Thinkpads Forum

Am thinking of upgrading to ssd internal and know very little if anything about doing this to my 400s and 500s. I have done a good bit of research and still know mostly nothing. My units have sim card holders, but I do not use for phones; so they could be sacrificed. Some of my questions are:

Is this possible?
Will the internal pci-e, M-sata accept and utilize a hard drive?
Which internal receptacle could be used, if possible?
Would I be better off with an ssd to fit the hdd slot?
Have any of you done this and to what degree of success?

I'm certainly sure I have more questions, but this is probably good to start. Thanks for you time.

Gary

The internal PCI slots are specialized for specific devices: wwan card, turbo mem, or wireless USB and don't have Msata lanes. Possibly with a non-whitelist bios or pins taped over you can install other things like PCI to SD or USB adapters for additional storage.

Thanks for your reply. This is absolutely the reason I ask questions when I am ignorant of the details. I use to just zip off and buy something like one of these SSDs and then be stuck with it. Thanks for keeping me straight. Many thanks.

Gary

Actually the newer Thinkpads Sandy Bridge and newer (t420,t520) do have Msata Sata 2 3GB/s lanes. But not the older ones. For my T500, I've considered buying a $15 Chinese mini PCI to SD card adapter to try in my T500's WWAN slot, but I worry that the speeds will be slow so I've refrained from purchasing one so far. The integrated T500's card reader is already a little slower than USB 2.0. I don't want to get something worse. I also want WWAN. Maybe the Turbomem slot can be used for an SD card. I'm right now using my Turbomem as fast flash storage.

Possibly the extra PCI slots can be used for an EGPU setup or does that also require Msata lanes? I don't know much about the subject either, but an EGPU is another side-upgrade I'm interested in doing for my T500. Radeon 3650 is sometimes enough for low res gaming, but I want more....

I would keep it safe and simple and just get an SSD for the HD slot. If you had a T420 and wanted 2 HD's then maybe you have more options.

Thanks for the reply. In the future, I'll keep an eye open for a 420.

We just use a 2.5" SATA SSD for our T410; our auxiliary slot had been taken up by our WWAN (Mobile Broadband) card.

The SSD speed is very good; more than good enough even for serious users demanding much faster speeds than HDD.

Our SSD brand even came with 10-year warranty; it would (eventually) become our backup storage after active duty!

TPFanatic wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 30, 2017 1:47 am

For my T500, I've considered buying a $15 Chinese mini PCI to SD card adapter to try in my T500's WWAN slot, but I worry that the speeds will be slow so I've refrained from purchasing one so far. The integrated T500's card reader is already a little slower than USB 2.0. I don't want to get something worse.

It should operate at USB2.0 speed because it's actually on an internal USB2.0 line. I have one of the dual microSD to mPCIe adapters you can find on eBay and it just shows in device manager as two USB card readers and their speed in CrystalDiskMark is exactly the same as an external card reader. One of the two slots is bootable.

Get the biggest SSD you can afford. Reload the OS of your choice and enjoy. Those machine are still very capable for web browsing, Office and general usage.

Or get a (smaller/cheaper if you like) SSD plus an Ultrabay adapter for a 2nd HD and use the old (or a new) HD for storage.
Get an external USB-housing for that CD-drive that just came out, which you now can use on ANY PC/laptop with USB-port!

T500`s has SATA II limited speed (3 Gb/s) so don`t bother getting the fastest SSD if you don`t plan to put it into something newer in the future. In your place I would get some Plextor or Intel MLC based SSD, with 5 or even 10 years warranty you will be quite safe Try to avoid TLC drives if you can.

RBS are you saying that Ultrabay devices are internally connected on USB alike line?

Thanks for the tips. I'll give it all consideration.

CASPER wrote: ↑

Fri May 26, 2017 4:35 pm

RBS are you saying that Ultrabay devices are internally connected on USB alike line?

No, just that the USB CD-housing can accommodate an Ultrabay device.

I am using the Ultrabay right now on my t500. I have a 2TB Seagate hybrid drive and it is great to have that kind of storage right at your finger tips. I have 3 Ultrabay adapters so I can switch and swap at will, nice stuff.

RealBlackStuff wrote: ↑

Fri May 26, 2017 9:28 pm

No, just that the USB CD-housing can accommodate an Ultrabay device.

I thought so.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PCI-E-TO-TF-Car ... Swxu5ZGof6

This works fine with the modded bios.
I play music, work with photos and watch movies off of mine. No issues.

Ron