just trying to bide my time until a sweet deal comes along on the 2010 Latitudes.