Thinkpads Forum

Picked up a used T410s. Exterior has some cracks, but it seems to operate fine. I just want to do some basic field stripping and see what parts are inside. I know it's got a 1.8" SSD. Is there a spare bay that will take a 2.5" HDD?

First thing I noticed is what appears to be a sim card under the battery. There's also a wireless provider sticker in the battery compartment, so I'm assuming this is a sim card for 3G or WWAN. I assume I can remove this as I won't be signing up for a 3G plan for the laptop.

But how to remove it? Pulling on it doesn't work. Pushing it in to potentially engage a spring loaded mechanism doesn't work. Kind of stumped here.



Admin note: Added PIC warning

serpico wrote:Is there a spare bay that will take a 2.5" HDD?

You can install an UltraBay HDD carrier instead of media drive.

OK, so I did a quick fieldstrip - optical drive, SSD, memory, keyboard - just to have a peak inside and note some make/model and part numbers.

Still haven't managed to get that SIM card out. I guess the blue tab has been pulled out. Tried using tweezers, but no luck. Anybody got any suggestions?

ajkula66 wrote:

serpico wrote:Is there a spare bay that will take a 2.5" HDD?

You can install an UltraBay HDD carrier instead of media drive.

Pretty neat. Do these take standard 2.5" SATA HDD's? I've got an old drive that came with my T60 laying around; may as well put it to use if I can.

serpico wrote:Pretty neat. Do these take standard 2.5" SATA HDD's?

Yes they do.

ajkula66 wrote:

serpico wrote:Pretty neat. Do these take standard 2.5" SATA HDD's?

Yes they do.

Thanks!

According to your picture, there is no SIM card installed. The black piece is what the SIM card rests/slides on. There's no spring-loaded action either; simply push it in and when you want to remove it, finger/thumb pressure on the SIM and slide it out. I have the same socket on my X300 systems.

rkawakami wrote:According to your picture, there is no SIM card installed. The black piece is what the SIM card rests/slides on. There's no spring-loaded action either; simply push it in and when you want to remove it, finger/thumb pressure on the SIM and slide it out. I have the same socket on my X300 systems.

Thanks. I had assumed the green piece under the black piece was the card. Guess the seller took it out prior to selling. Cool.

I was checking to see if this laptop has the pre-desktop/Thinkvantage partition. Appears not.

On startup, when I press the Thinkvantage button, I get the 'Startup Interrupt Menu', which has the following options:

ESC: resume normal startup
F1: enter BIOS setup utility
F12: choose temporary startup device
CTRL+P: enter Intel Management Engine setup

In Disk Management, the 120GB SSD is partitioned as follows:
1st partition: NTFS, system reserved, 100MB, 72% of which is free space
2nd partition: NTFS, system partition, 112GB

What's on that first partition?

serpico wrote:
What's on that first partition?

That's a partition that a W7 install creates. You have no recovery partition, and you shouldn't - at least in my opinion - have one on the SSD to begin with.

ajkula66 wrote: That's a partition that a W7 install creates. You have no recovery partition, and you shouldn't - at least in my opinion - have one on the SSD to begin with.

What's the purpose of that W7-created partition? Can I remove it and opt not to create a new one on a fresh install of W7?

serpico wrote:What's the purpose of that W7-created partition?

I'm not entirely certain.

Can I remove it and opt not to create a new one on a fresh install of W7?

AFAIK, the answers are "no" and "no". Personally, I wouldn't be bothered by a 100MB partition in the least...

The small one is the boot-partition.
Without it, it won't work!

RealBlackStuff wrote:The small one is the boot-partition.
Without it, it won't work!

My Windows 7 desktop has no such partition (or at least not one that I can see in Disk Management). It boots directly from a regular Win7 OS partition.

Please confirm you are looking at Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management. A small, un-lettered, partition should be displayed before your C: partition. On my X300 W7Pro installation it's listed as SYSTEM_DRV. If you are looking at a Windows Explorer window (i.e., "Computer"), then you won't see it as W7 hides it from you with that view.

rkawakami wrote:Please confirm you are looking at Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management.

