Ultrabay
UltraBay is IBMs name for the swapable drive slot. Introduced back in the times of the 770 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 and overview of the different UltraBay types, in which models they occured and what drives are available for them. Note that the optical drive bay in G series Thinkpads is not an UltraBay but that the drives are fixed here.
| UltraBay Type | featured in | available drives |
|---|---|---|
| UltraBay | 770, 770X | Floppy, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, HD, Battery |
| UltraSlimBay | 570, 570E, 600, 600E, 600X | Floppy, ZIP-100, CD-ROM, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, HD, Battery |
| UltraBay 2000 | A20, A21, A22, T20, T21, T22, X20, X21, X22, X23, X24 | Floppy, ZIP-100, ZIP-250, CD-ROM, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD-CDRW, DVD-RW, HD, Battery |
| UltraBay Plus | A30, A30p, A31, A31p, R40, T23, T30, X30, X31 | UltraBay 2000 devices plus WorkPad Cradle, Numpad |
| UltraBay Slim | R50, R50p, R51, R51p, T40, T40p, T41, T41p, T42, T42p, X40 | Floppy, DVD-ROM, DVD-CDRW, DVD-RW, HD, Battery |
On the media side UltraBay means basically just a mechanical form factor for drives. Up to the UltraBay Plus this means that the drives came within a special frame which included an interface adaptor as well. UltraBay Slim drives do not have neither the frame nor an interface adaptor anymore.
mechanical Characteristics
- UltraSlimBay: Frame, rectangle like blending
- UltraBay 2000: Frame, blending has cut out egde on the right
- UltraBay Slim: notably thinner than UltraBay 2000, cut out right edge in blending
Linux Support
Since the UltraBay interface is merely an IDE controller, all drives are supported by the IDE driver in the linux kernel. Hotswapping is supposed to be supported as well, using hdparm to (un)register devices. NOTE: This seems to be broken with 2.6 kernels. If UltraBay Plus devices are supported is not known.
