Is my Cf-51 broken or my caddy?

I recently had to buy a new caddy and hard drive for my CF-51RC4KFBM . I got the samsung hm160hc however the computer would constantly hang when the drive was put in it. Even when loading the bios menu it would hang and then I can see the bios slowly drawing to the screen, and it wouldnt let me boot from a cd or anything else with it inside.

I put the hard drive in an old dell and it was able to read it, make partitions, install windows, ect. I've tried everything I could think of I ran diagnostics on it, and I even tried lowering or raising the max ultra dma settings on the hard drive.

Thus I came to the conclusion that either the computer is broke or the caddy is. I dont see any visible damage to the cable and last time i looked at the computer's insides i didn't see anything obvious.

If anyone can help me out I would greatly appreciate it.

 

Why did you need to get a "new" caddy? Was the unit dropped or anything like that?

 

Initially, I didn't have a caddy because I couldn't find any online for less then 100$ at the time. So I bought the cable and connected inside and to the hard drive. Eventually, Someone knocked the laptop over and the hard drive flew out and broke and the cord broke from excessive use, then I finally bought a caddy and a hard drive.

 

'least your honest about it. Bummer. You may have a cracked solder joint or similar. Maybe a bent connector. It needs a close look with a magnifier. The computer side probably. Does the caddy slide in nicely? If not I'd be looking inside.

Better luck after this,

Jeff

 

actually the caddy doesn't slide as nicely as it seems it should. It seems to be slightly off alignment as it needs an extra push towards the end.

However, I'm not entirely sure if its the laptop because I used a Fujitsu hd and it worked perfectly fine (belonged to another laptop), but in the process of trying to get the first hd i bought to work (a toshiba) I broke some important pins on the Fujitsu. Its been really a nightmare lol, and there was a lot prodding and shaking.

So far I've figured I'm going to buy a hdd caddy that replaces the cd drive.

 

Look to see if you have ram installed ,(or if ram is installed the ram is seated correctly), this model has no built-in ram and will not boot without it

 

Cap! He is alive! Welcome back, man! I've tried to call you and mail but no reply.

Whats up?

ohlip

 

Alex is back ....the aliens let him go. W00t. Sorry for the hijack.

 

I've booted linux through the cd drive, so ram and everything else works.

Thanks for trying though.

 

I don't remember if that HDD cable connector has a blocked pin or not. Is it possible that you have the connector hooked to the HDD upside down?

 

Mine is the same way but if you hold the caddy lock open on the bottom of the 51 it does slide in better.

 

Not sure whether its the problem, but my IDE cable didn't have a blank pin which caused some head scratching!
I used the same HD as you. When installed in the caddy the Samsung label should be upper most.

 

Usually, in that instance, the "Pin 1" line of the cable bears a distinctive marking (inked line, for example).

 

After looking at my caddy I would say you got it installed right., if you did not have it right I really don't think you could not get the hdd hooked up in the caddy

 

Look for a bios update. Maybe the current bios wont support the samsung for some reason.

 

ya my cable is blocked. I'm gonna try to return the hdd caddy even though its been 30 days and I'm getting a converter caddy for the cd port today or tomorrow.

I also don't see any bios updates for mk1LL which I think is my version. But thanks anyways

 

I've got that 160GB Samsung drive and it works perfectly.

Like Alex said, the BIOS shouldn't be slow due to a faulty HD connection. The ATA connection isn't directly on the system bus, only the controller is but it's soldered on.
If the BIOS screen is lagging, it usually the RAM or WiFi connection which are directly connected on the bus.

Whenever a BIOS screen is showing anything out of order, the most important thing is to disconnect everything immediately. Only when the problem is resolved like this, it's worth your time to start thinking about connecting anything.

Disconnect everything, if it still doesn't work, start unscrewing!

 

Well I've finally installed windows in a cd caddy, it works pretty well except that it hangs at the bios screen for about 1-2 minutes. Maybe I have bad ram or wifi like tkteun said. As for the wifi, I hate taking apart laptops.. they are like a puzzle.. But tomorrow I can see if I have any extra ram and I'll test that out first.

Thanks for the help. It is greatly appreciated.

 

Pull your CD Drive first and try rebooting. Reply back with results.

 

I have a 2nd drive in a cd caddy for my cf51. With the cd caddy hdd in, it always hangs a minute or so at the bios. It then boots into windows. This is normal behavior with the cd/ hdd caddy.