That's exactly where I'm looking.

rkawakami wrote:A small, un-lettered, partition should be displayed before your C: partition. On my X300 W7Pro installation it's listed as SYSTEM_DRV. If you are looking at a Windows Explorer window (i.e., "Computer"), then you won't see it as W7 hides it from you with that view.

The first two partitions are two different, active, W7 OS partitions. No small boot partition, as I'm seeing on the T410s.

Technet (see below) wrote:This “stub” of a partition, which is new in Windows 7, serves two functions. First, it holds the Boot Manager code and the Boot Configuration Database. Second, it reserves space for the startup files required by the BitLocker Drive Encryption feature. If you ever decide to encrypt your system drive using BitLocker, you won’t have to repartition your system drive to make it possible.

More info: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/maga ... 41289.aspx

serpico wrote:

rkawakami wrote:Please confirm you are looking at Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management.

That's exactly where I'm looking.

rkawakami wrote:A small, un-lettered, partition should be displayed before your C: partition. On my X300 W7Pro installation it's listed as SYSTEM_DRV. If you are looking at a Windows Explorer window (i.e., "Computer"), then you won't see it as W7 hides it from you with that view.

The first two partitions are two different, active, W7 OS partitions. No small boot partition, as I'm seeing on the T410s.

I've seen that before, but very rarely. When I happen to find such examples, they're usually OEM installs.

Traditionally, there is supposed to be a 100MB "System Reserved" partition that manages the bootup of Windows. But in these special cases, where there is no such partition, the C drive becomes bootable and a "Recovery" partition is supposed to sit alongside it. (I'm talking about the 12~15GB partition that holds a factory image of the C drive.) For the sake of simplicity, for the OEMs, they "hacked" together a custom Windows image that will boot independently, without the "System Reserved" partition, to make deploying the factory image more simplistic and straightforward. I have also seen said "Recovery" partition being used as the system partition, containing an option to restore from the factory image in the "System Recovery Options" menu.

Sure that works for rolling out a factory image onto hundreds of thousands of PCs, but it becomes quite a hassle for the PC tech who has to work with this stuff on a daily basis... (I speak from experience.)

It's because of this, that I've defaulted to blowing away, and installing a clean copy of Windows, onto every PC I purchase brand new.

RealBlackStuff wrote:

Technet (see below) wrote:This “stub” of a partition, which is new in Windows 7, serves two functions. First, it holds the Boot Manager code and the Boot Configuration Database. Second, it reserves space for the startup files required by the BitLocker Drive Encryption feature. If you ever decide to encrypt your system drive using BitLocker, you won’t have to repartition your system drive to make it possible.

More info: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/maga ... 41289.aspx

Thanks. That explains it. When I did a fresh install on my desktop, I first used GParted to create all the partitions, then just pointed W7 install to the partition I wanted it installed in. Thus, no System Reserved partition.

More color: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... ded248247f

However, if you install on a drive that has multiple partitions, the recovery environment is stored in a folder in the root of your installation drive, so if you install to a partition with a label of C:\ it will be located at C:\Recovery.

Though I don't see a 'Recovery' folder in either Win7 partition on my desktop.

serpico wrote:Though I don't see a 'Recovery' folder in either Win7 partition on my desktop.

Oh, it's there alright. It's a hidden system folder.

In order to see it, you'd have to uncheck "Hide protected operating system files" from within Folder options.

that1nerd wrote:

serpico wrote:Though I don't see a 'Recovery' folder in either Win7 partition on my desktop.

Oh, it's there alright. It's a hidden system folder.

In order to see it, you'd have to uncheck "Hide protected operating system files" from within Folder options.

Correct you are, sir! I forgot that I had protected OS files hidden in Explorer options. There is a 'Recovery' folder in both Win7 partitions on my desktop.

that1nerd wrote:For the sake of simplicity, for the OEMs, they "hacked" together a custom Windows image that will boot independently, without the "System Reserved" partition, to make deploying the factory image more simplistic and straightforward.

I sometimes help out at the IT department at the local college when they have tasks that require lots of hands on work. So I made Win7 installs on T430 and T420 machines, installs that would later be uploaded to SCCM as a basis for machine images there. They didn't want this System Reserved partition either, so I remember simply deleting this partition, and then running the fixmbr command from the install disc to make the C: partition itself bootable.