Fujitsu Stylistic 3400 HD Backup/Replacement

[TCIII]

Hi all,

I recently bought a Fujitsu Stylistic 3400 tablet pc off of eBay for integration into my Stargate SG-IP home automation system as some of the members here have done.

After I had messed around with the tablet for a while, I got to thinking what if the hard drive dies?

The next question to come to mind was how do you mirror the original 6GB drive onto a new hard drive?

So I rounded up a couple of 2.5 in HD to 3.5 in HD adaptors so I can read the original drive and hopefully mirror it to the new drive which is a Fujitsu 40GB drive.

I plan to use Norton Ghost 2003 to do the mirroring by hooking the original drive and the new drive to my PC.

Has anyone here tried this and were you successful?

Regards,
TCIII

 

[jwilson56]

Yep... thats exactly how I did it.... used the adapters on a desktop PC.


John

 

[TCIII]

John,

How did you go about removing the hard drive from its compartment in the bottom of the tablet?

It would appear to be best to disconnect the ribbon cable at the motherboard end and then gently remove the drive (it apprears to be a press-in fit) from its cradle while making sure that the ribbon cable does not get damaged since it is wedged in between the drive connector and the compartment wall.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I do not want to damage the hard drive ribbon cable.

Regards,
TCIII

 

[IVB]

How did you go about removing the hard drive from its compartment in the bottom of the tablet?

There's a good thread on the CQC forum complete with pics here.

 

[TCIII]

IVB,

Thanks for the response.

Much appreciated!

Regards,
TCIII

 

[TCIII]

If you are trying to clone your 3400 tablet pc hard drive and can't get your PC to recognize the drive, it probably your adapter causing the problem.

Here is what I have found out concerning 44 pin to 40 pin adapters and the older Toshiba 6GB drive that is in the 3400 tablet pc:

The replacement Fujitsu 40GB hard drive has interface pins 41 +5v logic and 42 +5v motor pins shorted together (made common) on its connector.

The tablet Toshiba hard drive does not short (make common) pins 41 and 42 together on its connector.

The 44 pin to 40 pin adapter (CompUSA brand) only provides +5v power to pin 42 and not pin 41 so the Toshiba drive electronics will not get +5v and will fail to talk to the motherboard BIOS.

One solution is to buy a different adapter where the traces from the 44 pin side of the adapter are open and pins 41 and 42 can be jumpered together or a different adapter (GQ Brand at Fry's Electronics), unlike the one I am using, that has pins 41 and 42 already jumpered.

Regards,
TCIII

 

[TCIII]

Hi all,

I was finally able to clone the 6GB Stylistic 3400 hard drive onto the new 40GB replacement hard drive with Norton Ghost 2300 using my desktop PC.

However, after installing the replacement 40GB in the Stylistic 3400, all I got at boot up was a message saying the there was no operating system present.

Well, after experiencing the above bootup failure I did the following:

I created a Windows 98SE bootable floppy and used it to format (FAT32) the Fujitsu 40GB drive that I am trying to use to transfer the mirror image of the Stylistic 3400 6GB hard drive that has Windows 2000 on it.

I made the 40GB drive a boot drive and placed it in the Stylistic 3400 in place of the 6GB drive.

When I turned the Stylistic 3400 on, the tablet booted to the C> prompt so I know that the Stylistic 3400 can see and boot from the new 40GB drive.

However, when I attempt to use Norton Ghost 2003 on my PC with both the 6GB Stylistic 3400 drive and the new 40GB drive hooked to my desktop PC, the cloning appears to go okay, but when I put the new 40GB drive back in the Stylistic 3400, it starts up and again says that there is no operating system present.

What am I doing wrong? Am I not cloning the 6GB drive correctly? It appears like the cloning process is making the new 40GB drive unbootable.

Comments?

Regards,
TCIII

 

[samgreco]

Odds are that the PC you are using to Ghost is seeing the drive(s) with a different geometry.

I would put the drives in the Fujitsu, go into the BIOS and write down the exact drive settings for each drive. Heads, cylinders, etc. Then put the drives in the PC and MANUALLY set them up in the BIOS being sure that the geometry matches. Then try Ghosting again, etc.

 

[TCIII]

Hi all,

The solution to my problem was very simple.

A member on tabletpcbuzz.com suggested that I take the 40GB drive, that had been cloned with the 3400 6GB drive, and use my Windows 98SE boot disk to run fdisk /mbr on the 40GB drive while it was in my desktop PC.

Fdisk /mbr initializes the the bootstrap program inside the MBR (Master Boot Record) on the hard drive.

Apparently, after using Norton Ghost 2003 to do the cloning, the MBR somehow gets de-initialized and will not let the BIOS use the bootstrap program to get Windows booted up.

So the mystery is solved.

Because of this discovery, I suspect that drive geometry has nothing to do with cloning the 6GB drive to the 40GB drive on a desktop PC like I did.

Hope that this helps other HA memebers who want to clone their 3400/3500 6GB drives before they die.

Regards,
TCIII

 

[IVB]

Dumb question: How does the Microsoft license/activation thingey work when you clone a hard disk? I wouldn't have the key as it came with XP Pro, I presume my W2K 3400 is the same thing.

 

[Mike]

Activation started with W2K, you wont have an issue (at least as far as I have ever seen).
EDIT: I meant XP.

 

[gregoryx]

Did this with four 3500s with a USB-IDE enclosure for the PC and Acronis (similar to Ghost). Image copies worked great.

 

[upstatemike]

Are these things touch screens or stylus only?

 

[gregoryx]

Touch. Not all that attractive, but very functional in every other way.

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