CF-51 2nd hard drive in media bay

Has anyone done this? I'd like to but I'm not sure any of the adapters I've found will work. Obviously it's much cheaper to use an SATA instead of IDE/PATA drive for this so I've been looking at media bay adapters that go from an SATA drive to and IDE/PATA connection to the media bay. I'm not worried about the speed of data access, I know I'm not going to get SATA speed. What I am worried about is getting an adapter that I can't put the connector from the CF-51's DVD Multi drive on. There are four screws that hold the adapter's plastic frame on the DVD drive. I've yet to see an adapter that appears to allow for those screws. I'm guessing drilling and tapping may be what I'll have to do...?

 

Get a universal 2nd hdd caddy from fleabay for $12.00. Remove your existing dvd from the cf 51 caddy. Screw the 2nd hdd caddy into the cf 51 caddy. It's a direct fit, no mods needed. Slide that bad boy into the cf 51 media bay.

I did this 2 years ago and it works great except it adds about 15 seconds to the boot time. If you don't access the 2nd drive for a while, it takes 15 seconds for windows? to check out the drive and access it. After that it works as fast as any 2nd drive on a pc.
Unless you don't access the drive again for some minutes then there is the 15 second delay again. Maybe it's the power saving settings that shut the drive off????

I can't remember if the cf 51 will boot from the media bay hard drive. I don't think it will.

My original thread on this

 

I just tried the media bay drive in my cf 52. It will not boot unless you disable boot from cd/dvd in bios.
It just hung until I disabled the boot option.
It does not show in windows explorer at all. I can't access the drive at all in the cf 52.

It still works fine in the cf 51.
Anyone have an idea how to get a media bay hdd to work in a cf 52?
Hmmm

 

The bios needs to have the boot to cd option off and win 7 won't recognize the drive until I manually refresh the device manager then it seems to work.

 

I missed you previous post because I searched specifically for a CF-51 mod, I did search before starting this thread though. I believe that all Toughbook optical drives are set to master, but not 100% sure. So what about the plastic around the optical drive that has the button that holds the optical drive in the bay? And the ribbon adapter that goes from the optical drive to the connection inside the bay at the back? I don't need this to stand up to shock, the CF-51 MK3 is usually docked. We are going on vacation with my 2 year old and we need to take her music and movies with us, hence the second drive. I thought it would be much nicer not to have to use a second external usb hard drive for this I'm sure anyone who has kids or has them around knows how much they like cables!

 

here is a link with photos. You take the orig Panasonic part off your dvd and put it on the 2nd hdd adapter.

linky

 

Gotcha, thanks for the link

That's what I figured needed to be done. In the picture I still can't tell if the plastic part from Panasonic is screwed onto the 3rd party hdd caddy or not...? If not does one use double sided tape or what? I presume one could also tap, but that for me at least, would be a pain as I don't have the tap kit.

 

It screws on using existing holes. It really is simple to assemble. They "can" be a pain to configure sometimes.

 

Shawn do you mind posting a link to the 2nd hard drive adapters you used for the CF-51?

It would be nice to use a really large SATA drive in the CF-51. I wish there was a large drive that would fit in the primary HD caddy.

 

Here is the one I got.

SATA 2nd HDD Hard Drive Disk Caddy

 

Thank you very much

 

Shawn, were you able to get this to work in a CF-52? I have tried it in a CF-52 MK2 and CF-52 MK3. I can get it to boot by turning off the boot option in the bios, but cannot get the drive to show up in Win 7. Any help. Also, I bought the same caddy you did. I am able to make this work in a CF-51 MK3.

 

Yes it "works" in my CF52mk2. Mine wont get past the bios post with the drive / caddy seated. It just hangs.
If I slide it in after windows is done booting, it works. 75% of the time windows recognizes the drive automatically. The rest of the time, I do a search for new hardware in device manager and it finds the drive. I don't know why mine has the bios post hanging issue. Maybe my 2nd drive is set as primary boot also???????

 

absolut no problens in my cf52mk4 win7 64bit

 

CF52 mk2 .Win7 32bit....If I leave the drive in during boot, it hangs on the press f2 for setup. I can't get into setup. Need to pull battery and restart.
I tried changing it to logical instead of primary. That had no change. It's odd. I tried with boot from cd on or disabled. No change.
I have a 2nd caddy with a drive in it. I am going to try that drive/caddy setup.

