7mm Drives into 9.5mm Drive Bay Caddy - Options

[Tableteer]

Keywords: 7 mm, 9.5 mm, HDD, SSD, caddy, adapter, tray, frame, bracket

7 mm high 2.5" drives, in particular SSDs, are becoming more common. Some newer Thinkpad models have internal drive bays exclusively for them. A situation many of us with previous generation models face with increasing frequency is how to insert newer 7 mm drives in a bay designed to accommodate 9.5 mm drives. So far there are 3 types of options.

1. Ad Hoc, Do It Yourself Solution
- The advice on this thread, the only relevant one I was able to locate at this site, was to fashion your own spacer using cardboard strips: How: Make 7mm SSD fit & work in 9.5mm Caddy/Space on a X61T? http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=103682
- I've seen posts on other forums recommending double sided tape and other ad hoc solutions.
- Basically, the idea is to put some kind of padding sufficient to fill the 2 mm gap. There are varying degrees of effectiveness.

2. Drive Manufacturer Supplied Frame or Adapter Included in Retail Boxes
- As an example, the solution for Intel retail drives is to include a removeable frame that goes on top using extended screws allowing a natively 7 mm drive to have an optional height of 9.5 mm: http://www.google.com/search?q=intel+ssd (go to Images)
- Other drive manufacturers have kits for notebooks and desktop bays included in the retail box that tries to be system manufacturer agnostic.
- Depending the design, using such adapters, if one could get hands on them, on OEM drives sold by Lenovo may invalidate their warranty. For example, trying to fit one of those Intel frames on Intel manufactured Lenovo drives requires portions of the label to become damaged in order to replace the screws on the top cover as if taking apart the cover isn't bad enough. The label clearly states it must remain intact.
- Lenovo does not supply such adapters when the drive is ordered separately from the system.

3. Lenovo Adapter
- I discovered this: Looking for 2MM spacer for 7MM drive http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2257424
- Scroll down to the photo in the 07-14-2012, 10:09 PM post by StarTech (very last one at the time of this writing). That is characteristically a Lenovo OEM drive with its attached black plastic pull tab. The drive caddy and more particularly the rubber rails are of interest. He's trying to put a Samsung 830 SSD (a 7 mm drive) into his W520 (which has 9.5 mm bay).
- Could someone help fill in the part number? It's not up on Lenovo.com in Storage Adapters category. It's probably cataloged as a repair part although consumers may be able to order it at will.
- It's not the same the one for 9.5 mm drives. The rubber rails have extra 2 mm padding inside instead of being completely hollow. I can't tell from the photo but there may also be a slight difference in the sheet metal piece at the 2 corners opposite the pull tab. On the caddy I have, it's slightly raised such that it's nearly flush with the top of a 9.5 mm drive; I measured these corners in question at 9 mm with the rest of the side at 6.5 mm high. Looking at their ends, the rubber rails in the photo doesn't seem to accommodate the slightly elevated corners and from that angle, I can't see the side profile of the caddy to verify whether the corners are indeed different.

[permutations]

My answer is probably too late for you, but here it is. Maybe it will help someone else.

The IBM part number is 04W1640. And although Lenovo does its best to hide the fact, it is sold on the IBM site for a whopping $40. StarTech said that "some robbers" are charging $40 for the part. The robber is Lenovo/IBM. That is the retail price.

Lenovo also works hard to hide the Hardware Maintenance Manuals. All the links to it are broken. You must have the part number to order from the IBM site, and you need this to get the part number. I was lucky enough to find the HMM for my own Thinkpad, a T420:

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/guides- ... MIGR-76853

This is the link to the IBM parts site:

http://www-304.ibm.com/shop/americas/co ... _main.html

I really need this part myself, which is why I know all this. But I can't bring myself to hand over $40 for two small pieces of rubber. They're very hard to come by on eBay. I've seen it only once, and it was sold.

[RealBlackStuff]

Lenovo also works hard to hide the Hardware Maintenance Manuals. All the links to it are broken.

Before you tell any BS, it's a well known fact that Lenovo replaced all the IBM webpages with Lenovo webpages, on their own website.
All Hardware Maintenance Manuals (HMMs) can be found easily and on one webpage to begin with:
Thinkpad HMMs, old link: http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail. ... MIGR-39298
and here's the new link: http://download.lenovo.com/express/hmm_ ... ebook.html
HMMs for other machines can be found through there as well.

[rjashall]

I have a T60 and have installed a 7mm hard drive - would this part fit my laptop (suffice to say I am not moving it around much at the moment!)

If not has anyone any idea what part number I should be looking for?

[RealBlackStuff]

Put it in the regular caddy with the screws, together with the rubber rails, and stick a layer of 2-3mm foam rubber or similar on top of the HD/SSD (between the rails) to stop it from 'flapping'.
You'll be fine after that.