Old T43 BIOS does not detect HD

[dlegoh]

Hi All,

The BIOS of my old T43 laptop does not detect my hard drive. No matter what brand of HD I use in the bay (I've tried Hitachi, WD, and I think Seagate), the BIOS doesn't show it. I've tried reseating it on all HD, still doesn't show.

Any ideas on how to fix this? The BIOS is already updated to its current version.

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

this probably means the pata connector on the laptop is broken.

[dlegoh]

If this is the reason, I wouldn't mind opening up the laptop and doing some soldering . Do you know of any other virtual fix I can try first?

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

I don't know if there is any virtual fix as such. 

[andyP Community SuperMod]

dlegoh, welcome to the forum,

have you transferred the metal caddy which the original drive sat in to the new drives you have been trying?  Hard drives will more than likely not be recognised if the caddy is not attached.

[dlegoh]

Thanks Andy,

Ya, I've always used the metal caddy when trying all the different HDs. It would be quite difficult to slide the HDs in (and later pull out) without the metal caddy.

I'm not sure what happen. The laptop was doing a windows update and when I rebooted, it couldn't detect the HD.

[andyP Community SuperMod]

That's good to hear ane one common cause dealt with The next most common is the "stupid" question that has to be asked; are you inserting the drives the right way up, which in the case of the T43 is the wrong way up i.e. with the HDD label to the bottom of the system and the caddy at the top?

If the answer to the above question is yes, you might find one of these usefull;

Hardware Maintenance Manual (July 2005) - ThinkPad T43/p (2668, 2669, 2678, 2679, 2686, 2687) pdf file 4.43MB

Hardware Maintenance Manual (July 2005) - ThinkPad T43 (1871, 1872, 1873, 1874, 1875, 1876)  pdf file 4.26MB

[dlegoh]

Thanks. I'll use the pdf as my guide while opening up the laptop.

And yes, it was the 'correct' way up (both right and wrong way depending on how you look at it ).

[andyP Community SuperMod]

It would be great if you could keep us posted on your progress, it might help others experiencing the same. And, if you do get down to some serious soldering it would certainly make an interesting and great knowledgebase article

[ajkula66 Guru]

Before you warm up that soldering gun...

T43/p are well-known not to recognize hard drive due to a SouthBridge chip failure. Nothing to solder there, unless you have very expensive professional re-balling equipment.

Motherboard replacement is in the cards here.

Good luck.