HD Serial Bay Adapters

I'm guessing everyone who buys these bay adapters must be getting them some place other than Lenovo. I wouldn't want to pay 50-60 bucks for one.

For anyone who has bought from other sites (ebay, amazong, etc), did you actually get the Lenovo part? Or is it just a random third-party brand that makes the same item?

I'm looking at this one here: for IBM 43N3412 SATA 2nd HDD caddy bay T400s T500 - eBay (item 350345523981 end time Jun-23-10 08:28:25 PDT)

but just want to make sure that it's not a cheap knock-off.

Thanks!

 

Not really.

Re your question:
If lenovo sells something for >$60, and you find it somewhere, "brand-new, unused" for <$15, do the math and decide whether that's a knock-off.

Of course lenovo screws us with obscene prices on essential accessories, but that's how the industry works...

 

I've bought 3 such HD adapters from Lenovo as well.. the price premium is mainly for peace of mind for my data as well.

 

Yes, peace of mind matters. However, like the OP, I just cannot convince myself to pay $60 for an HDD adapter when the HDD in question costs only $35. Besides, it is not like the adapter is some kind of precision equipment... the adapter is just a case with plugs and wires (no electronics whatsoever) and probably costs less than $10 to make.

 

that really depends on the quality of soldering job the factory undertook on the compatible parts. It is not about the cost of the drives, but rather how much value you place on data integrity.

 

If there is a bad soldering, then the laptop will just fail to detect the hard drive in the adapter. The data on the disk will remain perfectly safe.

Does anyone here pay $60 for a "premium" SATA cable to ensure data integrity?
If you trust a $5 SATA cable and a $20 USB hard drive enclosure, why do you distrust a $15 hard drive adapter (which, functionality wise, is closer to the SATA cable than the USB enclosure)?

 

Do you buy your ram (or worse, your usb flash drives) from lenovo?

A cheap alternative doesn't mean it's automatically a knock-off. (Reason why I made this thread )

Right now I'd really value the opinion of someone who has actually bought or at least used this part from somewhere other than Lenovo. Everything else is speculation.

 

i don't use generic usb hdd enclosure, i have had my bad experiences. Basically, the soldering job was extremely poor, which resulted in a lot of drop out. It is not that all Ultrabay enclosure is bad, what i am trying to say, is that you got to be careful with the generic enclosures.

The SATA cable is only made by a few large companies, as the margin is really low, and capital expenditure of setting up the facilities are also more expensive. So only those factories can move a lot of cables will profit from these businesses, which prevents many cottage factories from joining this.

 

Oh ok. But that's apples and oranges. RAM and USB drives are generic, standardized stuff. These bays are developed/designed by lenovo specifically for lenovo thinkpads. So there is either the (technically semi-legal) knock-off, or the genuine, overpriced part from lenovo.

(I'm assuming here that lenovo didn't give out licenses to produce and sell them independently.)

 

You're right, but they actually work for a few other brands of laptops too. Lenovo's not the only one in the expandable bay game. This particular part I listed above also works in a few Dell models. (You can see how my thought process jumped from here to -> Hey that means I should be able to get it cheap)

 

The new laptops (W510) may not work with the 3rd party adapters.

I had one from my W500 that worked fine in the W500, but when I put it in my W510, it wouldn't spin up. I had to go buy the genuine adapter.

My suggestion is to just suck it up and buy the real one the first time, otherwise you may end up buying one that won't work, and having to buy the real one anyway.

 

I don't have a W510, but I have working adapters from my T400 and W500, that couldn't even fit into my new T410.

Thus, I was under the impression that the T/WX10 series use a whole different type of adapter.

 

T410 should use the same adapter as the T400. When you say you can't fit into what do you mean by that?

 

I have both a T410 and a T400 in front of me, and am 100% sure that the model that fits into the T400 will not fit into the T410, at least without additional modifications (that I prefer to avoid).

I can't quite recall exactly what it is, but I think it was an additional piece of plastic in the way that prevented it from slotting into the T410. I called my retailer, who confirmed that the 2 adapters were indeed different, and ordered another on the spot.

I did not try slotting the T410 adapter that I bought into my old T400, but I imagine it wouldn't fit either.