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#1
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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 |
#2
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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 |
#3
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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. |
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