NIGHTMARE: SATA Ultrabay Adapter

Hello there,

I never really call any customer service support because of terrible experience with it. However, always thought that IBM has got something more to offer with this respect, but it seems I was wrong.

After two days spent trying to figure out what's wrong with two Ultrabay configurations I gave up and called IBM technical support.

Here's scenario. It's T61p with Vista Ultimate x64 and Hitachi 7k200 as system drive. I put Seagate Momentus 7200 rpm 100 GB in SATA Ultrabay Adapter. That hard drive was my previous system drive prior to arrival of my Hitachi 7k200. And it was working quiet fine as system drive.
I barely managed to format it, booting from PE.

So here're the facts:

* Windows Vista keeps locking Seagate in Ultrabay constantly, even logging blocks at some point.

* Opening Windows Explorer blocks as well.

* Safely removal blocks also. Easy Eject blocks too.

* Unable to delete partition, format hard drive

* Shutting down takes half an hour

* Changing anything in Hardware Policies - Write caching and Safe Removal doesn't help

* Hitachi 5400 rpm 160 GB works like charm in Ultrabay without locking

* SATA compatibility mode in BIOS doesn't make any difference

The only solution that I found is to boot up system without having Seagate in Ultrabay and then after I log in I turn Ultrabay with Seagate inside. Then I'm able to shut down and safely remove unit. However, sometimes it fails as well.

In Event Viewer I'm getting following error:

"The default transaction resource manager on volume D: encountered a non-retryable error and could not start. The data contains the error code."

"The device, \Device\Harddisk0\DR2, is not ready for access yet."

"The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort1"

"An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0\DR2 during paging operation."

BTW: Guy from IBM told me that I fried hard drive since Ultrabay doesn't support hot swap!

Thanks!

 

you cound try the seagate hard disk daig

and put the hard disk laptop it might be bad hard disk

am not sure ultra bay killed it or not mind you

 

Guessing since it was tagged as a system drive that Vista might be using it for swap, ReadyBoost, or something. I've had no problems with a "new" drive.

The guy from IBM was an idiot. The Ultrabay does indeed support hot swap, and you would not have fried your drive if you removed it without properly ejecting. You might have corrupted some data or messed up your system state if it was being used for swap/cache, but not physically damaged.

I hot plug my SATA ultrabay adapter in all three machines and have never had any issues with my drive getting "fried".

 

^^^^^^ ditto. I hot swap my ultrabay drive all the time with my factory 60GB hard drive. I use easy eject to hot swap, but I have forgotten a few times and pulled it out without shutting it down... no big deal.

I think something just got corrupt on the factory hard drive somehow. The only thing I can think of the might be a solution is to re-install the factory hard drive as the primary hard drive and do a clean install. Go to my clean install guide and follow the instructions to remove the hidden partition. Do a clean install of vista, make sure to delete all partitions during the install process and create one new one taking up the entire hard drive, don't bother installing drivers or activation.

Replace your new primary hard drive; Then put the factory hard drive back into the ultrabay adapter and see if you can format it.

 

Well,

New response from IBM "technicals" after I explicitly asked them "Is there any number of hard drives which are not compatible with SATA Ultrabay Adapter?", he said let me check my documentation and after a minute he responded "You know what, your hard drive is not compatible with ultrabay". Then I asked is my Hitachi 5400 rpm 160 GB compatible, he answered negative as well (even though it works perfectly fine), according to him only certain Thinkpad drives are compatible. Unbelievable...

I'll try to reinstall Vista and to make it as primary hard drive, but I doubt in it. Actually, I was suspecting that whole issue arised because there was system partition. I'm not quiet sure, but it seems like something's left from old system. Even though I deleted recovery partition and in every tool including Disk Management and Diskpart it shows only sinlge Simple Primary partition.

I had slightly problems when I installed Hitacho 160 GB for the first time. That one came from my X61t and it had system partition too. However, since I boot up machine with it inside of ultrabay, it somehow ruined my BCD store, so I was unable to boot again until I fixed it with BCDEdit.

However, I can manage to format this hard drive and to check for errors (no errors at all) booting in Safe Mode but not with hard drive inside of bay. I have to put hard drive in bay after I boot up in Safe Mode. Then I can conduct formats, parititon deletion and creation. If I boot in Safe Mode with drive inside of bay, it's locked as it's with regular system.

