Have a look at this: http://www.microsatacables.com/catalog/c107_p1.html

Interesting adapters. Any idea if this adapter can work in 15" T43 main HDD's bay?
http://www.microsatacables.com/catalog/i169.html

I compared it with my SATA HDD which I've in Ultrabay slot and one thing came into my mind: using this adapter will cause HDD won't be upside down, but in normal position. And there can be a problem... pressure on palmrest may interfere with HDD cover which may cause its damage. What do you think?

Unfortunately I don't see any adapter here that does the actual 1.8" SATA to 2.5" IDE (PATA) conversion. I thought it was this one, http://www.microsatacables.com/catalog/i177.html until I looked at it more carefully and realized it was 1.8" IDE to 2.5" IDE. The other ones are all 1.8" IDE or 1.8 ZIF adapters. Judging from the earlier posts here, I believe the ZIF drives are out of the question.

Lukee: I looked at something like this earlier, but I believe this adapter will position the hard drive too far out for us to be able to put the HDD cover back on. That's why we are looking at using the 1.8" drives, since they are smaller and will allow enough room for an adapter to be placed between the drive and the motherboard IDE/PATA connector. However, you *miight* be able to use the adapter you found, if you modify the hard drive cover, etc. Anyone ever tried to fit an adapter like this and seen how far out it actually pushes the drive?

cool concept i could pickup 1 too.

How about putting the adapter in a 15" machine with a 2.5" HD, and use a 14" HD cover?
And there is always Old Faithful (i.e. the Dremel tool...).

This specific one was already discussed earlier in the thread. This adapter isn't designed for laptop use, and even if you manage to do some custom modding of your laptop to get it to fit, you're gonna end up with irreversible modifications to the chassis.

I do remember someone mentioning that the T43 laptops natively have SATA connectivity, but has a built-in bridge that converts it to IDE. Has anyone tried tapping into the native SATA connection, bypassing the bridge?

You are right, the T43 was built with a native SATA HDD interface, and probably originally planned to run SATA drives. But for some reason IBM put a SATA - PATA bridge in and let it run PATA drives. A couple of days ago I noticed this in a different thread here:


So it has obviously been done, but I didn't get anything out of the Chinese forum other than characters I didn't understand.


Is it the size of the adapter that requires modifications to be able to fit it in the bay at all? A modification to the HDD cover is no big deal, but the drive should probably not protrude outside it. And any major modification of the internals of the bay is not desirable at all. At least not in my eyes.. I still see the 1.8" Micro SATA to PATA as the ideal solution, but so far the current minimum order limit seems to be a stopper here. So I guess we will have to wait for a brave soul to buy those 100 adapters and sell them off one by one on eBay. And it's no big deal yet, as I am not planning to convert any of my T4x to SATA anytime soon. Hopefully time will come up with a solution here.

Check this out (translated with Google Translator):
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=cs&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.friendeye.com/%3Faction-viewthread-tid-60630

Dang... who ever did that is crazy!
Wish I had the time, resources, and a spare mobo to try that out...

a quick search on the forum led me to this:
http://wiki.marek-walther.de/wiki/proje ... grade_sata

Based on the date of the post, it looks like initially when that Chinese guy modded his T43 to accept SATA drives, 2.5" SSDs were still around the corner, and insanely expensive. Even one of the guys commenting on his work mentioned that the performance gain at the time wasn't worth the hassle. Too bad that after SATA SSDs have finally dropped down to reasonable price ranges, many ppl have moved on from using the beloved T43

Unlocking the native SATA connection would be ideal, allowing us to hit the true potential of our T43/x41 (now... if it had SATA2... )

Hi ChugokuOtaku,

because T43's BIOS is missing AHCI support, then the performance potential of modern SATA 7200rpm drives & SSDs can't be reached there Unknown is also capacity support - if an modded system accepts i.e. 500 GB TravelStar HDD?!

