I have a 2005 vintage IBM A52 ThinkCentre I have been using to run my business till software for the last 15 years, using an old version of Xubuntu (12) as the OS. Lately the original 20-year-old HDD has been showing signs of wear, just intermittently failing to boot on the first attempt. So, I decided to replace the HDD and clone the system onto a new drive. I didn't want to just buy a new computer because the hardware setup first time was a bit fiddly.
The IBM A52 ThinkCentre came out at the inception of SATA, and the BIOS does not explicitly refer to it, only as a serial IDE alternative to 'parallel' IDE interface. However, the motherboard has a SATA data cable and SATA connectors are available alongside the Molex power connectors, and these connectors are used by the original drive.
First I tried an SSD (Western Digital Green 120 Gb). Cloning the system onto it went fine, but when I installed it the BIOS failed to detect it. I checked it using a SATA USB adapter and everything seemed to be there, but the BIOS could not see it when plugged into the SATA cable.
Plan B used a 'reconditioned' 80 Gb SATA HDD as a direct replacement. The cloning was straightforward and the 'new' HDD worked first time.
From the successes and failures I infer the following:
- There is nothing wrong with the SSD I tried.
- There is nothing wrong with the SATA connectors on the motherboard.
- The BIOS and motherboard hardware may not be up to handling an SSD, or at least this particular SSD.
So, my primary question is, is using an SSD in a computer of this age a lost cause?
Depending on the answer to the above, is it possible to find a make/model of SSD that would be OK working with a first-gen SATA setup? Is there some other chicanery I could do to get the SSD I have to work in this computer?
Update 2025-09-05
I am posting the following in case others find it helpful.
Following the helpful comments to this post I upgraded the BIOS and also tried updating the SATA motherboard cable to SATA III. It turns out that the BIOS is only able to 'see' the SSD in very specific circumstances, on first power on before booting. From then on it becomes invisible.
I found the SSD was bootable when mounted externally via a USB adapter, but of course it was very slow.
All the parts of the system work, they just don't seem to want to work together. I am left with the conclusion that, barring further ideas and suggestions, trying to use an SSD on a machine this old just isn't going to work.
The good news is that my investigations uncovered a second SATA socket on the motherboard, so it is possible to mount a second HDD in the A52 chassis (I know because I tried it and it worked).
POSTSCRIPT 2025-09-10
Just when I had given up I was donated a job lot of old laptop HDDs and SSDs, all of them much larger capacity than I needed. So just for fun I went through them all to see if any of them would work. Surprisingly I found none of the HDDs worked, and only one of the SSDs worked (for the record, a Samsung). I have now cloned the old drive onto the working SSD and my ancient ThinkCentre has a new lease of life.
That still leaves the question as to why the drives that didn't work failed, and how to tell the difference without the work of actually installing them, so if anyone can enlighten me I would be pleased to hear from you.
