Thinkpads Forum

I have a T420 with a USB 3 Express Card and it works great. It's just that when I pull out the USB device then the card comes with it. I don't suppose there's some ingenious way of making sure it stays there permanently.

I *think* I remember hearing someone in a youtube vid say they bent the chassis or something to make their card permanent but it's quite possible I've got things muddled.

Thank you!

Usually they are 2-port cards, why not hold one finger on the other slot (or cable), while you pull out the (other) cable?
Or if you are handy: remove keyboard and KB bezel to begin with.
Then find a place in the express cage to put a screw through which would just hit the side of that card.
Then make a screw-matching dent in that card's side to hold it in place.
The dent (one only) should [only] look a bit like one of these, forget the dimensions on the pic:

Have fun!

Indeed The ExpressCard mechanism of recent Thinkpads is abominable, and the cards are almost guaranteed to come out when you pull the USB device out, unless you physically hold them in place as RBS suggested.

I would be cautious with any ideas of permanent attachments. These USB cards are notoriously finicky, and can fail / become flaky. You would not want any "permanent" attachment become "too permanent", should you ever need to swap out a faulty card.

To remove/replace that USB-card, remove KB and KB-bezel again, remove that 'card-screw', remove/replace the USB-card.
All done!

The insertion/removal force of a usb plug is much higher than that of the expresscard slot.

So I always make the usb connections before plugging in the card, and always remove the usb connections after ejecting the card.

The Windows taskbar icon to "remove device" works very well. If I'm running a hard disk off a usb 3.0 expresscard, I use the icon to eject the card, which also flushes the hard drive queue. There is no compromise in data safety with this procedure.