Just last week my Lenovo T430u's 500GB Toshiba HDD was afflicted with the clicking of death. I therefore called for a replacement and the recovery disks. The laptop has no internal optical drive so I bought the an external one, an Asus sdrw-08d2s-u to be more precise. It has a Y connector, the ugly double USB thing for the extra power instead of having an adapter. The laptop does not want to boot from the optical drive. It lights up and spins as if actually reading the disc. The optical drive appears in the boot manager, but just like when I select the empty HDD it tries to boot from it but then immediately goes back to the boot manager.
What I have tried:
1) I have checked the BIOS without having the optical drive plugged in. It clearly shows I have "USB CD" as having priority in the boot sequence.
2) With the drive plugged in, it is recognized and replaced "USB CD" with the name of the drive in the boot sequence. It is still first to boot.
3) Some would suggest not enough power, I dont know what I can do for that. The drive is plugged in with both USB plugs in the only 2 USB outlets I on the laptop. It does not appear to not have enough power, it spins and lights up just as it should. I have tried with only one of the USBs plugged in and it doesn't light up or spin any less.
4) I am sure the optical drive works. I have plugged it in my desktop computer, arranged the BIOS to have it boot first and it did so successfully while loading the Windows 8 install manager.
After all of that, I do not know what else to do or try. I feel like my laptop is just being damned stubborn. Thanks for any advice you could give!
What I have tried:
1) I have checked the BIOS without having the optical drive plugged in. It clearly shows I have "USB CD" as having priority in the boot sequence.
2) With the drive plugged in, it is recognized and replaced "USB CD" with the name of the drive in the boot sequence. It is still first to boot.
3) Some would suggest not enough power, I dont know what I can do for that. The drive is plugged in with both USB plugs in the only 2 USB outlets I on the laptop. It does not appear to not have enough power, it spins and lights up just as it should. I have tried with only one of the USBs plugged in and it doesn't light up or spin any less.
4) I am sure the optical drive works. I have plugged it in my desktop computer, arranged the BIOS to have it boot first and it did so successfully while loading the Windows 8 install manager.
After all of that, I do not know what else to do or try. I feel like my laptop is just being damned stubborn. Thanks for any advice you could give!