Help, my 2nd HDD on my UltraBay disappears

Okay, so I bought a new 96gb ssd for my boot drive, and it works great an all, but its a bit slow, so I thought that I would just buy one of those cd-bay replacement caddies and put a hard drive in there. It is detected, it does fit, and there is a led indicator that shows that its powered, but after maybe 5 minutes of continuous use (i.e. formatting, transferring files), it shuts off; disappears from the face of my computer saying anything transferred might not have saved correctly and I may have lost some data. However, I do notice two things, one is that it still spins (so there must be power, right?) and secondly the HDD works completely fine via USB, so unless the USB uses less power, it makes sense that its not a power issue. I also noticed that it has extremely slow transfer rates. It estimates it takes 60-100 minutes to transfer a 35gb file.

There are then two solutions that I have found that get it back to being able to be detected (none of which last more than 5 minutes of use, so that doesn't solve the problem). One is to restart with the HDD out and plug it in when the computer is booted up. The other is to take it out, plug it into a SATA to USB adapter and access it, and put it back in the caddy and it will detect.

I'm pretty sure of the following: it is not because of power issues, as I can run it via usb it is not the hard drive; it works fine in the main hdd tray it is not because my ultrabay is broken; my CD-RW works fine

Here are my specs:

Lenovo T61P Core2 Duo @ 2.4
Windows XP 32-bit 3gb ram
Kingston V+100 SSD @ 96gb
Fujitsu 160gb 5400 HDD(came with laptop)
eBay knockoff hdd caddy

In short, how do I test out if its my caddy, not some software/bios issue? I am pressed to afford a $50 real caddy to test as I've spent so much on the SSD already when the matter could be completely software/bios related...

 

I would start by looking at the HDD's policies in Device Manager. A slow data transfer performance may be caused by the removal policy being set to Safe Removal in which case try Best Performance.

However, that doesn't explain why the computer is losing sight of the HDD. I had some similar problems with an HDD dock connected via eSATA but I blamed the problems on the interface chip in the dock, which could also be connected by USB.

John

 

Is it a Lenovo caddy or third party?

 

it is a third party. the thing is, i have read elsewhere that third party caddies are fine. I ordered another one today and returned the old one. I'm pretty sure its the caddy.

but I still have it. any other suggestions before I return it?

i'll update when i get the second one in a couple of days.

 

do you think it could be a chip problem within the ultrabay? honestly, i think its that more than the 3rd party caddy.

 

All your devices should be included in the boot priority order in order to ensure that the devices sync properly. On my T61 the boot priority order looks like this:
Ultrabay CDRW
Mainbay HDD
Ultrabay HDD

I have no issues with the Ultrabay HDD, even if I boot with the Ultrabay CDRW and then swap in the Ultrabay HDD. Like you, I am using a Lenovo HDD that is firmware limited to SATA 1.5 in the Ultrabay. I am using the latest Lenovo BIOS version. As long as you are not using a modified BIOS to overcome the SATA 1.5 limit, you should be fine no matter which Lenovo BIOS version you are using.

If all of the above checks out, then I would assume there's an incompatibility with your third-party adapter (the original adapter, which I have, was discontinued in December 2009).

 

I tried the above, my guess is that its a caddy problem.

I've ruled out:
power supply (works fine via usb)
HDD (tried two different ones, and it works on the main bay, and one of the hdd is a 1.5gb/s)
OS (reformatted)
BIOS (used default, used newest Lenovo, and used modified for 3.0gb/s sata)

possible causes:
caddy problem
ultrabay problem?
SCSI controller? (see image below) what on earth is that? it wasn't there when I started the computer! as you can see, the status of the Fujitsu HDD is currently unknown.

 

It shouldn't be. I took my (Lenovo) UltraBay HDD caddy apart and and there is only a cable to connect between the connector on the outside and the socket for the HDD. There's the possibility that the cable arrangement or type in a 3rd party enclosure results in excessive signal degradation causing loss of communication. Let's hope that the replacement works OK. Its usually easy to find older Lenovo accessories on ebay at reasonable prices.

John

 

I can't seem to find any Lenovo genuine ones from eBay.

 

They can be hard to sort out on eBay. You might have to buy directly from Lenovo to ensure a genuine one. While it's true most will probably work, I've seen some that haven't. I don't know whether that means they're all like that or just that one. Hopefully, the new one will work.

 

problem solved. new caddy worked. son of a b-


thanks for taking the time to help!

 

Thanks for the update.

It shows that even a simple cable is sometimes not up to the task.

John

 

The Ultrabay on a T61(P) runs on a PATA channel (the Mainbay runs on a SATA channel), so the HDD adapter incorporates a SATA-PATA converter. Apparently some converters are more robust than others.