Thinkpads Forum

Hello all, I am delighted with my new X220, I can honestly say that it is the best laptop that I have ever had. The keyboard is fantastic to type on and it really does not feel like you are using an ultraportable (at all). I have an i5 2520M version with 8GB RAM and the default Toshiba (THNSNC128GCSJ) 128GB SSD.

The default SSD is a SATA II drive. I have a spare Crucial M4 (9.5mm version), I am thinking of modding it by removing the spacer, applying some electrical tape to the back of the top cover where the chips are and reassembling it with some shorter M2 3mm screws resulting in a 7mm drive. From my reading this seems to have been quite a popular mod.

My questions are:

1. Can I pls. check with you guys to see if the current Toshiba SSD drive is of a standard 7mm form factor and I will just be able to do a straight swap to the modded M4 using the same mounting caddy and spacers? I am away from home until next week, so don't have a screwdriver with me to open the bay and see how this default SSD is installed.

2. Is it a worthwhile upgrade? The M4 is just lying around and I was going to sell it on eBay (at a loss), so figured that it might be good to mod it and use it. I have another M4 in a desktop and it seems (slightly) faster than the the default Toshiba SATA II SSD in the X220.

3. Can I just confirm that doing this will not invalidate my Lenovo warranty. I imagine a simple drive swap will not, but just thought I would check.

I know that modding the SSD will invalidate it's warranty, but i'm not too worried about this as the M4 is said to be a very reliable drive and SSD prices seem to be continuing to drop, the 128GB M4 is now <£100, I paid £116 for it 6 weeks ago.

Thank You.

The Toshiba has to be a 7mm drive cause Lenovo wouldn't use a 9.5mm drive for a 7mm bay. You won't be able to do a straight swap. You'll need to modify either the SSD or the X220 to get it to fit.

Personally, I'd say it's not worth it. The benefit of a SSD is the near instantaneous seek times. Since they're all .1ms, they're won't be much of a difference in the SSDs for most uses. At least that's been my experience. I have SSDs in both my laptops and all three of my desktops. Oddly enough, the one that seems the fastest to me is my R60e. Though it has a SATA I controller, it runs Linux, which has lower overhead than Windows. It boots it like seven seconds.

Modifying your drive won't void your warranty in my opinion, but if you modify your X220, you're on less firm ground.

Another option for you, if you don't need WWAN, would be to sell you drive(s) and pick up the mSATA SSD. A mSATA SSD is a small SSD that plugs into the miniPCI slot on the motherboard. Once installed, it's seen as another hard drive. The benefit of this setup is you get the mSATA to use as the boot drive for speed and you can get a platter drive for the main bay to use for storage where speed isn't as important. I have this setup on my X220i(80GB Intel mSATA and 500GB Hitachi Z5K500). It's quite slick. If you click the Air vs X220 link in my signature, about half way down there's a picture of the mSATA in my X220i.

ZaZ wrote:The Toshiba has to be a 7mm drive cause Lenovo wouldn't use a 9.5mm drive for a 7mm bay. You won't be able to do a straight swap. You'll need to modify either the SSD or the X220 to get it to fit.

Personally, I'd say it's not worth it. The benefit of a SSD is the near instantaneous seek times. Since they're all .1ms, they're won't be much of a difference in the SSDs for most uses. At least that's been my experience. I have SSDs in both my laptops and all three of my desktops. Oddly enough, the one that seems the fastest to me is my R60e. Though it has a SATA I controller, it runs Linux, which has lower overhead than Windows. It boots it like seven seconds.

Modifying your drive won't void your warranty in my opinion, but if you modify your X220, you're on less firm ground.

Another option for you, if you don't need WWAN, would be to sell you drive(s) and pick up the mSATA SSD. A mSATA SSD is a small SSD that plugs into the miniPCI slot on the motherboard. Once installed, it's seen as another hard drive. The benefit of this setup is you get the mSATA to use as the boot drive for speed and you can get a platter drive for the main bay to use for storage where speed isn't as important. I have this setup on my X220i(80GB Intel mSATA and 500GB Hitachi Z5K500). It's quite slick. If you click the Air vs X220 link in my signature, about half way down there's a picture of the mSATA in my X220i.

How easy to install mSATA drive? My x220 is using Samsung 830 128GB drive right now, and there is no WWAN module in my x220.

Your X220 is most like WWAN upgradeable, meaning if you put the card in, it should work, provided you've got a data plan. The mSATA slot on the X220 sits under the palm rest. It shares the same slot with the WWAN card, so you can't have both. It took me 10 minutes or so to install the mSATA.