Thinkpads Forum

I've got a T420 that I love very dearly. The only thing I kind of hate is that when I'm moving it around (which is fairly often, I'm a student) I very often seem to brush up against the drive release button for the CD drive. It's a really minor and petty annoyance, but lately it's been driving me absolutely insane. I've been googling around and I still can't seem to find a straight answer on this--I was thinking of adding one of the 3 cell ultrabay batteries in it's place, because that seemed like an all around good solution. But it looks like they don't make one of those for the T420? Then I started wondering, do I even have an ultrabay in the first place? I read the manual and it's been pretty unhelpful. It makes reference to a Serial Ultrabay Enhanced, but mentions that some systems don't have them installed.

So I guess my question is multifaceted

1. How would I go about finding out if my machine has the Ultrabay?

2. Assuming that I do, what can I do with it on a T420? I've seen extra hard drives, and that sounds cool too, but I'm not really in the market for more drive space as it's largely just a machine for school and I just installed a 240GB SSD.

3. Assuming I don't, is there a way to GET an Ultrabay thing installed?

In case it matters, I'm running Lubuntu on it primarily, but I have Windows 10 on a separate partition.
Sorry, I'm pretty new to thinkpads, and I bought this machine second hand on Amazon.

This place seems to attract people who hugely complicate what is a reasonably simple question.

You can buy an ultrabay hdd tray for under $10... thing is you dont need to put a hdd in it for it to act as a dust cover/blanking plate.

I have one right now and its a must buy for me as I have 400/400s/410/420 and if I need faster than usb2 speeds for hdd, this one does it at sata speed.

I believe this forum sells them too.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SATA-to-SATA-2n ... xy2d9SXLAD

Just so its easy for everyone.

Yeah...I saw that. And it definitely the same shape and stuff as my CD drive when I took the thing out a while back. I guess I was just nervous about if the ultrabay thing was special, like a different kind of connector but the same form factor otherwise or something. I didn't know if I had one or not, the manual put doubt in my heart.

Well it says so right there in the title and you have the protection of paypal AND if its the wrong one but dont want to send it back you're out a massive $6.

I just spend $10 on lunch.

Lyrila wrote:I'm running Lubuntu on it primarily.

Ubuntu (and its variant) have a command you can use to make the DVD drive get locked.

check the 2nd answer here:
http://superuser.com/questions/71939/di ... top-ubuntu

Lock the drive: eject -i 1
Unlock the drive: eject -i 0

Alternatively, put in this travel bezel, saves weight as well: http://www.ebay.com/itm/381533361865

Lyrila wrote:batteries … it looks like they don't make one of those for the T420?

Correct. There is little "ultra" about optical drive bay in T420: it is basically a 13-pin SATA bay.

Lyrila wrote:Serial Ultrabay Enhanced

That is indeed what the bay might be called. You might consider getting ThinkPad 12.7mm Serial ATA Hard Drive Bay Adapter III: Marketing P/N: 0A65623, FRU P/N: 04W3584, ASM P/N: 0B55883.