B right back....

 

Well 2nd drive was a fail, but it is a dual boot setup and may have a odd mbr. Not sure as I did not set it up.
I tried a ssd drive that I had cloned to my existing drive. It failed also. Until I used disk management.msc.. That ssd drive had a signature collision with my existing C: boot drive. Once I eliminated that by forcing win 7 to give it a new signature, then partitioned and formatted..SUCCESS:thumbsup: It did take a few extra seconds during boot, but otherwise it was perfect. Win 7 found and mounted it immediately upon boot.

The other drive must have some sort of mbr conflict also..I'm not sure. It only works if I install it after booting is complete. I have data on it, so I am not ready to re partition it.

So...My suggestion is to completely repartition whatever drive you want to use a a 2nd drive.
Make sure you delete the hidden 100mb system partition that win 7 puts on the drives.
I am not booting from the 2nd drive. I just use it as a storage volume. I also turned off all boot options in the bios except the main hard drive.

EDIT::
My suggestions here are to completely wipe the drive and start over. Let Win 7 create the 100mb system partition again if you are making a boot drive. I don't mean to eliminate it forever. I am suggesting to completely clean the drive and eliminate the possibility of any left over bits. Windows has had a history of leaving things in the boot sector that can cause issues.

 

I have the original HDD from Panasonic with the original US-Win7 in my media bay. I have nothing changed. So I think it is not the point to kill the 100MB partition.
If I slide out my SSD, the system boots from the Panasonic 320GB drive. And if I turn off and reinsert the SSD, my German Win7 starts. And I can slide out and in the media bay, whenever I want. No problems.

 

That's the way it should work. I am guessing that you started out with clean drives. I started out with drives that I pulled from old machines. That's why I said to repartition and start with a clean drive. Win 7 will create a new 100mb partition if it needs it. I think my issues are because I did not wipe the drive first.
Since I use it for storage and not boot, I figured it wouldn't matter. It does seem to make a difference for some reason. There must be something left over in the boot sector on my "old" drives that causes a conflict.



The one drive of mine still hangs at F2 setup screen. It is a Hitachi 320g sata drive that I have setup as 2 partitions. I deleted the first partition and re created it in Win 7. Still no joy on that drive. Maybe it's because it has 2 partitions on it?? I can't figure it out. If I plug it in after boot, it works great. I have 2 adapter caddies and made sure I used the same caddy for both drives.

 

The drive came preinstalled from Panasonic with the whole Win7 system.

Had u checked the flags (i.e. partitionmagic will do this)?

 

I'm trying to use my 2nd hard drive for data. I tried with no partition and could not see the drive. I created a partition and formatted it through a USB external hard drive case. I can see the drive in the USB case but not in the 2nd hard drive caddy. I'm using Win7 32 bit in both machines. I have a 320 as the main drive and 250 Hitachi as the second hard drive. I have tried multiple 250 drives to no avail. I turned off all boot items but the main hard drive in the bios. Still no show.

 

onirakkiss, what 2nd hard drive caddy are you using?

 

It is a Multibay AK868AA from my former HP EliteBook 8530p. I have only exchanged the plastic frame around with the outer frame and the connector from my original Panasonic DVD-drive.

 

The drive that gives me trouble is a Hitachi also. I wonder if that matters?
I did rewrite the MBR using Easeus Partition software. That should have reset the flags shouldn't it? Some sites recommend completely erasing/ rewriting the bootcode from the command prompt to fix a stubborn drive. Is the mbr the same as the bootcode?
I want to backup all this data and try to partition this as 1 drive.


@hawk1234..Did you assign a drive letter to the 2nd drive? That made a difference for me. Did you go into device manager and search for hardware changes? That makes a difference by forcing windows to see the drive. What OS are you using?


On a side note, It really irritates me that you can't turn off that $%^# Blue Panasonic post screen. I want a verbose screen so I can read what's going on.

 

I still cannot see the drive at all in the second hard drive caddy. No way to assign a drive letter when I cannot see it.

 

do u c it in the BIOS setup?

 

I will check tomorrow. Caddy at my office

 

No, I do not see it in the bios. I tried a Hitachi 250GB, Toshiba 80GB and Fujitsu 160GB. None of them show up in the bios. I have tried them in two different 2nd hard drive caddies that both work in a CF-51 MK3. All three drives show up when attached to a USB drive case. I also tried inserting the caddy after Win 7 has booted - no luck. I am at a loss of what to do next.

