Replacing Hard Drive in Panasonic Toughbook Y2/W2/T2
Update:
Now it’s possible to upgrade hard drive without clipping pins. So you still be able to insert the drive in an external case or other laptop later if you want to.
Cover the first three pins of the HDD connector with electrostatic tape (see picture). After replacing the cable, make sure there is no connection between pin 41 and the mainboard. Now it’s possible to use any 5 volt 2,5 inch ATA-6 HDD and still be able to use the disk in an external case if operating system fails.
Via: http://www.leog.net
Toughbook W2 HHD cable modification.
The Panasonic Toughbook models CF-Y2/W2/T2 and CF-Y4/W4/T4 are a 3.3.Volt notebooks and as such NOT compatible with standard 5 Volt notebook hard drives. 3.3 Volt version of HDDs are
only available via OEM suppliers. BUT most modern drives seem to be internally compatible with 3.3Volt usage and can be made to run on 3.3Volt by clipping two power supply pins. This recipe is from the Japanese CF-R3 site.
It has been tested on the CF-R2 using a Hitachi 80GB drive and now by myself on the CF-W2 and T2 using a Western Digital Scorpio ATA-6 120GB drives (WD1200BEVE 120GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache), both times replacing the original Toshiba MK4025GASL.
WARNING: By clipping the pins you make the new harddrives incompatible for
normal 5Volt usage. You will probably loose your warranty and may damage your
notebook. You should make a backup of your data before starting!
Other HHD models reported to be compatible:
- Fujitsu MHV2120AH 120 GB, 5200rpm 8mb cache
Hi.. thank you for your trick. I have done it with Samsung 120 GB (HM120.., sorry I do not remember the last two letters as identifier). Anyway, It works well with Linux (Ubuntu Ver. 8.02). Unfortunately, I could not install Windows on it. The comment was : IT HAS NO COMPATIBILITY PARTITION FOR WINDOWS. I have tried with Win XP Pro 32 and Win Server 2004 SP1.
Any suggestion to make it suitable with Windows?
Thank you for any reply.
I had successful installation in reverse order: after installing Win XP on a fresh HDD I created 2 more partitions. One was used for backup and the other onewas used by Ubuntu during quite strait forward installation. Ubuntu installer even offered dual boot loader option.
Try this: Create a new primary partition. Boot with your Win CD. Format newly created partition in FAT32. After this operation install Win on this partition.
Please let me know how it goes.
Where i can find the HDD Cable of panasonic cf-w2?
I have been trying to figure out for months why my Panasonic T2’s network card was no longer working since putting in a new hard drive ! ( HITACHI HTS541616J9AT00 )
thanks to you and this excellent tip, its now all working again ! superb tech note !
thanks to the Japanese original note as well !
Call Heartland (Panasonic official service provider). Contact info can be found here. last time I paid $23 + $10 for ground shipping. Let me know if you have problems with them locating the part number.