[Thinkpad] About The 7K60 Firmware...(the famous ..or infamous)

Hi, dearest everyone
I have no choice but digging up this old topic once again, but after my strenuous effort on finding relevant documents on the Google, HGST, and all kinds of forums for about 2 weeks, the mailing list is the best place I hope to get my answer.

I already know that a 7K60 containing HPA will be screwed up if one upgrade its firmware, the "SET MAX" command will fail, and the space occupied may never be available. And I'm also acknowledged that the 48-bit LBA capability will be disabled (Well, does this really matter??) after upgrading the firmware.

BUT!! HERE'S MY QUESTION:
How about if I upgrade a brand new 7K60 in the first place? Will the drive still be fully functional? I mean, to be specific, will it be able to install a functional HPA later on? Did anyone try this?

Thanks for your time and help!!

For your information, I've made several tests on 7K60 already. About fighting the evil, annoying "intermittent clicking sound" while entering the low power idle stage, here're the results:
1) software approach:
   the Intel Application Accelerator is no longer available, and the HGST PowerBoost 2K makes no difference. Power Management from the windows don't do any good either.
2) firmware approach(adjustment):
   I) the Feature Tools from HGST, the APM adjustment doesn't do any good, at least in my perceptive.
  II) Yet the AAM in FTools worked! It really reduced the noise a lot, but that's in cost of performance, so it's not an ideal solution to me.
3) soft pads: Well, actually, I found a kind of acoustic absorbing product in Japan while I surfed on the web which meant to be attached on 2.5" drive (they also have 3.5" ones), but I can't be sure if they can be tucked into ThinkPad's or not, so I didn't bother to order it from JP.
4) firmware upgrade:
  I) the latest firmware should be A6EA from Dell's website, but I can't get it work on a retail 7K60 anyhow, even when I tried to extract the file and alter its discrimination method.
 II) the A6DA on the IBM site can't be applied directly on 7K60 with A68A firmware, which believed is the latest version of firmware on retail 7K60s. However, I discovered some discussions on China's ThinkPad users forum saying that one should upgrade to A6BA first (w/ an altered FW.PRO, of course) in order to upgrade later on to A6DA. And this worked! the clicking sound was really diminished to minimal.

But the nightmare began. I found out I lost my HPA function and it's capacity forever! I tried disabling the HPA in my BIOS, but fruitless. I tried to access it using Pheonix's FW tools (included in IBM's recovery cd), but respond that the drive would not accept SET MAX command. I've also tried low level format using DDD-SI and set capacity func. in the FTOOLS, but none worked. Finally, I surrendered and exchanged another new drive from my retailer. :'(

Another two interesting facts during my 7K60 adventure are:
1) when I tried to use the IBM's recovery cd for my X31 when the 7K60 firstly installed, I forgot to disable the HPA in the BIOS in advance. The result is, it only took 2 out of 3 cds to recover, the windows came to an activation screen which mentioned by another mailing list user before, BUT! the predesktop area is still accessible! Strangely enough, it lacked the "restore to factory content" and "use RRPC" option(no icon for them)!
2) I continued to use the drive above to reinstall WindowsXP using my own cd-rom, succeeded with all available capacity seen (no HPA's 2.4GB occupied), partitioned into 2 drives, C & D, but I found out the D drive can't be formatted nomatter how. And only after I disabled the HPA in the BIOS then I successfully formatted the D drive, however, my predesktop area were gone along with the format procedure.
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Received on Tue Jan 25 19:35:26 2005