eXcentris

Weird problem with my Lenovo T61p. I installed Win 8 on a new SSD and put the original HDD in the ultrabay, replacing the optical drive. I didn't do anything to that HDD, it still has XP and all my old stuff on it.

- When I boot (cold boot), I get the Thinkpad logo and 2 sec after that, I get the error "HDD in ultrabay failed to initialize, press 'esc' to continue." So HDD fails to initialize and is not recognized.

This is where it gets weird:

- If I then do a reboot, it pauses at the Thinkpad logo for 10-15 sec, and then loads Win 8 without any error. And sure enough, the HDD has been initialized and I can see the drive.

OR

- If I put the laptop in sleep mode (closing the lid) and then "wake" it, File Explorer has opened up, and it show the D: drive (the HDD). So waking it, initialized it.

It's not that big a deal, but I wonder what occurs on a cold boot that causes initialization to fail?

Ranger

I think that when a drive is going bad, it's common to have it go on and off, losing connection at random. So maybe test it a while longer to confirm the wake from sleep mode is really what gets it working.

Check for a BIOS update. Have you booted to a disk utility program like fdisk or a linux partitioning program to double check if the drive is being detected at all?

eXcentris

It doesn't go on and off at random. It's only not detected/initialized on a cold boot. Reboot initializes it and so does wake from sleep. And it was working fine before I swapped it for the SSD and put it in the ultrabay, so I doubt it's going bad. And I have the latest BIOS (well the unofficial latest BIOS which "unlocks" Sata II).

Other people have reported this issue, and it mostly seems to occur with Seagate HDD's, and only on a cold boot. Some people have solved the issue by putting a jumper on the drive to reduce speed from 3gbps to 1.5gbps but that didn't change a darn thing for me.

cungar

Intermittent problems are the WORST. Good luck.

X

Maybe the drive takes too long to spin up and isn't recognized by the system when it starts fresh?

4KRG

replace your magnetic declenator and/or upgrade your differential xeon circuit and it will be fine

4KRG

just read this

There could be a firmware issue with the drive. Seagate has been less than impressive with firmware issues in the past.

What model is your seagate drive??

Seagate use to have some hard jumper settings for certain drive behaviors, IIRC there was one that made the drive spin up on it's own instead of waiting for a command to spin up, that might help *IF* it is relevant to this situation

Dave99

I'm betting this is it. I've had this issue with some sandforce ssd's as the primary drives (obviously not a spinning up issue, just taking too long to initialize.)

eXcentris

Yup! That's what it seems like, i.e. it boots too fast so it doesn't have time to recognize the drive or something... But on a reboot, it hangs at the Thinkpad logo/boot screen for 10-15 sec., recognizes the drive and boots!

The BIOS is set to "Quick" (boot) but the only other option is "Diagnostic" which is for troubleshooting.


Don't give me that Star Trek mumbo jumbo shit.

eXcentris

Anyway, I think I fixed it. While I was in the BIOS, I went to boot order and moved the HDD from #6 to #2 on the list. Maybe it initializes devices in the order they are on the boot list? Who the heck knows...

I tried a number of shutdowns (even removed the power cord), booted, and no error anymore. Heck, it doesn't even hang at the Thinkpad logo on reboots anymore. So I'm back to booting to Win 8 from the SSD in 10 sec! Woooooo!

Weird...