Third party Ultrabay from eBay won't work with W520

I bought a HDD adapter from eBay that doesn't work with my W520. Both the BIOS and windows won't recognize the HDD in the adapter and I have tried 2 HDD already. Has anyone experience similar problem? I thought it's such a simple device that it shouldn't be defective.

If no one can provide me suggestion on how to make it works, I have the refund the adapter and lost the shipping cost + 3 weeks of waiting.

NEW! Ultrabay SATA Hdd Lenovo ThinkPad W700 12.7mm DV16 on eBay.ca (item 300546747256 end time 11-May-11 23:00:26 EDT)

 

I wonder if the reason it would not work for the W520 is because the Ultrabay you bought was made for the W700. If it fits, then it should have the same interface, maybe the firmware is what made it incompatible.

 

The item that I bought has the description of 'Ultrabay SATA Hdd Lenovo ThinkPad W700 W510 12.7mm DV16'. It definitely use the same interface as far as I can tell.

 

What kinds of hard drives are you using? Do they have data on them or are they new, blank drives?

 

I got the reply last night from the seller say "We have ended the listing for the meantime because manufacturer reported that they have an earlier batch of our caddy DV16 that has problem with W510 and those might be in the mixed with our DV16 in stock now". So I will just return the tray back. Not a very positive eBay experience!

 

buy only fenvi caddy. Search this name on pictures

 

I've heard about problems with 3rd party caddys & ThinkPads in the past, and it sounds like hit-or-miss. Not sure if Lenovo has a lock-out chip that needs to get reverse engineered or some other issue. I mean, it should just be pass-through SATA signals, but there appears to be a small chip or three in the housing.

For my data, I stick to the Lenovo caddy - too much risk otherwise!

EDIT: And yes, it's crazy expensive for what it is!

 

But doesn't the lenovo caddy leave a gap?

 

I owned 2 Lenovo Caddy before and never had any problem. This time, I ended up buying the Caddy from third party because of the gap and the price. The gap is less of a issue now because the third party caddy that I got has gap all over the place anyway. But without owning the third party one, I didn't realize the how good the original one is.

 

i got an UB adapter on ebay too (T510 model) and it is also not working.. im wondering if its b/c its missing the nub that presses in the button to notify the laptop that the device is there..

if you look at this picture, you can see the plastic peg sticking out above the C at the top of the picture of the adapter. the adapters that come from ebay are missing this extension. i am considering using some superglue to attach something there and see if it works, as the adapter was only $12 and returning it doesnt seem worth the time.

thoughts?

 

nevermind that plan, i tried a temporary attachment and it didnt make a difference.

do we know that the UB III by Lenovo does in fact work with the W520?

 

I can't see the Ultrabay Enhanced III caddy failing to work on the W520, sprtnbsblplya was able to use it on his T420 and the two models (in terms of architecture) should be similar. The only problem is that it will leave a big gaping hole, it is a serious omission by Lenovo and hopefully they would bring out an official caddy soon for the newer models (unless we're able to source one working unofficial caddy somewhere).

 

I know for a fact http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/...35BAB3C417CA9D77F5867D31462&model-number=4249 works with the W520, T420s, T410s, W510, and T410.

 

Does anyone have a picture of the "big gaping hole" people speak of between the caddy and the W520?

 

Here's one I borrowed from google and the internet.

 

At first I got the same as the OP (with the black plastic at the bottom and rectangular hole). This one did not work in my W520 either. I later ordered a different 12.7mm adapter with metal bottom and this one works fine...

 

Volker would you care to share where you got your working adaptor from?

 

Posted that already in the "owner's thread":

Picture

Ebay link

 

To be honest, I don't think third-party adapter is a good idea since the data is invaluable. The bad building quality makes it more risky to store your data there.
And it is always fishy to buy these stuffs from the seller outside US, as eBay requests delivery confirmation when the item is returned, which costs even more than the crappy adapter itself.

 

1) Lenovo doesn't sell a 12.7mm high ultrabay hdd adapter, so there is no "first-party" part.