Very weird, but I deeply suspect something's up to Vista, even though I have no clue what can it be.

Cheers!

 

Stop calling them, they are apparently clueless. I've never had an issue with any drives in the Ultrabay. They are going to give you a list of their drives that they tested, not an exhaustive list.

 

What about a local dealer? Maybe they can help?

 

^^^^again... ditto. All 2.5" sata hard drives are made by the same standards; they all receive and transfer data in the same basic way (sure some are faster than others and some have more bells and whistles, but in general a sata hard drive is a sata hard drive). The ultrabay adapter is nothing but a sleeve to hold the sata drive in a nice secure fit within the laptop. Technically you could bypass the adapter all together and just wire it with a sata and power cable. What I'm getting at is any sata compliant drive will work in any sata compliant port on your laptop. The adapter just takes the place of a sata cord, power cord, and provides a secure fit.

 

Stallen,

You're completely right. However, I was thinking that maybe due hot-swap capability some SATA drives may be inappropriate for ultrabay option. However, it turned out that hot-swap has nothing to do with ultrabay ut rather SATA.

 

ngm_nyc, could you please give this a try?

In T61 BIOS, there is a screen for changing boot order, see if 2nd HDD is included in the boot order. If not include it but put it at a lower priority than 1st HDD. Save and exit BIOS.

 

Sugo,

That's exactly it, I had ultrabay excluded from boot sequence. It works perfectly now, without "locking" Seagate, shutting down immediately, safely removing, formatting etc. etc. everything works!

Do you have any explaination for this?

Thanks a lot for assistance!

 

Can you try putting the drive in a normal desktop PC without vista and reformat the drive there? I'm suspecting Vista is the culprit here.

 

Hello guys
I follow the bios setting and it worked. However i found the success wouldn't last long.
After a restart the problem came back. And by either including or excluding the ultrabay hard drive in the boot sequence, the hot swap only works before i restart the computer.

Does anyboy have a clue? Many thanks.

 

Honestly it sounds like a Vista problem. Try booting an Ubuntu live disc and see if you experience similar problems. Either way I don't think its the Ultrabay adapter's fault. There's no mechanical connections or chips to get messed up... its just copper.

 

Thanks for your input.
In fact I am using XP and i agree with you that it's not the adapter's fault.
I will keep trying..

 

I was just having similar problem with my ultrabay.

For some reason if I have hdd in ultrabay at boot time, easy eject wouldn't work. And when I reboot chkdsk was running and finding errors.
So I uninstall easy eject and so far (only about 10 minutes) everything is working good.

 

So is your ultrabay still working fine?

No improvement for mine yet. oh no, there is one: the prompt of "the device can't be stopped now" after an attempt to eject it is getting faster and faster...

 

Did you guys buy your adapters from Lenovo or a reputable source? Quite a few counterfeits on E-bay I've noticed.

 

now i don't plugin the ultrabay until the windows starts. then it works fine.

though not a good solution at all, this is the only workaround i know..

 

This is just a shot in the dark, but desktop SATA drives usually come with a SATA version jumper set to SATA 1.5 from the factory. If one has a SATA 3.0 controller, they need to remove that jumper to enable the higher speed. Do 2.5" SATA HDD's have this as well? If so, you might try it with and without.

 

Hello, I have a problem with my Ultrabay Slim 2nd HDD Adapter for the X6 Ultrabase. My laptop is the x60s.

I bought the adapter, which came with no software. I dropped my Seagate 320gb SATA drive in, and it fit well enough. The adapter+drive slide into the slot and fit snugly, and a green light on the adapter and the ultrabase are lit.

However, my OS does not seem to be aware of a new drive, and my BIOS doesn't either.

Is there some software needed that I do not have? Like a driver for the Ultrabay drive itself? I'm just trying to get my computer to recognize that there's a disk so I can format and partition it.... but so far, bupkis.

 

Did you format the new drive?

Go to Start -> Computer (Right Click on Computer) -> Manage -> Under Storage Click on "Disk Management" -> You should now see a list of all your hard drives, including the new ultrabay drive.

