Thinkpads Forum

With good, decent-size SSD's finally becoming affordable, I'm going to upgrade some of my thinkpads to SSD.

My thinkpads have 9.5mm internal HDD bays, but new SSD drives are 7mm high. So I have some embarrassingly simple, newbie questions please...

Must I use some kind of 7mm to 9.5mm adapter? Or may I simply insert a 7mm-high SSD into the HDD bay?

I read in another thread to just jimmy-in the SSD using cardboard/paper, but won't that make the SSD vulnerable to overheating?

Also, do I need a caddy for the SSD, or can I re-use my thinkpad's existing HDD caddy (9.5mm) to instal the SSD?? Do SSD's have 4 screw-holes in their sides like HDDs?

(I'm leaning toward Crucial MX200 just because it includes a 7mm-to-9.5mm adapter... Is this the easist/best way to go for fit with thinkpad?)

I have two 7mm drives and both came with plastic rectangle boost plates for the drive. I don't use them and simply use the caddy and screws in the standard drive bay in my thinkpads. The T420s and some of the newer T series thinkpads require 7mm drives. I have yet to encounter any alignment problems with the power or SATA connectors between a 9.5mm and a 7mm. When you put on the rubber rails on the caddy you won't notice a difference. I tried the booster plate but it added weight and the additional height was pointless because the caddy fits the 7mm drives just the same.

You need a caddy or your SSD will rattle around in the drive bay and probably fall out of the SATA ports.

SkiBunny wrote:using cardboard/paper, but won't that make the SSD vulnerable to overheating?

No. And consider, some people install the units in lands hotter than Canada (such as Texas and Australia).

SkiBunny wrote:Must I use some kind of 7mm to 9.5mm adapter?
…
Is this the easist/best way to go for fit with thinkpad?

The easiest/best, most obsessive-perfection compulsive-wallet-opener, "as the designer intended"' way to fit 7 mm-thick no-moving-parts drive into 9 mm-thick ThinkPad SATA bay, is to use 7.0 mm SSD spacer rails for 9.5 mm bay (Plastik): FRU PN 04W1641, FRU PN 0A35880. http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drives#rails

SkiBunny wrote:Do SSD's have 4 screw-holes in their sides like HDDs?

They usually do, but you should check the documentation to be sure. If a maker does not bother to document their retail product, then I will not bother to buy it. Some people would rather gamble: buy first, try later, maybe seek documentation after that.

Hans Gruber wrote:I have two 7mm drives and both came with plastic rectangle boost plates for the drive. I don't use them and simply use the caddy and screws in the standard drive bay in my thinkpads. The T420s and some of the newer T series thinkpads require 7mm drives. I have yet to encounter any alignment problems with the power or SATA connectors between a 9.5mm and a 7mm. When you put on the rubber rails on the caddy you won't notice a difference. I tried the booster plate but it added weight and the additional height was pointless because the caddy fits the 7mm drives just the same.

You need a caddy or your SSD will rattle around in the drive bay and probably fall out of the SATA ports.

Sounds great, I think... If I understand correctly, for your older thinkpads you simply screwed your 7mm SSD into your old caddy from your old 9.5mm HDD?? (provided that the HDD caddy holes align with the SSD holes). Then just slid the caddy/SSD into the drive bay and it all aligned... no SSD height adapter needed because your old caddy & screws hold the SSD in-place.

So I suppose installing an SSD is the same fit as installing a "thin" HDD into a regular 9.5mm internal drive bay.

automobus wrote:

SkiBunny wrote:using cardboard/paper, but won't that make the SSD vulnerable to overheating?

No. And consider, some people install the units in lands hotter than Canada (such as Texas and Australia).

SkiBunny wrote:Do SSD's have 4 screw-holes in their sides like HDDs?

They usually do, but you should check the documentation to be sure. If a maker does not bother to document their retail product, then I will not bother to buy it. Some people would rather gamble: buy first, try later, maybe seek documentation after that.

Unfortunately SSD makers tend to not document where their SSD screw holes are located, so unless it's a common standard, that's frustrating because I like to know how/whether something will fit before buying. I've noticed a purchase reviewer claim his new Intel 535 SSD wouldn't fit into his laptop due to screw holes, but I'm skeptical because the photo of the Intel shows holes that look to be in the same position as an HDD.

