[ltp] Re: UltraBay for dual boot

[Aaron Mulder]

To start with, UltraBay is a name for the slot where the CD/DVD drive
normally goes.  You can eject that and put in other devices like a
battery or hard drive carrier.  The T43 actually comes with an
UltraBay Slim -- the original UltraBay was thicker so devices made for
one won't work for the other (without, you guessed it, another
adapter).  So, if you buy an UltraBay Slim hard drive adapter, you can
put a laptop hard drive in it, install it instead of your CD/DVD
drive, and access it as a second hard drive on the machine.  However,
you won't be able to do a CD/DVD install of any OS on it, or access
any CDs or DVDs from the OS on that drive at all, unless you have a
USB CD/DVD drive or something.

http://www-131.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=
=3D-840&langId=3D-1&partNumber=3D62P4554&storeId=3D10000001

However, getting back to your original point, you should definitely be
able to dual boot on the main drive of your T43.  I think that's a
much better solution, since you don't have to sacrifice your optical
drive to do it.  There are typically 3 ways to do it:

1) Restore the factory Windows configuration using the ThinkPad
restore feature, then do a Linux install that will shrink the existing
Windows partition and take the newly created space on the drive.

2) Partition the drive into 1 (must be first) partition for Windows,
and any number of Linux partitions thereafter (there must be actual
partitions there, not just free space).  Then restore the factory
Windows configuration using the ThinkPad restore feature, and it will
only take up the first partition of the drive (plus any subsequent
free space).  Either install Linux to the remaining partitions, or if
you already have, just reinstall the boot loader.

3) Partition the drive however you want and install both OS's
manually, using some kind of media for the Windows install (a disk
from, say, a Dell laptop if you want to use your current install key,
or a MSDN or retail disc or something if you have your own Windows key
to use).

I've been able to set up dual boots on T-series machines with all of
these techniques.  I haven't tried Ubuntu, but I don't see why it
should be any less capable than other modern distros.

Thanks,
    Aaron

P.S. Rumor has it the BIOS-to-hard drive model lockdown was because
they require special logic in the hard drive firmware for the
IDE-to-SATA adapter in the T43 to perform well.  I find this plausible
based on experience with a SCSI-to-IDE adapter for a CD burner back in
the day.  I'm hoping the T60 just comes with an SATA drive and drops
this restriction, but I guess we'll see.  Speaking of which, there are
supposedly Lenovo new product announcements coming on Feb 12, 14, and
28.  :)

On 1/27/06, Josh <josh_0b11111010101@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I recently purchased a ThinkPad T43.  I couldn't get a
> dual boot system working on it so I installed Ubuntu
> Linux on the entire hard drive and it's working well.
>
> Unfortunately, I need to occasionally boot Windows XP.
>  I am under the impression that I can buy something
> called an UltraBay and put the 40 GB drive from my
> broken Toshiba laptop in it, and then carry around two
> hard drives in the ThinkPad (after removing the CD/DVD
> drive, which I hardly use anyway).  The main 60GB hard
> drive would have Linux on it, and the UltraBay drive
> would have Windows...
>
> Will the Ultrabay work with any laptop hard drive, or
> do I have to buy a special hard drive from Lenovo?
>
> Has anyone done this and is it a good solution?
>
> Thanks
>
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