You’ll see a box that reads Unallocated. You need to right-click in that box, and then select New Partition from the options. The New Partition Wizard will now appear. Step through the wizard and choose the Primary Partition; then choose the appropriate size (my preference is to have only one partition that is as large as possible) and drive letter. Finally, the wizard will ask you if you wish to format the new partition. You may choose NTFS or FAT32. Also, leave the Allocation Unit Size to default, and enter the drive letter in the Volume Label field. If the drive has never been used before, then check Perform a Quick Format, otherwise leave it unchecked. Also, leave the Enable File and Folder Compression unchecked, and click Next to format the drive.

The wizard will now start formatting the drive; while it is formatting the drive, do not close the Computer Management window. The formatting is complete when the status changes to Healthy from Formatting.

 

When I do that, I only see my primary hdd, not the Ultrabay Slim one.

No, I didn't format it... trying to do that now.

PS. Thank you for the reply! I have enjoyed my little thinkpad so far, and was sad that this device didn't work right out of the box... hopefully it is a configuration issue and not a hardware issue.

 

Sounds like a firmware bug in the hdd. The older the drive (the closer to the introduction of SATA), the more likely that there are bugs in the command queuing etc. Try changing jumpers for sata1.5/disable ncq if you can find documentation.

The easiest route will be to buy a new hdd which will hopefully be more compatible. And larger and faster

 

This is the drive I am using in the adapter

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148336

And I have never used it before. Plugged it into the adapter fresh out the box. Larger and faster aren't readily available at the moment.

But I will try the jumpers I suppose... thanks.

 

I am having the same problem. I have a WD Scorpio (160) SATA that works with the UltraBay Slim...but when I plug in the new Seagate 320, it does not work. After plugging it in, I do not hear the USB chime, and my Disk Manager does not list this device.

 

I'm using Scorpio 320's in my Ultrabay II; all good.

I"m sure it's not the drive, but in general, I've been happier with WD over Seagate drives, although Seagate/Hitachi/WD are all fine.

 

I have a T61p, if i get an ultrabay adapter and a 7200 rpm drive, will the speed be limited by the ultrabay or is it the same as sata?

 

Hi,
To add to the discussion.

I bought a 250 GB Seagate Momentus 7200 rpm SATA disk today, plugged it into my T61p's Ultrabay (which already had a 160 GB Seagate momentus 7200 rpm SATA working in it !) and it did nothing. You can't even hear the drive starting to spin. Both green lights (in the ultrabay and in the laptop just left of the USB ports) are 'on' but nothing is visible. Not even in the Disk Manager.
And not using third party tools like Acronis Disk Editor.

Until ... i placed the drive in a USB powered SATA enclosure and suddenly the drive works perfect.

Now, does someone have any clue whatsoever.
My guess is that the ultrabay uses different power pins than the external drive enclosure. And that the 250 GB drive also has different power pins in use that the 160 GB of the same company (Seagate).
Very puzzling ...

 

About the inability to safely remove drive:
It's a vista problem.
When an NTFS drive is plugged in at boot time, for some reason or another, it locks the drive permanently for that windows session.
Reason? Vista's Transactional NTFS filesystem (TxF)

If you take a look at the handles open on the drive before removing, you will notice that there are txf files in $Extend\$RmMetadata\, among some other things.

Still looking for a software workaround, but plugging the drive in after boot will have to do for now.

EDIT: On second look, I don't think it's TxF locking the drive. There's also a lock on the root of the drive by System, which isn't there if the drive is plugged in at runtime. Needs some more observation.

 

In order to get the Seagate Momentus SATA II drives to work in the Ultrabay adapter you have to jumper them to run at 1.5 gbs/s (SATA I) - otherwise they are not recognized. This involves putting a jumper over the two pins on the left (with the drive held so the jumpers are on the left and the SATA connectors are on the right). This seems to solve the problem.

 

Here's the link to the Seagate knowledge base which deals with this problem:

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=193775&Hilite=jumper

 

Great link! Thanks! Do you know if running the ST9320421ASG without the speed limiting jumper as a primary drive is safe? It seems to work and gets a 4.9 "Windows Experience" rating, but Acronis reported two bad sectors when creating an image on another drive. That's just how I back up since it's usually fool proof. Yes, running the Seagate diagnostic tools is next on my list.