Upgrade T420S main hdd (not 2nd bay)

[V4705]

Hi
I'm looking to replace my SSD main drive to a 1TB regular (spinning) HDD.
Can you please advice me which HDD to get, and what to take in mind before opening this laptop? (I replaced dozens of HDD and mems before, but lenovo may surprise me with something non-generic that I'd love to know before ).

Edit: my current drive is "ssdsa2bw160g3l".


Many thanks!

[ZaZ]

I believe the T420s uses a 7mm drive, which means the biggest drive that will fit in it is a 500GB. If you want a 1TB drive, the only way to get one in the T420s is to replace the optical drive with a hard drive using the hard drive caddy.

If you're not using WWAN I might suggest picking up a small mSATA SSD and then a 500GB platter drive for the main bay. This way you can use the mSATA as the boot drive speed and the 500GB for storage where performance is not as critical I have this set up on my X220i, which also uses a 7mm bay. It's quite slick. Good luck and welcome to TPF.

[V4705]

Is this a good choice to use for the OS in T420S: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820148611 ?

Thanks!

[ZaZ]

There's little difference in SSD performance in my opinion, though others here will disagree. I would buy the SSD with the lowest price in the size you prefer from a reputable brand, which certainly Crucial is. My mSATA SSD is 80GB, which is plenty for Windows unless you've got a bunch space hogging applications. If so you can always bump up to a 128GB drive.

[Cigarguy]

^^^ Yep, pretty much what ZaZ said.