2) Its just a piece of sheet metal with a sata connector. No moving parts, no integrated circuits. As long as the connector is the right one it'll work forever.

3) With respect to data integrity, you are probably missing the elephant in the room: The drive can fail instantaneously, and your laptop can be stolen in seconds. Always have a fresh enough backup so that you can just shrug off the loss of everything stored on your laptop.

True, but then you can buy two third-party adapters, throw away one of them, and still save over the Lenovo ultrabay hdd adapter. Which leaves a big gap to boot.

 

1) Lenovo actually use the 9.5mm adapter with some rubber rails to make it 12.7mm, that would be an easy part to DIY.

2) It's not just a connecter converter if you have disassemble both the two kinds of adapters. There is a part protecting the hard drive from circuit surge or whatever, however, the cheap third-party one uses the electronic part with cheap quality (or maybe a fake one standing there and the seller may claim that it has the same quality with the genuine one).

3) the risk I'm talking about is not the risk of the hard drive failure itself, but extra risk from the failure of the adapter, as I have pointed out in 2).


And what if neither of the two work? You buy three or four?
Come on, the price difference only worths a dinner, you do not have to give money to the ebay seller for free and put your own data into risk.

BTW, the third-party adapter sells less than 8 bucks in Hong Kong, you can imagine how cheap the quality is. Although the genuine one is over-priced, at least it is much better for data storage and the investment is a good one.

 

I do have the Lenovo ultrabay adapter, too. I disassembled both and they don't have any active parts apart from the LED. Both the original Lenovo one and the ebay one have two resistors, one in series with the LED and one across the SATA ground. Neither resistor is really critical to operations nor would benefit from particularly accurate resistors.

In any case there is no risk for the data. The third-party part is so cheap because ist just a sheet of metal with two sata connectors, really. In fact, the disassembled parts were virtually indistinguishable from the "genuine" one, I'm pretty sure they share the same supplier.

Part of the reason for taking the minor risk of ordering one is that we can then share on this forum whether it is good or not.

 

I purchased from the same ebay user as you. I will be more than happy to report my findings. $24 for a caddy out the door is hard to pass up. but you'r probably right of them being made in the same factory.

 

Cool, I'm glad that you did compare the two products. Actually I've compared them as well, as you said, the genuine product does not have any active part while the after-market one has.
I'm not exactly sure about this difference but I've compared the 1.8" microsata to 2.5" sata converter (both 42w7888 and 42w8019) and the after-market one (dane-elec). Apparently, Lenovo does not use resistor design either, but chooses different circuit which could take 3.5V only, instead of converting 5V into 3.5V by using the resistors. Although it is not the direct evidence, it still could shed some light on the different design.

Probably because of the different designs, the Lenovo one would not suffer from the failure of the resistors. However, for the third-party adapter, the resistors become an essential part, which results in incompatibility or failure (if they are not essential, then those manufacture must get rid of them to gain more profit).

And here is the problem, the same type of resistor could come with different qualities, like A+ stuff V.S. B- stuff. Because of so, forum members could encounter the problem of incompatibility at first, but it is still better than adapter failure which ruin all the data.

Further, I don't think the third-party could mimic what Lenovo designs (just my guess). Since without extra resistors could save them more, why bother design the chip itself? It is very likely that they are not able to mimic the design.

 

I'm afraid that there is no possibility they are from the same factory. The designs of the circuit part are totally different, nor does the building quality of the "metal and plastic" part.

As I explained in the previous post, it depends on your luck if the third-party adapter works well. Even it works, it does not mean it works for someone else. And we cannot always keep real-time backup, which would put your data into unnecessary risk.

 

Let me clarify that once more. There are 3 variations.

1) The "genuine" lenovo ultrabay 2nd hdd adapter. Doesn't quite fit the W520.

2) The ebay ultrabay adapter (from uq511) that I linked to earlier. Is 12.7mm high and works in my W520.

3) The ultrabay adapter that the OP linked to (bottom is black plastic with a square hole as opposed to a sheet of metal). Does not work on W520.

