Trouble re-using IBM Thinkpad Hard drive

[uallas5]

I've replace the 80GB hard drive in my Thinkpad T60p with a 160GB and I'm trying to re-use the 80GB in an external enclosure but having trouble. The enclosure does both USB and eSATA but I can only get the hard drive to work with the eSATA connection.

I talked to the guys I bought the lappy from and they said it's a problem with the security chip on the drive. If it's active, it prevents the drive from being hooked up to a USB connection. I popped the drive back into the laptop, went into the BIOS and turned off all the security features. saved, restarted the laptop then shutdown. Popped the drive in the internal enclosure, but still no good.

I then connected it again eSATA and blew away both the OS and recovery partitions and formatted the drive. Reconnected USB but still nothing. I tested the USB connection of the enclosure with a drive from an Acer laptop an it works fine.

Anyone come across this before or have any ideas? Thanks.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

The drives in the thinkpads are just standard hard drives. Is the enclosuer powered by the USB eSATA or does it have it's own supply?

I have a USB powered enclosure that will not work with 7200 RPM drives, but will work with 5400 RPM drives.

 

[uallas5]

Thanks for the reply but I just got it going. Apparently these Hitachi Bulk Data Encryption (BDE) drives can be a bit finicky. Ended up having to put it back into the laptop, go into the BIOS, password protect the drive, estart and confirm the password protection, restart an remove the password, restart to confirm that, now it works fine.