From my understanding, the BIOS only supports IDE backward-compatibility mode on the T43, but even that shouldn't limit the performance. You'll lose things like TRIM or NCQ if supported by the drive, but it should have no trouble tapping the much higher transfer rates of modern 7200rpm/SSD drives after modding.

I've come across someone accidentally installing his OS on a 10Krpm raptor with the SATA controller in legacy mode, and didn't bother running the driver fix to switch it over to AHCI until one day he realized his eSATA ports won't plug and play. Even in legacy-compatibility mode, the raptor had no trouble reaching advertised performance.

Here's another idea

How about a 2.5" IDE to 1.8" ZIF adapter - http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.20295 - coupled with a modern 1.8" ZIF drive - http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/Catego ... if+for+Mac

Those particular Renice drives use the modern Indilinx controller with a Marvell bridge chip, and apparently support TRIM.

but 1.8" ZIF SSDs are almost as expensive as some 2.5" PATA SSDs, and with most models, their performance don't quite saturate ATA100

The trouble is, the vast majority of ZIF and PATA SSDs are junk - they use old-fashioned controllers, and don't perform particularly well.

That particular Renice drive uses the same Indilinx Controller as found in many SATA SSDs, and offer excellent performance and will support TRIM when used with Windows 7.

Whether it saturates the ATA100 bus or not is irrelevent - the performance of an SSD is dictated by it's handling of multiple tiny reads and writes, not the sequential throughput.

Most effective way from both performance and cost standpoint is to remove the SATA-PATA bridge on T43/X41 and use SATA HDD's. It isn't as hard as it may seem. It is especially wise on T43 because of the wide choice of 2.5" SATA drives for very little money.

I just bought a 80GB 5400 rpm 1.8" SATA drive which I intend to use in modded X41 and it cost me just 20 usd.

You are right about this being the most effective way, but to refer to it as the "easiest" way is maybe a bit off. Even though I understand the theory behind what the guy did there, and have done some soldering and component level work, I am nowhere near to being willing to try this on my T43. The chances are too big that I will damage it and leave it useless. And it doesn't help people with older T4x or even T3x machines that don't have a SATA interface at all. At least in my eyes, this is not so much about the increase in speed, but more the chance of being able to use newer drives that are cheaper and easier available. SATA SSDs and PATA (Both SSD and platter drives) drives moves in very different directions when it comes to price/availability and resources put into developing them further.

I have briefly talked to ChugokuOtaku, and the order limit of 100 pieces is so far a stopper. But we will keep looking out for this.


By "modded", are you referring to removing the SATA bridge? Good luck, keep us posted. Glad that someone are willing to try it. (If I ever move back to Norway, maybe I put my T43 in the car a weekend and drive down to have you modify mine too. He, he.)

I have a couple of adapters on the way since I'm in possession of Samsung ZIF SLC SSD that is not doing much of anything right now, and has enough capacity (32GB) for a boot drive.

Ideally, I'll throw W7 on it and see how my T43p likes it. For storage purposes, I have a UltraBay SATA adapter since I don't use the media drive on this machine once the OS is installed anyway...

Will keep you guys posted...

Sure, by "easy" I meant that it is easy for someone familiar with electronics and I see no reason why anyone couldn't print the how-to for this mod (which chip to remove and which wires to where to solder) and give it to some local electronics specialist? It takes around an hour, not more.

And according to Zagnut, he was able to get rid of the 2010 Error also, though reasons are unknown because he is not using a known T43/X41 compatible HDD.

If you will bring your T43 here, I'd be glad to perform this mod, no problem I have proper equipment also for chip removal.

No 2010-error BIOS mod was introduced these days: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=92115

Thanks, I saw this thread right after I posted my reply to this one!

The fact that there is a no-2010 bios available makes performing the SATA bridge removal mod even more valid.

