7 mm SSD in T60p

[Garth]

I'm thinking of fitting an SSD into my T60p but see there are 2 thicknesses of my preferred SSD, a Crucial M4. Can I fit a 7 mm thick M4 into the T60p? The reason is that if I get a different laptop in the future which takes 7 mm drives I could use the SSD in that.

Regards,

Garth

[slpin]

they usually come with weird plates to make it a 9.5?

[ScottyBoy]

they usually come with weird plates to make it a 9.5?

+1 - It's generally a plastic filler, which can be removed to drop it's height down to 7mm.

[ZaZ]

It'll work fine. The connectors sit at the bottom of the caddy regardless of whether it's a 7mm or 9.5mm drive and the bumpers will hold it in place.

[TuuS]

It'll work fine. The connectors sit at the bottom of the caddy regardless of whether it's a 7mm or 9.5mm drive and the bumpers will hold it in place.

Agreed, but if you have one of the chinese "knock-off" harddrive caddies, they can have very thin metal and without the support of the full height drive, the rubber bumbers won't have anything solid to secure to, so if you use a 7mm drive without the spacer plate, I'd recommend a factory caddy. You can easily tell the difference if you hold one without a harddrive, the cheap knock-offs can barely support their own weight.

ps. When secured to a full size drive the cheap caddies work fine

[Garth]

Thanks for all your help. I'll find out soon enough as I've ordered a 7mm Crucial M4 256 Gb for my T60p, also 4 Gb of memory to replace the 2 Gb it currently has. Everything else is working just fine so the upgrades should hopefully keep it usable for the next year or two as I think it's a brilliant laptop. It's been running Windows 7 with a 500Gb WD Black hard drive up to now, but having fitted an M4 SSD in my desktop PC I do notice the wait when booting up, and when loading programs. I have a USB enclosure ready and waiting for the HD if needed.

I'll let you know how I get on.

Regards,

Garth

[TuuS]

You might want to consider using your harddrive in an ultrabay adapter. I have some genuine lenovo in new conditoin in the forum for $40, and another of our members has a used one a bit cheaper if you're interested. You can also buy generics pretty cheap.

As for the ram, it would have been cheaper to get a 2gb and keep one of your 1gb chips. You can install 4gb, but only 3gb will be usable. You'll find that the T60 ram limitation makes these models ideally suited for SSD because your virtual memory will be much faster. When all your available ram is consumed, the system has to use harddrive space as ram, which not only is slower, but it tends to make the drive slower too if it has to perform this extra function. You'll love the SSD.

Good Luck

[Garth]

Thanks for the suggestion of the ultrabay adaptor which I may get in the future if needed. I'll keep this in mind but I live in the UK and postage from the US is quite expensive. I bought a new connector lead for one of my classic IBM M keyboards for my desktop PC from the US and the postage cost more than the lead! Worth it though. I run 2 desktop PC's both with M keyboards (made in Scotland, UK).

There is quite a lot of user info on the net about the pros and cons of using 3 Gb or 4 Gb in the T60p. I'm aware of the 3 Gb limitation. Some users say it makes no difference with 4 Gb and some others say that it does, so as the memory chips are quite cheap I thought I would just replace them both.

I have seen Ultrabay HD adaptors for sale in the UK on fleabay which is probably cheaper than having them shipped from the US.

Regards,

Garth

[TuuS]

I have seen Ultrabay HD adaptors for sale in the UK on fleabay which is probably cheaper than having them shipped from the US.

Generic adapters are very common, and go for about $15, but the genuine Lenovo have been selling over $100 on ebay since they are hugely popular now, but were not popular at all back in 2009 when lenovo stopped selling them.

Shipping to UK isn't that bad, it cost me $17 to ship them priority mail, and for that price I could ship one, or several... compared to $6 for domestic shipping. This isn't really bad considering it has to cross an ocean.

[Garth]

I've now fitted the Crucial M4 7mm 256 Gb SSD to my Thinkpad T60p. It installed without a problem - just fitted straight in. I've installed Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit plus lots of programs and data (60 Gb now free) and all seems to be OK. It's definitely worth it, as apart from the much quicker startup, all my progs load virtually instantly and the whole Thinkpad experience is just much snappier - and quieter. It's too soon yet to see if the battery life is longer than the 3-4 hours I was getting with the WD Scorpio Black HD previously. It's currently showing as 5hrs 18 mins left with 93% battery remaining - settings optimised for long battery life. Battery is original Panasonic extended type.

Thanks for all your help.

Regards,

Garth

[TuuS]

great news. Let us know what you think of the drive after you've used it for a while. You'll probably find the performance gain considerable when multitasking, as it can provide much faster virtual memory compared to a conventional drive.

[Garth]

I'm still using my T60p regularly fitted with the Crucial drive, but with only 250Gb available, space has recently been a problem. I've now fitted a SATA Ultrabay HD adaptor to take a 500 Gb WD HD and this works absolutely perfectly - fast SSD to boot and some 750 Gb for storage, with the option to slot in the DVD drive if needed. This shows how versatile the T series design is! The Ultrabay HD caddy cost a mere £10 from Ebay (about 7 dollars).

Amazingly the original Panasonic battery is still working well, showing some 83% full charge capacity after over 350 cycles and 6 years of use.