 

Had u tried an IDE and SATA drive? Maybe the earlier MKs only accept IDE in the Mediabay.

 

Mine is a mk2 and my drives are sata. The optical drive is an ide. So it does have an adapter in the caddy. As we found with the ide to sata in the cf29, these adapter/drive combinations can be picky.
My ssd sata is recognized and works fine in the caddy. The Hitachi won't pass the bios. If I install it after the bios post, it works. I did look at the label on my Hitachi. It is an Apple TV drive that I repartitioned and formatted with a NTFS format. If I remember now, it was a bit of a pain to get it to boot properly in the first place. I did make it work though. The boot issue is why I made it a data drive now.
I do have another bootable sata drive that I will try in the caddy. I know the 52 boots from it in the main caddy.

 

I was thinking this a couple of days ago, but didn't bother to try. Sure enough IDE works right away. I took a 20g IDE drive with Windows ME on it stuck it in a IDE to optical adapter and stuck it in the CF52. It booted as fast as the main drive. Well it tried. The Win ME was from some p3 Compaq I scrapped. No way it was going to actually boot the whole way to Windows.
The Mk2 bios had no problem with an actual IDE drive. Maybe tomorrow I will put a boot sector on that sata ssd and see if it will boot. I know it passes the bios post. I tried a Toshiba 160 platter sata drive and the bios post hung.

 

I think this is the same one?
I want to see if it works better than what I have.

HP 8440w Multibay SATA HDD Exp Cradle New 6070B0253601 | eBay

 

I have not tired an IDE drive. Do not have an IDE caddy. The SATA drive does work in a CF-51 MK3

 

I got the HP adapter today. It is for a SATA HDD to A SATA optical drive. Do the later CF52's use a SATA optical drive? MY mk2 uses a IDE optical drive.

My aftermarket 2nd hard drive to optical drive caddies have a converter pcb inside them.

 

Yep, indeed.

 

Shawn...Here is a picture of the CF-52 cd-rom (MK1,2 and 3) The CF-52MK4 is different, it has an extra tab so I can not slide it into my CF-52 MK1 or MK2

 

Aha ! They did the same thing with the cf51 cf73 floppy drive so you can't use it in a cf52.

 

So the question is if you remove that tab will it work...well my guess is no because with my MK2 cd-rom in the MK4 it will not boot up

 

That's the same question I was thinking. Sadly with the same answer. What's inside the mk4 optical drive? Is there some sort of pcb between the drive and the connector?
If it's just the ribbon cable, then the mk4 has a sata interface where the mk2 has the ide interface on the media bay connector. I was hoping for a converter of some sort built into the drive caddy.

 

Soooo I picked up a large IDE drive to use for storage in the media bay on the CF52. I have been using a SATA that I have to pop in and out at every boot. My CF52 mk2 would not pass POST with the IDE either.
But I did not give up. I put a jumper on the drive to make it a slave and BINGO it passes the POST:thumbsup:.
I don't know if it would boot from the 2nd drive or not. Sometime I will try to load a system and see. I was trying to load Ubuntu on it, but I was having some issues and moved on. I don't need it to boot from the 2nd drive anyway.
Next thing I will try is take one of my SATA to IDE hdd optical adapters and solder a jumper to force it as slave. Opposite of the dvd mod on the CF29. Isolating pin 47 of the ide should do it. The ide connector is the one on the rear of the 2nd hdd adapter. It plugs into the Panasonic drive adapter.
Hmm

Well even forcing the SATA to slave or forcing to master, won't pass POST. This caddy has a Marvell chip in it. I'll have to look at one of my sata to ide adapters that work in a cf29. See what chip is on them.

 

I copied this into this thread just for future searches......

Ok on the cf51 2nd hard drive in the media bay.
CF51
floppy drive passes post and boots to c: normal
ide hdd in media bay passes post and boots to c:
sata hdd in media bay takes approximately 30 -45 seconds to pass post and boot to c:

None of my 2nd drives are set up to boot. I use them for storage only.

CF52
floppy will not boot. freezes
sata in media bay will not boot. post freezes. I have let it set for over 5 minutes, it will not boot with a sata in media bay. insert hdd after windows finishes starting and drive is accessible.
ide in media bay passes post and boots to c:

 

Someone PM'd me about a SATA HDD in the DVD on a CF 52..

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