Seagate 5400.3 T43 install troubles

Long story short. I have a T43P that is 16 months old. The warranty expired after 1 year. I buy a Seagate 5400.3 drive to replace my old 40GB which crash/burned/died.

My recovery CD's won't work because the Seagate drive is not Lenovo supported or approved by IBM. Imagine that, the largest hard drive maker has no support. Forget about the 5 year warranty. Let's go with crappy lenovo junk instead, lol.

I try and install XP via my own XP pro copy. Starts installing ok until half way through my 80GB drive vanishes and the XP install won't work. Lenovo wants $45 for a recovery XP copy that should have been included with the computer.

How do I get this piece of **** to boot? I realize doing it my way will mean downloading every utility manually but it's the principle not paying extorsion fees. Thinkpads already cost an arm and a leg and the customer support and Lenovo sucks like Dell.

Is there a bios hack or work around? I realize the T43 is the only unit that is picky about hard drives, but this is rediculous. How does a hard drive being formatted suddenly disappear during installation? I disabled the predesktop and everything else, but nothing works.

Does Seagate have any drivers to fix this problem? Does Lenovo have any drivers to fix this problem?

Help!!!! I badly want to destroy my T43 right now. It's the only thing that will make me feel better.

I have Bios version 1.27 and have also disabled all the security features while attempting to install this new drive.

 

Have you looked in the BIOS at the Hard drive setting? You should check and change the interface to 'compatibility' mode if that's an option. I would call back and speak with someone else (perhaps a higher-up) at Lenovo. They should send you a disk for free if you explain the situation. Maybe tell them that you lost or corrupted their recovery partition and need a disk to return the machine to factory condition. It's not really a lie

 

Since it is a T43, the replacement HD really needs to be one of the compatible drives from Lenovo with the special firmware. That might explain the visible/vanish part of it. Also like mentioned above, make sure it is set into compatibility mode.

 

Thank you for the responses. I am sorry for the context of my original post. It just burns me up that Lenovo thinks that they are IBM now. You can't just buy an arrogant brand leader and be as ruthless as IBM is. Seagate proclaims to be the best hard drive manufacturer. Many can disagree with Seagate's self promotion. However, you can't argue with Seagate's industry leading 5 year warranty.

If Lenovo does not make the firmware public, that is an antitrust issue. It makes Microsoft look like a great non monopoly company in comparison.

Anybody have any links to bootleg Thinkpad Bios'?

That's probably my best bet.

It's not like I was asking Lenovo to replace my out of warranty 15 month old hard drive. I did that myself. I do think that we as Thinkpad customers are entitled to an XP pro installation disk with our purchase. That's all I ever wanted.

 

Check out this link to Lenovo's site. It shows that a new hard drive drivers update support the 7200RPM Seagate drive. Mine is the 5400.3 perpendicular drive. These drivers must exist somewhere for my drive. My model is ST 980815A

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-62282

 

I thought there was a way to update the firmware on the drives.

 

Zaz,
There's got to be a way. After only a few minutes, I found the drivers for a couple Seagate drives. I'm quickly losing my affection for Thinkpads.

 

The plot gets more interesting. I have located some interesting conversations and problems pertaining to Seagate and most every other drive manufacturer. This is a real problem which Lenovo should have addressed long ago. Have a look. I'm trying to help myself and everybody who may face the same issue I am dealing with.

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