Issue replacing the hard drive of a 6 years old Mitac laptop...

As I know there are some gurus hanging around here, I would like to
submit a problem that drives me mad for a few weeks : I would like to
give a second life to a Mitac 5026 laptop, but one requirement is to
change its HD : 2.1 Gb is definitely too short. The problem is that
all the hard drives of higher capacities I tested fail to get
detected.

The first strange thing is that these laptops' BIOS don't allow for a
primary slave. Only primary master, secondary master and secondary
slave are available in the configuration screen. Well, so be it.

The second strange thing is that no matter how if I configure the
drive, it never shows up in the BIOS.

I mean, I understand that the BIOS should probably not recognize the
full capacity - the goal is to install Ontrack Disk Manager - but it
should at least show up to be able to install a drive manager.
Although, all the detection says "None", and if I set it as "User"
with 16384/16

Now what is most surprising is that if you run the IBM diagnostic
program available on the Ontrack boot disk and if you let it scan the
bus, the HD is found with correct make, model and capacity, and it can
even be tested (successfully) for reliability.

I have the latest available BIOS version.
I tried to configure the drive as master, slave and cable select, as I
said.
I tried with a 12 Gb Toshiba, a 6 Gb Toshiba and a 12 Gb Hitachi and
always have the same behaviour - although Mitac support told me that
drives up to 8 Gb are supported.

I would be tempted to place the drive on the secondary IDE channel,
but unfortunately, I miss the replacement tray where it should go,
with the specific connector, and neither Mitac.com, Mitac.be, Mitac.de
not Mitac.co.uk have any of these trays left :-(
I am now thinking of hacking the CD drive just to get the connector in
the hope I can reuse it for the HD, but I would definitely like to use
another way if possible...

Does anyone of you have an advice ? Is there some explanation as to
why these PCs don't allow for a primary slave ? Does anybody know if
putting the HD in the CD bay will allow it to be used ?

Any information is welcome. Thanks for your attention.

Best regards,


Vicne.

PS : It seems the Mitac 5024 (and maybe the whole 502x series)
exhibits a similar behaviour, as can be seen on this post :
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=mi...aol.com&rnum=2

Does the internal CD ROM drive get configured as the primary slave by any chance? Just a thought....

Vicne wrote:

As I know there are some gurus hanging around here, I would like to
submit a problem that drives me mad for a few weeks : I would like to
give a second life to a Mitac 5026 laptop, but one requirement is to
change its HD : 2.1 Gb is definitely too short. The problem is that
all the hard drives of higher capacities I tested fail to get
detected.

The first strange thing is that these laptops' BIOS don't allow for a
primary slave. Only primary master, secondary master and secondary
slave are available in the configuration screen. Well, so be it.

The second strange thing is that no matter how if I configure the
drive, it never shows up in the BIOS.

I mean, I understand that the BIOS should probably not recognize the
full capacity - the goal is to install Ontrack Disk Manager - but it
should at least show up to be able to install a drive manager.
Although, all the detection says "None", and if I set it as "User"
with 16384/16

Now what is most surprising is that if you run the IBM diagnostic
program available on the Ontrack boot disk and if you let it scan the
bus, the HD is found with correct make, model and capacity, and it can
even be tested (successfully) for reliability.

I have the latest available BIOS version.
I tried to configure the drive as master, slave and cable select, as I
said.
I tried with a 12 Gb Toshiba, a 6 Gb Toshiba and a 12 Gb Hitachi and
always have the same behaviour - although Mitac support told me that
drives up to 8 Gb are supported.

I would be tempted to place the drive on the secondary IDE channel,
but unfortunately, I miss the replacement tray where it should go,
with the specific connector, and neither Mitac.com, Mitac.be, Mitac.de
not Mitac.co.uk have any of these trays left :-(
I am now thinking of hacking the CD drive just to get the connector in
the hope I can reuse it for the HD, but I would definitely like to use
another way if possible...

Does anyone of you have an advice ? Is there some explanation as to
why these PCs don't allow for a primary slave ? Does anybody know if
putting the HD in the CD bay will allow it to be used ?

Any information is welcome. Thanks for your attention.

Best regards,

Vicne.

PS : It seems the Mitac 5024 (and maybe the whole 502x series)
exhibits a similar behaviour, as can be seen on this post :
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=mi...aol.com&rnum=2

Clive Oldfield wrote in message ...
Does the internal CD ROM drive get configured as the primary slave by
any chance? Just a thought....

No. It's on the secondary channel, according to IBM's diagnotsic software...

Vicne.