Thinkpads Forum

Hello all,

I recently purchased a T410 2518-ahu from a forum member and am having a difficult time installing a new hard drive. The drive is a WD 320 GB Black. It came to me with a modded BIOS 1.45 slic 2.1 wifi whitelist removed.

I was able to install the drive, install W7 32 bit and have it do all the updates. The only problem is that the only way I can make the machine recognize the HD is to enter the BIOS on boot up and save it (hit F10). Once I do that it happily sees the drive and runs W7. If I shut down the machine and restart it will give me a "2100 HD initialization error" every time, however if I hit escape, enter the BIOS, save it (either AHCI or Compatibility mode) it sees the drive and loads the OS just fine.

Oh, I put the new drive into another machine and it recognizes it. I also put another drive (SSD) into the T410 and it sees it.

Any thoughts about what is going on? Does the modded BIOS not like the drive? Should I roll back to a standard Lenovo BIOS? This is a new drive out of the box, is it sick? I am currently doing a DBAN wipe on the drive to see if that helps.

Thanks ahead of time for any ideas or thoughts...

Bruce

Hello all,

Here is an update: I have rolled back the modded BIOS, tried Lenovo 1.44 and 1.45 BIOS and had the same problem, hard drive initialization error 2100.

Repeated my experiment of putting two different drives (A SanDisk SSD and Hitachi 250GB 7200 rpm) into the T410. They were recognized by the BIOS, started up W7 and crashed as they are not configured for this machine. So, they essentially work. Also repeated putting the new drive into my X61. It was recognized by the BIOS.

I guess the only thing left is to send the new drive back for a replacement.

Bruce

Update: Sent the WD320 off for a replacement but had a new Toshiba 500GB 5400rpm drive that I installed and it showed up in the BIOS fine.

Meanwhile tried to install W7 64 bit on this drive and having BSOD on install. I started a new topic on this list.

Not sure whether to post on this list (T410) or Windows 7 OS list. I posted on both, probably the wrong thing to do.

Bruce

From reading this and your other post, I would suspect a bad BIOS or a hardware issue. A corrupt BIOS will certainly do it. Having said that I would suspect a hardware connection somewhere. At this stage I would eliminate the HDD being the issue.

Cigarguy wrote:From reading this and your other post, I would suspect a bad BIOS or a hardware issue. A corrupt BIOS will certainly do it. Having said that I would suspect a hardware connection somewhere. At this stage I would eliminate the HDD being the issue.

IDK...

I've owned a T410 which was throwing fits - the same error as discussed here - at a particular SSD which worked with no errors in a X61T, was sold with and is still working in the aforementioned tablet AFAIK.

A different SSD was subsequently installed in the said T410, and the laptop has been made its way some 6,000 miles away where it still works today.

Do I have a 1001% foolproof answer on what's going on with OP's machine? No.

I just feel that this particular bit of info was worth sharing.

The replacement drive arrived and not to my surprise the problem was not fixed. I was able to install W7 64bit by doing a BIOS save. It installed fine doing a couple of restarts. After doing a hard restart I got the dreaded 2100 hard drive installation error again.

As previously mentioned the new Toshiba drive works fine, the BIOS seeing it on each restart. I did re-install the modded BIOS to get a different wireless card to work. It does not seem to be a BIOS issue related to the mod, although it might be another BIOS bug that has always been there.

I also tried to load a new SATA driver when W7 was unable to find the drive. The driver seemed to be the correct one but the drive was still not there.

I did find a patch on the Lenovo site http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail. ... MIGR-74582 that is supposed to fix HD detection issues but have not had any luck getting this installed. Not sure it is applicable but thought I might try anyway.

At this point i am running out of ideas and am tempted to put back the Toshiba drive although I would like to find a 7200 rpm drive that worked.

Any more ideas appreciated.

Bruce

Try pulling the HDD out. Boot a few times to a Live Linux distro and see if you are still having the same issue.

Success ..well not quite.

I got the Lenovo patch to install and it Restarted fine. It finds the drive when doing a Shutdown / Restart but not from a Shutdown and then a start from the on/off switch. I guess I will just put in the Toshiba and call it quits.

I am unclear how the patch is helping. It creates a task for the Task Scheduler, but that runs within windows so I am unclear how it could make the HD recognizable. Someone who understands this better might help me take it the rest of the way.

Bruce

I returned the new WD 320GB Black Drive hoping it was a drive problem but realizing it probably was not. Well, I was correct. The new drive behaved in the exact same manner as the previous one only be recognized by the BIOS after doing a saving then being forgotten on start up.

My solution was to use a new Toshiba 500 GB 5400 rpm drive. It has been running fine now for a couple of weeks with W7 64 bit Pro. I was really hoping for a 7200 rpm drive but gave up on getting the WD to work. Maybe someone will someday figure it out and post a solution.

I am moving on...

Thanks,

Bruce

I wonder if it's just an issue with WD drives.

I remember on earlier Thinkpads that I owned I would have to update the embedded controller firmware in order for it to recognize some drives. I don't know much about your machine, but it could be worth a shot.

On another note, unless you need 500GB of HD space and dislike the 5400RPM speed of your current HD, have you given any thought to adding a 256GB+ SSD?

I'm reasonably certain that all of my past T410 units had Hitachi drives...When it comes to spinners, that is.

Just a thought.