Ultrabay

IBM UltraBay UltraBay1 is IBM's name for the swapable drive slot. With IBMs words: "The ThinkPad UltraBay, also standard with the system, is an intelligent bay that switches its pinout signals to allow the installation of standard and optional features in what would normally be just the FDD bay." Introduced back in the times of the 750 ThinkPads, this technology has gone through redesigns with almost every new generation of ThinkPad models, possibly leading to some confusion that is hopefully cleared up here. The following table gives an overview of the different UltraBay types, in which models they occurred and what drives are available for them. Note that the optical drive bay in G series ThinkPads is not an UltraBay in that the drives are fixed and not removable. On the media side different UltraBays relate to the form factor of the drives they accept, e.g early A, T and X series models can accept UltraBay devices up to 12.5mm in thickness, whereas current T and X series machines are limited to devices no more than 9.5mm thick.

Overview over UltraBay types and available devices

UltraBay Type	featured in	available drives (see UltraBay Devices for details)
UltraBay	355, 355C, 355CS, 360, 360C, 360CS, 360P, 360CE, 360CSE, 360PE, 370C, 750, 750C, 750CS, 750P, 755C, 755CE, 755CS, 755CSE, 755CV, 755CX, 760C, 760L, 760E	, 2.88 MB diskette, PCMCIA Cartridge, IBM Wireless Modem ARDIS, IBM Wireless Modem
UltraBay Thick	755CD, 755CDV, 760CD, 760E, 760ED, 760EL, 760ELD, 760LD, 760XD, 760XL, 765D, 765L, SelectaDock I, SelectaDock II	, 2.88 MB diskette, PCMCIA Cartridge, IBM Wireless Modem ARDIS, IBM Wireless Modem
UltraBay II	770, 770E, 770ED, 770X, 770Z, SelectaDock III
UltraBay FX	390, 390E, 390X, i Series 1720, i Series 1721
UltraslimBay	600, 600E, 600X, UltraBase, Portable Drive Bay
UltraBay 2000	A20m, A20p, A21e, A21m, A21p, A22e, A22m, A22p, A30, T20, T21, T22, T23, Dock, Dock II, UltraBase X2, Portable Drive Bay 2000
UltraBay Plus	A30, A30p, A31, A31p, R30, R31, R32, R40, T23, T30, UltraBase X3	, WorkPad Cradle, Numpad
UltraBay Slim	T40, T40p, T41, T41p, T42, T42p, T43, T43p, T60, T60p, Z60t, UltraBase X4, UltraBase X6, ThinkPad X4 Dock	, Serial/Parallel Port Adapter
UltraBay Enhanced	R50, R50p, R51, R52, Z60m ThinkPad Advanced Dock

Compatibility Matrix (read columns as slots with rows as devices that are compatible)

Slots Devices	UltraBay	UltraBay Thick	UltraBay II	UltraBay FX	UltraslimBay	UltraBay 2000	UltraBay Plus	UltraBay Slim	UltraBay Enhanced
UltraBay	yes	yes	Adapter	-	-	-	-	-	-
UltraBay Thick	-	yes	Adapter	-	-	-	-	-	-
UltraBay II	-	-	yes	-	-	-	-	-	-
UltraBay FX	-	-	-	yes	-	-	-	-	-
UltraslimBay	-	-	-	-	yes	-	-	-	-
UltraBay 2000	-	-	-	-	-	yes	yes	-	-
UltraBay Plus	-	-	-	-	-	-	yes	-	-
UltraBay Slim	-	-	-	-	-	Adapter	Adapter	yes	yes
UltraBay Enhanced	-	-	-	-	-	Adapter	Adapter	-	yes

Characteristics

• UltraBay: no hot swapping
• UltraBay Thick: Thicker version of UltraBay to support CD-ROM drive
• UltraBay II: supports hot swapping, blending has cut out edge on the right
• UltraBay FX: the combined Floppy drive and CD-ROM, DVD or CDRW mechanism found in the 390/390E/390X
• UltraSlimBay: supports hot swapping; Frame, rectangle like blending
• UltraBay 2000: supports hot swapping; Frame, blending has cut out egde on the right
• UltraBay Plus: same as UltraBay 2000, but can take the UltraBay Plus Device Carrier which in turn can hold the UltraBay Plus c500 Cradle or the UltraBay Plus Numeric Keypad
• UltraBay Slim: supports hot swapping; notably thinner than UltraBay 2000, cut out right edge in blending
• UltraBay Enhanced: supports hot swapping; slightly thicker than UltraBay Slim, but accepts UltraBay Slim devices

Linux Support

The pinout switching is done by the BIOS and hardware, so that it is completely transparent to the operating system.

• Floppy drives are supported by the standard floppy driver.
• ZIP drive support is possible through the ide-disk driver.
• IDE hard disks and optical drives are supported by the IDE or ata_piix driver in the linux kernel. SCSI emulation via ide-scsi is possible.
• Batteries are automatically handled by the hardware (and can be controlled by using tp_smapi).
• UltraBay Plus devices should be handled by the USB subsystem, but if the devices are is not known.

Hotswapping

Hotswapping is supposed to be supported as well, using hdparm to (un)register devices. People reported varying success with this (see below).

The ibm-acpi kernel module has an eject function (# echo eject > /proc/acpi/ibm/bay). This only manages the ACPI calls to power down the device and the bay. It does not actually unregister the device from the IDE driver. # cat /proc/acpi/ibm/bay shows "unoccupied" unless an IDE device is present, but the eject function still works and should still be used.

To unregister the device, try using the Debian hotswap package. This also allows the drive to be swapped as a normal user by default, which is useful. You should use hotswap to unregister the device and then # echo eject > /proc/acpi/ibm/bay. This was reported to work on a ThinkPad T23 (kernels 2.6.8.1, 2.6.14.2 and 2.6.15-arch) and T42 (kernel 2.6.13), but fails on a ThinkPad T43 (kernel 2.6.14.3).

Only IDE devices (HDD's, optical drives, zip drives) require special treatment - batteries, floppies and other devices can just be pulled from the bay, provided they are not mounted or in use at the time. However, you should still power them down first using the ibm-acpi eject function.

Help needed

How do you identify the ultrabay device in Linux?

External Sources

• IBMs page on using a second hard drive adapter in the Ultrabay 2000 slot under Linux

FOOTNOTES [Δ]

1. IBM originally used the spelling UltraBay with a capital B and later switched to Ultrabay with a lower b. We are sticking with the capital B here.