Big Problem! Thinkpad Harddrives not found...help! lol

[Mündo]

Hey...i have 3 a22m laptops...2 with 20gb and 1 with 12gb drives...

the computer with the 12gb also had double as much ram as one of the ones with 20's, so i decided to swap hd's...so i could charge a premium for the better of the 2 when reselling.

once the harddrives were secure in the other machines, the computers were no longer able to see them...

i tried reseting the bios, tried different combinations between laptops and hd's...(made sure i static discharged)...but then realized i had left the battery in when i did the swap, so im concerned about the possiblity of surging them... that doesn't really make sense though, because when i tried using the 3rd and "working" harddrive in another system i had the same problem...then when i put it back in the "working" laptop, it was no longer working. this time the battery was out and it was unplugged, and i was soooo careful...it was like i was handling a bomb.

i tried using windows install and dos based utilities to find the drive, but nothing seems to be doing the trick...

i'm an experienced repairman, but feel free to make any suggestions regardless of how simple they might be...let's just assume im a total newb.

i figure since they came from a government office there might be some ibm corperate data protection or something crazy like that at work...beats me though.

 

[Nubius]

Hmmm, strange indeed, and technically it shoulda been no problem since it's all the same kind of laptop.

Have you gone into the BIOS itself to see if the HD is seen in there? You might have to manually set it in the BIOS to recognize the HD. I remember for whatever reason my grandmas computer all of a sudden stopped seeing the hard drive and I had to go into the BIOS and actually change one of the options for the IDE devices for it to come up. Don't know how it got changed off that in the first place, but your problem sounds similar and it's all I can think to tell you at this point.

 

[Mündo]

I've looked a few times and cant seem to find anything that even alludes to there being a harddrive, except for the boot order and network boot order.

also...i tried disabling network boot on the slim chance that network boot was interfering with the computer's ability to see the hd...

no luck...

this bios is really awful

 

[Mündo]

update:

I put one of the hd's out of the a22's into my r40, and i got bluescreen right after post....somehow all 3 of the hd's are euchre'd...

im afraid if i try the hd from the r40 in one of the a22's the same thing might happen to it.

Another Update:

i put the 12GB drive into the r40 and reformatted it...and successfully installed winxp...

so its a problem with the a22m's seeing the drives...not actually dead hd's...what a relief...now i just have to figure out wtf is going on...lol

 

[Mündo]

lenovo wants $50 per call for out of warranty notebooks...ouch lol

 

[Nitestick]

thinkpads lock their hdd's to the individual laptop

 

[Mündo]

then why can i use the 12gb drive from one of the a22's in the r40?

can you help me with a solution? im really freaking out...one of them has already been sold and is getting picked up saturday...i have to have to up and running again before then.