Metal clips inside hard drive slot?

[thinkpac]

Last night I upgraded the hard drive in my T60. When I took the old drive out, I noticed the slot was kinda dirty, so I pushed a paper towel in there to try to clean it up a bit. When I took the paper towel out, it took out a little piece of metal along with it! I didn't notice at first, but inside the slot, there are 2 metal clips that protrude diagonally upward about 20 degrees or so. So the paper towel must have snagged onto one of them and pulled it out. How important are these clips? What is their purpose?

[mgo]

Last night I upgraded the hard drive in my T60. When I took the old drive out, I noticed the slot was kinda dirty, so I pushed a paper towel in there to try to clean it up a bit. When I took the paper towel out, it took out a little piece of metal along with it! I didn't notice at first, but inside the slot, there are 2 metal clips that protrude diagonally upward about 20 degrees or so. So the paper towel must have snagged onto one of them and pulled it out. How important are these clips? What is their purpose?

Those clips seem to be designed to help hold the hard drive in, and aid in aligning it, especially if the drive cover is not in place. Without the clips the near zero insertion force SATA connectors might jiggle loose and the drive would slip back while the drive was running. (with ugly results!)

Just be careful when inserting the drive so it is indeed making proper contact with the SATA interface, and otherwise "don't worry, be happy." Seems to be crappy design.

[thinkpac]

I too thought they might be for helping to align the drive, although they bend down very easily, so it's hard to see how they could be used to position the much heavier drive. I also don't think they are meant to keep the drive from disconnecting from the connector, otherwise you wouldn't be able to take the drive out!

Whatever their purpose, I actually managed to get the clip back into place just now! I thought it'd be an impossible task, but thankfully there is some iron in the clip, so I took a screwdriver with a magnetic tip, and gently lowered the clip into place and then pushed it back in!