Texas and Oz are cold compared to where I'm moving next yr - Singapore (on the equator). Many years ago thinkpads used to be made in Singapore, when they were hot

SkiBunny wrote:If I understand correctly, for your older thinkpads you simply screwed your 7mm SSD into your old caddy from your old 9.5mm HDD??

7mm and 9.5mm drives have the screw holes in the same spot, so this should not be a problem as the drive is still attached to the caddy.

SkiBunny wrote:Sounds great, I think... If I understand correctly, for your older thinkpads you simply screwed your 7mm SSD into your old caddy from your old 9.5mm HDD?? (provided that the HDD caddy holes align with the SSD holes). Then just slid the caddy/SSD into the drive bay and it all aligned... no SSD height adapter needed because your old caddy & screws hold the SSD in-place.

So I suppose installing an SSD is the same fit as installing a "thin" HDD into a regular 9.5mm internal drive bay.

This is not necessarily the whole story. Yes, the 7mm drives will have the same four side mounting screw holes for the caddy. Yes, the drive/caddy/rubber rail combination would allow proper alignment with the SATA connector inside the laptop's drive bay. However, as automobus pointed out a little bit earlier up-thread, the correct method would be to use the proper rubber rails which are designed for the 7mm thin drives (be it SSD or spinning platters). He provided a link to a ThinkWiki page but here's the thread that started the whole discussion:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=116890

TL;DR: Use the 9.5mm rubber rails designed for 7mm drives. If you use rubber rails designed for 9.5mm drives, then the 7mm drive could move a little bit but it will be limited in travel to about 2mm. If you don't use any rubber rails, it's hard to align the drive to the SATA connector (but it can be done), however the drive will flop around inside the drive bay - definitely not good.

rkawakami wrote:

SkiBunny wrote:Sounds great, I think... If I understand correctly, for your older thinkpads you simply screwed your 7mm SSD into your old caddy from your old 9.5mm HDD?? (provided that the HDD caddy holes align with the SSD holes). Then just slid the caddy/SSD into the drive bay and it all aligned... no SSD height adapter needed because your old caddy & screws hold the SSD in-place.

So I suppose installing an SSD is the same fit as installing a "thin" HDD into a regular 9.5mm internal drive bay.

This is not necessarily the whole story. Yes, the 7mm drives will have the same four side mounting screw holes for the caddy. Yes, the drive/caddy/rubber rail combination would allow proper alignment with the SATA connector inside the laptop's drive bay. However, as automobus pointed out a little bit earlier up-thread, the correct method would be to use the proper rubber rails which are designed for the 7mm thin drives (be it SSD or spinning platters). He provided a link to a ThinkWiki page but here's the thread that started the whole discussion:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=116890

TL;DR: Use the 9.5mm rubber rails designed for 7mm drives. If you use rubber rails designed for 9.5mm drives, then the 7mm drive could move a little bit but it will be limited in travel to about 2mm. If you don't use any rubber rails, it's hard to align the drive to the SATA connector (but it can be done), however the drive will flop around inside the drive bay - definitely not good.

automobus wrote:The easiest/best, most obsessive-perfection compulsive-wallet-opener, "as the designer intended"' way to fit 7 mm-thick no-moving-parts drive into 9 mm-thick ThinkPad SATA bay, is to use 7.0 mm SSD spacer rails for 9.5 mm bay (Plastik): FRU PN 04W1641, FRU PN 0A35880. http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drives#rails

Thanks for the clarifications about the proper caddy and side rails. The phrase I keyed on was obsessive-compulsive perfection, so I inferred (perhaps incorrectly??) that the 7-9.5mm side rail setup was, in practice, optional... and that the standard 9.5mm caddy & rails work fine in reality for a 7mm SSD, with or without a 7-9.5 SSD spacer?

Unfortunately, the 7-9.5 caddy/rails cannot be got here quickly. Same for the 7-9.5 SSD spacers, which are included with very few SSD's. I first considered the 250GB Samsung 850 Evo which is on-sale here now for $74, but it has no spacer, so I regrettably moved on to SSD's that do include a spacer like the Crucial MX200 or AData sx930 or Intel 535 retail pkg, all now $90 apiece @240gb. That's a significant price versus the Samsung850 when wanting multiple drives.

Likewise, I don't want the expense of buying 7-9.5mm caddy/rail setups for multiple thinkpads if I don't have to?... at some cost point for the upgrade I'd leave my thinkpad as-is.