I have all three. 1) and 2) are virtually identical, except for the 9.5mm vs 12.7mm height. The PCB with the SATA connectors is basically the same, they even have the same codes silkscreened on them. Both contain 2 resistors and a LED. And a wire connecting the LED to the PCB.

3) is very different. It doesn't work. The PCB is different and has no resistors. The LED that appears to be on the outside is just a dummy, and there are no wires between the LED and the PCB with the SATA connectors

 

It took me a while to search the image of the genuine adapter for W510, as I've seen before. But I could not recall the title of that post because the author did not put "ultrabay adapter" in it.
However, I'm 100% positive that Lenovo uses the same adapter (FRU 43N3412) for W510, the only difference is that Lenovo adds some rubber rails or something to make it 12.7mm.

For the PCB part, I have to admit that I made a mistake, the design looks similar. Thanks for rephrasing it, which reminds me of that I mixed the comparisons between the converters and the adapters.

Anyway, due to the cheap price, I cannot expect the same quality. And I've seen complaints about failure to recognize the HDD smoothly, or failure to swap the adapter as it stuck in the slot.
And I understand there is trade-off between 12.7mm and genuine part, but for me, I won't take such risk but DIY or just let it go, since data safety worths much more for me.

Finally, the QC for the third-party product is definitely poor, since some users could get it alright while others couldn't. It really depends if this adapter could work/fit or be durable for data storage.

 

Good posts, but I have a working full time genuine Lenovo ultrabay caddy III in my W520 and I have no issues.

$20 savings is not worth having issues over.

I certainly wouldn't buy memory or SSDs or HDDs from Lenovo but I will buy interior parts.

Perry

 

It shouldn't work, cause it is for W700. I have adapter in my W700ds and it does not work in my W520. I beleive you need the one that work with W510. At least that is the one I bought for myself. Now I'm waiting for it to arrive.

 

Volker, have you run read/write tests on the UQ511 caddy to see if the drive operates at rated performance?

 

I ordered the same one as Volker and here are the results with a Crucial 64GB c300 in the caddy.

http://santangelo-eng.com/w520/ultrabay_c300.png

You get slightly better results if you use the deafult Windows ACHI drivers but the Intel ones seem to be more stable.

 

That is strange. I would expect to see write speeds in the 150s or above for an ssd in the caddy with a SATA interface. I recently saw a review of usb 3.0 enclosures fitted with SSDs which saw write speeds of 160MB/s. See Benchmark Results : Portable Performance: Four USB 3.0 Enclosures For Your 2.5? Drive

 

It may be due to the disk size. This is a 64 GB drive.

 

I got mine from ebay (uq511) yesterday. Seems to work fine. just the LED is always on (flickers a bit when in use but not as it's supposed to I guess).
How does yours work?
BTW there is no way to screw the hard drive to the caddy to make sure it's not moving right? Just feels a bit insecure to me!

 

Yes there is. This is somewhat of a FAQ so I posted pictures to ThinkWiki.

 

Thanks, That's what i did. I meant actually screwing it to the ultrabay but i guess that's out of the question.
Did you do anything about the small gap to the left of LED? (I have the one from ebay)
It just feels like a lot of dirt can get in overtime.

 

Its pretty small and on the underside, so even if you use it on the beach no dirt should be able to get to the hdd / electronics.

 

Not that using your laptop on the beach is a good idea ;-)

I wonder if that would void the accidental damage warranty?

 

You mention everything but the T420 in your list of supported machines. Will this one work in the T420 too? Or is there something different enough about the T420 to require another adapter?

 

The "Ultrabay Slim ThinkPad Serial Hard Drive Bay Adapter III" does work with the T420 but it is a bit short on the bezel. I opted for the unoffical caddy which covered the whole gap on my T420.

 

No beaches here in Montreal!
I think it's around 3mm and it does bother me, I'm thinking I may stick something there to block the airflow. Maybe I have OCD!
The good thing is lifting the keyboard and cleaning everything is really easy.

Does the LED stay on for everyone? and flickers a bit when in use?

 

Same problem here, I didn't want to force it. Where can you buy the plastic rail guides if you don't have them?