FWIW: I purchased a 1.8" 64 gb ssd made by crucial. The problem is it has a sata interface but the laptop has ide. I figured I could save $100 using a sata drive over buying a ide drive and just use an adapter. Using a sata to ide adapter I was able to connect the drive to the laptop in this manner. For some reason, when I connect the drive to the laptop's ide port the bios doesn't "see" the drive. Thinking the drive or adapter is defective I connected a ide to usb adapter to the hack and connected the drive to an available usb port. Now, the laptop sees the drive, can read and write to it and boot from the ssd drive using this approach. Why the laptop doesn't see the drive when connected via the ide port is a mystery to me. For those who want ssd this method may work for you, but I think it better to just buy a ide ssd drive and be done with it. If anyone has any ideas why the laptop doesn't see the drive when connected to the ide port I'd like your input.

Hi, and welcome to the forum.

What adapter did you use? You found one that fits inside the main HDD bay?

If it turns out that the bios doesn't see the drive when it's on an adapter, or modifications/altering of settings are needed in order to make that happen, that is useful information.

This looks like a new item (and you don't have to buy 100 of them) :
http://www.microsatacables.com/catalog/i196.html

It's also available at their eBay store :
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0508236238
One feedback says "Works great! Adapt Intel X18M SSD to IDE laptop Fits 2.5" Dell HDD caddy Happy".

Who wants to be the first to see if this adapter will work with a 1.8" micro sata ssd in an IDE T4x ... or other IDE laptops ?

Can anyone say, if here exists some "ATA to SATA drive" converter with ideal dimensions to fit SATA HDD into 15" T4x shell? I mean into main HDD bay, not to Ultrabay adapter.

edit: is it possible to mount this converter into T43's HDD bay?
http://cgi.ebay.com/laptop-2-5-SATA-HDD-IDE-44-Pin-Converter-Adapter-New-/140497498198?pt=AU_Laptop_Accessories&hash=item20b64db056#ht_2301wt_905

Is the ATA connector pinout OK, when the HDD is installed upside down?

This looks to me like it should allow the Intel X18-M to work with any 2.5" IDE Laptop.

Theoretically it should work fine.
By the looks of it, in a 15" T4x/R5x this adapter goes in as seen on that picture.
The SATA HD would then go in with the label UP (instead of down).
Because of the extra room between HD and HD cover, I think a regular 2.5" SATA HD could also work.
You would need to tape the HD-caddy onto the HD, because caddy-screws would be in the way.
And you'd need to make a "pullout" strip (like on T60 caddies), to get the HD out again.
BUT, if you look at the dimensions (either W 14 or H 17.5 , it will NEVER fit inside a Thinkpad HD Bay.
Maybe, just MAYBE, if you can whittle it down to 9mm High....

I just got interesting thing into my mind: standard 2.5" ATA HDD has skipped pin on ATA interface from manucaturer in the bottom line. It means (when the HDD is upside down originally in Thinkpad) that skipped pin should be in Thinkpad's ATA interface in the upper line. If you look on the detailed photo of that converter here (I don't know how to put pic warning into thread's name as I am not creator of this thread):



you can see, that the converter has the skipped pin in the bottom line of interface so this adapter is not usable in ThinkPad where the HDDs are originally upside down - there will be interference with palmrest... Am I right?

This one looks like it has the pins in the correct place: http://cgi.ebay.com/Female-SATA-44-Pin- ... 0604392008

Yes, but unfortunately it has male/female thing reversed. You need female SATA and male PATA on the adapter, not the opposite like on the adapter in the ebay add you posted.

Maybe they have correct adapters also?

Nice! I remember this site from my earlier searches, so this must be a new item, yes. I will order one, but I have to wait til next month when I go back to Norway before I have access to any of my T4x machines again. And I don't have any X18 SSD yet, so the first thing will be to make sure the adapter really fits in there and leaves room for the drive itself. I can't recall how the IDE plug is located in there - top or bottom.