SkiBunny wrote:.. and that the standard 9.5mm caddy & rails work fine in reality for a 7mm SSD, with or without a 7-9.5 SSD spacer?

In my experience, standard 9.5mm caddy and rails work just fine with a 7mm SSD. That's the setup I've had in dozens of ThinkPads so far. Just re-use what your current HDD sits in and you're good to go.

I first considered the 250GB Samsung 850 Evo which is on-sale here now for $74, but it has no spacer, so I regrettably moved on to SSD's that do include a spacer like the Crucial MX200 or AData sx930 or Intel 535 retail pkg, all now $90 apiece @240gb. That's a significant price versus the Samsung850 when wanting multiple drives.

I honestly wouldn't go for any of the SSDs that you've mentioned. My recommendations would be SanDisk Extreme Pro, OCZ Vector 150 (not 180) or Crucial MX100 - not BX100 or MX200 - if you're shopping for a less expensive drive.

My $0.02 only...

ajkula66 wrote:In my experience, standard 9.5mm caddy and rails work just fine with a 7mm SSD. That's the setup I've had in dozens of ThinkPads so far. Just re-use what your current HDD sits in and you're good to go.

I honestly wouldn't go for any of the SSDs that you've mentioned. My recommendations would be SanDisk Extreme Pro, OCZ Vector 150 (not 180) or Crucial MX100 - not BX100 or MX200 - if you're shopping for a less expensive drive.

Thanks for the tips!

As for the SSD, I respect & value your experienced feedback. I care most about the reliability, not the speed, which I suspect is also your priority. The MX100 isn't avail up here anymore. What's wrong with the intel 535? Or the MX200? I read MX200 can lose a write in a power failure (due to smaller capacitors than MX100), but in a laptop w/battery that's not a real problem for me. I'd love the SanDisk ExtremePro for $99 there at newegg but it's $160 here at newegg. I can get an Intel 730 for $10 more, which I assume is the gold standard (?) but outta my budget unless price drops this week. Back to sandisk, the sandisk ultra II is $100 here but in that price range I imagined the crucial mx200 and intel 535 were more reliable. These are all 240-250 GB which is my sweet spot for size & price.

SanDisk Ultra II uses TLC NAND which is not something I'd ever install in a system that I need to depend on.

Intel 535 utilizes a SandForce controller which has its own fair share of issues.

Intel 730 is a great drive if one can afford it. I've gone through several of them and was very happy with their behaviour.

I have yet to test MX200 personally, but am somewhat skeptical given the reviews that I've read.

My $0.02 only...

Anticipating your next question and to expand on what ajkula66 meant about TLC NAND... FLASH memory is what's in an SSD that stores the actual data. The first type of NAND FLASH cell that was created is now known as SLC, or single-level cell. SLC is kind of a misnomer; there's actually two voltage "levels" that the cell can retain. Those two levels translates directly to a single data bit (0 or 1). SLC is the most expensive design because of the overall size of the silicon chip, in relationship to the amount of storage that it can provide, is the largest among the different cell designs. In talking about silicon memory, size = cost. This is the main reason why an SLC SSD costs more than an MLC or TLC drive, given the same storage size between them.

MLC, or multi-level cell, was the first attempt to allow more storage for a given space of silicon. Nowadays, MLC generally means that two bits of data can be stored per cell, effectively doubling the amount of storage using only a slightly bigger piece of silicon real estate to do so. Therefore, you can get twice the memory for about the same price if the cell uses MLC design. In order to do this little bit (pun intended) of magic, each cell must be able to retain four distinct levels. TLC, or triple-level cells, expands on this idea by storing three bits of data per cell using eight different voltage levels. Both of these multiple-bits per cell designs have a higher chance of generating what's known as a "soft failure" than an SLC design. This means that sometimes the data in the cell may not be read out correctly. These read errors are mitigated by the chip's own error correction routines. As a user, you don't see the error in the data because the chip has (theoretically) self-corrected the data before it's given out to the computer's CPU. MLC generally has less of a chance to encounter these read errors than TLC, or put another way, TLC has the most chances of read errors among the differing cell designs. However, both MLC and TLC have another significant penalty when compared to SLC: endurance.

