Thinkpads Forum

As per my original WTB thread, I'll start sepparate thread in more appropriate section.

I've received the first 5 pcs of the caddies for testing. I can say, the chinese variant looks quite nice, they even coppied that plastic thingie which holds installed HDD in place. Works just fine in T61, there does not appear to be any difference from the original IBM/Lenovo caddy, function-wise.

I'll try few different TP models which I have. I think the oldest I have is like R50 or something. But in theory, it should run in pretty much everything with the connector, right? That would be as old as A22. From my experience, even UATA-to-M.2 adapter work fine in old HP laptops even under XP, so I guess that pretty much all the laptops, including some very old ones, which have this JAE PM1M050H1AE, should support it.

How can the same adapter / tray work in both a T60 / 61 and an A22 (or T22). The connectors are vastly different.

Obviously that's if the old models had the JAE connector. If they had something else yet, no joy there Never seen that old TPs yet so been guessing there.

So it's only UB Slim/Enhanced than, correct?

Yes UltraBay Slim or enhanced, them only differing in height. This would be T40 series through T60 / 61 series (along with Z/X/R etc). Before these, T 30 and earlier used the Ultrabay 2000 connector which was quite larger and stuck out a little from the back of the drive / adapter.

Hello, I am posting late but hoping you are still out there. I am now officially a thinkpadder...I have a T400 that I am working on upgrading, but I also went out and bought an advanced dock. What an education!!! To make a long story short, I have been unable to find the ultrabay slim hdd adapter anywhere (which i believe will work in the advanced dock?). Your awesome post gives me hope that I may find a solution to being able to plug in an hdd or ssd into my advanced dock to use as a secondary drive when the T400 is docked. If the modified caddies ended up being succsessful, and if you have any left, and if you would want to sell one, please let me know....help me ObiWan Kenobi! You’re my only hope!

I'm always here, just not posting as much.

The Ultrabay Slim and ultrabay Enhanced trays / DVDs etc will both fit in the Advanced dock. The only difference between slim and enhanced was the height, 9mm in slim and 12.5m in enhanced. The HDD trays were only made in slim (to my knowledge) while the optical drives were made in both heights.

These Ultrabay slim HDD trays are very hard to find at present. I will look through my stash to see if I can spare any. I have more computers that take these trays than any other.

Note that the T400 itself takes a different tray which has a different connector and a small tab that sticks out from the center of the tray in back to keep one form forcing the tray in the wrong system.

What you can do is get an HDD tray Ultrabay Serial slim for the ThinkPad itself and the very inexpensive Ultrabay slim DVD RW for the advanced dock. The T400 and later HDD trays should be more readily available, and I DO have some spares of those.

That's the way I use the systems. 2nd HDD in the ThinkPad with the optical drive (or a third HDD) in the advanced dock.

My 2c in addition. If i remember right - advanced dock routes IDE interfce to USB bus throught adapter. So it is right desision to place DVD in dock on slow USB interface and place HDD (SSD?) on fast SATA interface in ThinkPad ultrabay.

Thanks for the advice! Much appreciated. Serious learning curve with all the different compatibilities but still a lot of fun learning a lot about Thinkpads. You have given me a new lead on getting as much out of this great system as possible and I’m going to look into that path. Waiting on a T9600 cpu and bidding on a Crucial 250gb SSD...can’t wait to get it all put together! Thanks again!

FryPpy wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 31, 2021 7:44 am

My 2c in addition. If i remember right - advanced dock routes IDE interfce to USB bus throught adapter. So it is right desision to place DVD in dock on slow USB interface and place HDD (SSD?) on fast SATA interface in ThinkPad ultrabay.

That is correct. Any drive in the Ultrabay of the advanced dock is treated as a USB drive. Weird, but I'm used to it.