Endurance means that each storage cell can be re-written so many times before that particular cell it will fail to store the correct data. There's a memory controller built into the SSD that will spread around the usage of the memory so that an individual cell will not get hammered with erase and write operations all the time. This is known as "wear leveling" and is meant to extend the useful life of the drive. Each time the SSD is supposed to write new data, a different storage location within the FLASH memory will be used. SLC has an endurance of around 100,000 cycles. MLC is about 10,000 cycles and TLC is even less. Reading data out from a SSD, no matter what cell design it uses, does not reduce its usable lifetime.

A TLC drive would be useful as a read-mostly storage medium. Using it as your main drive where you are constantly writing new data or changing old data, is probably not a good idea. Also, not all of these SSD memory controllers are equal in performance which has led to some SandForce drives being rated lower in performance and/or longevity.

Thanks for the all the advice. So the good news is I know that I can easily instal the ssd... The bad news is that all the ssd's I can afford suck

The SanDisk Extreme Pro looks fantastic and it's only $95 at amazon.com, which is in-budget, but it's $160 at amazon.ca ... that's too much for me. It's an obviously highly-sought drive as it's sold-out here at $150. Only thing about it, which may or may not matter to some, is it doesn't have encryption like the other drives I mentioned, which I thought was a good, prudent feature. I had an encrypted HDD for work - and I hated it because it was slower and a PITA - but throughput has advanced so much since then... As has the need to practice secure computing.

Yeah, I see the TLC drives are cheaper and have the rep of crapping out without warning, often prematurely. But an interesting dichotomy is that the Samsung TLC drive outlived all the rest in lab test, fwiw, as a lab test isn't real-life of course
http://techreport.com/review/27909/the- ... e-all-dead

I have the impression from my wee reading that more bits/levels per cell is the way of the future... and eventually all SSD's will be like that.

Anyway the $74 Samsung 850 EVO 250-GB's are flying out the door fast and I'd love to get a couple, but indeed I just do not *trust* samsung drives, because it's TLC and because of the slow-read-fiasco with the 840's. The 850 seems to have fixed that problem, but who knows for sure yet or what different problem might be lurking with it. In addition, samsung seems to leave its buyers in the lurch if there's a problem. Love their phones and TV's, though...haha

I still think the Crucial MX200 seems like a reliable product, at least in 500GB or bigger, which cost too much for me. The MX200 lineup has the exact same memory and controller as the MX100. Seems to me an issue is with the small GB version, which introduced a new cache (to improve the benchmarks for marketing PR) but this might cause some real-world performance problems and worse (overheating under heavy load?)

Wish I was able to get the $90 - $95 sandisk extreme pro here

There are companies across the Canadian border in USA, that specialize in receiving packages for Canadians.
e.g. here: http://shiptotheborder.com/looking-for-a-us-po-box
https://www.kinek.com/find-a-kinekpoint ... adius=10.0
From Toronto to Niagara Falls is ~1.5 Hrs driving, but you may know people who go there regularly.
You could save a bundle that way...

SkiBunny wrote:Anyway the $74 Samsung 850 EVO 250-GB's are flying out the door fast and I'd love to get a couple, but indeed I just do not *trust* samsung drives

Seems like a pretty good deal and you can probably find bad things written about every drive manufacturer out there.

ZaZ wrote:

SkiBunny wrote:Anyway the $74 Samsung 850 EVO 250-GB's are flying out the door fast and I'd love to get a couple, but indeed I just do not *trust* samsung drives

Seems like a pretty good deal and you can probably find bad things written about every drive manufacturer out there.

Indeed that's so true.

RealBlackStuff wrote:There are companies across the Canadian border in USA, that specialize in receiving packages for Canadians.
e.g. here: http://shiptotheborder.com/looking-for-a-us-po-box
https://www.kinek.com/find-a-kinekpoint ... adius=10.0
From Toronto to Niagara Falls is ~1.5 Hrs driving, but you may know people who go there regularly.
You could save a bundle that way...

Yes that's how I get thinkpads. It's easy to take used ones cross-border. Not so with new stuff, plus it's a big hassle if you get a DOA item. Anyway, right now some of the aforementioned SSD's on-sale at newegg are the same price after FX adjustment

Will an SSD work with a recovery partition? I mean, if I clone an HDD drive (contains a good recovery partion) to an SSD, will the thinkpad be able to reset itself from the recovery partion, just like it can from a recovery partition on a cloned HDD??

Also, do you lose the machine's Sleep-Wake functionality with an SSD? Thing is, I had a W510 couple years ago that shipped with an SSD. The W510 would never wake-up from sleep with that SSD; I always had to reboot by press-and-hold of the power key (it'd wake from sleep when using an HDD). But I assume that nowadays the SSD can support device-sleep and "wake up"? (as Sleep support is documented as a drive interface standard).

SkiBunny wrote:Will an SSD work with a recovery partition?

It will work. However, both cloning and having a recovery partition carry a performance penalty in my not-so-limited experience with solid state drives. Fresh install, all the way.

Also, do you lose the machine's Sleep-Wake functionality with an SSD?

No. You should disable hibernation when using an SSD, though.

ajkula66 wrote:both cloning and having a recovery partition carry a performance penalty in my not-so-limited experience with solid state drives. Fresh install, all the way.

My understanding is that a fresh install is always best, but I'm just a weenie who can only clone (or restore from the recovery partition), and hopefully the clone migration to ssd (and some SSD over-provisioning factored in) provides an enduring noticeable boost.

So unlike the old days, it's best now to not even have a recovery partition (if you're on an ssd) and you should skip/kill it..... lol I imagine that Lenovo and others still ship new units with recovery partitions because that's cheaper than providing recovery media. And thing is, I don't have any recovery CD's past the T60 - and even those I threw out when I recently moved, along with lotsa useful stuff, which moving tends to necessitate doing.

Does the recovery partition carry a performance penalty mainly because it reduces the available free space? If so, maybe the presence of a recovery partition is becoming less of a hit than before as SSD size is becoming much bigger than before?

ajkula66 wrote:You should disable hibernation when using an SSD, though.

Pleased that you mentioned that as I hadn't noticed it before. Just read that one should disable auto defrag (on win7) and auto restore points, tho I can't see what's wrong with having some restore points, unless they eat too much space.

SkiBunny wrote: My understanding is that a fresh install is always best, but I'm just a weenie who can only clone (or restore from the recovery partition), and hopefully the clone migration to ssd (and some SSD over-provisioning factored in) provides an enduring noticeable boost.

Well, any SSD will be faster than a spinner...even cloned. You can somewhat set the new drive straight with a number of tweaks, but I'd still recommend a clean install regardless.

And thing is, I don't have any recovery CD's past the T60 - and even those I threw out when I recently moved, along with lotsa useful stuff, which moving tends to necessitate doing.

You don't need recovery media. Any retail disk for the proper version of the OS that you're installing - and which the COA is for - will work just fine. Worst case scenario, you might have to call Microsoft in order to activate the installation.

Does the recovery partition carry a performance penalty mainly because it reduces the available free space?

No. I've actually had speeds go up on the same machine/drive - measured by CDM - after nuking the restore partition. The consistency - clearly visible when measured by HD Tune - is also much higher with no recovery partition installed.

Just read that one should disable auto defrag (on win7) and auto restore points, tho I can't see what's wrong with having some restore points, unless they eat too much space.

Defrag should most definitely be disabled. That is a must. As for the restore points, it's really your call. I don't leave any but can understand why some people would want to have them in place...

ajkula66 wrote:

SkiBunny wrote:You don't need recovery media. Any retail disk for the proper version of the OS that you're installing - and which the COA is for - will work just fine. Worst case scenario, you might have to call Microsoft in order to activate the installation.

I don't have any Win7 retail disks, sigh. Correction, i have one single unopened shrink-wrapped Win7 Ultimate that I was given at work years ago. But all my win7 machines are either licensed for Win7 Pro or Win7 for Refurb PC.

They seem to be clearing out the SanDisk extreme pro so I can pick-up one or two now w/o breaking the bank or smuggling. Yay, thanks.

You could make Recovery Media yourself from your current HDD install. Following that, use the Recovery Media to do a fresh install on the SSD.

There are also a number of SSD optimizations you could do within Windows and individual programs. For example, if you don't rely on indexing too frequently you could turn it off, or limit it to index only specific folders that you often utilize. Do a search for "SSD optimization _program name_" for any applications you are running. I like to watch out for programs that do a lot of cache writes to disk, and change the cache folder to a HDD.

SkiBunny wrote: I don't have any Win7 retail disks, sigh. Correction, i have one single unopened shrink-wrapped Win7 Ultimate that I was given at work years ago.

Take a look here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads ... de.781213/

Thank you thinkquan & ajkula ..... much appreciate the advice & tips.
Haven't begun or decided on the instal - and no rush because have until Jan 31 (gotta love the holiday extended-returns policy, haha)