Thinkpads Forum

One of the big features Lenovo has been promoting for the T420s is the MicroSSD storage for OS/key applications that is in combination with a traditional hard drive for file storage. But nobody at the Thinkpad orders line seems to have a clue about it. Does anyone know or have any ideas about when this will become available? Also, any thoughts on how effective a solution it'll be? Thanks.

It is not currently offered from the lenovo website. Most user simply buy mSata drive (40g or 80g) from some websites (such as newegg.com) and install it themselves afterward. The process is quite simple enough. You can browse around for instruction. Try the following link.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo- ... -boot.html

Yes- don't buy it from Lenovo unless you feel like paying twice as much for the same product.

It's a good way to speed up your system- but just be advised that you do eat up your WWAN expansion slot when you do this.

Actually, unless you need 250 GB of hard drive space, it's even better to replace your hard drive with a 2.5" SSD instead. It's faster, bigger, and you don't have to bother with dual drives. The installation is way easier since you have 5 screws to remove and that's it.

Remember that your only option for the T420s are the Intel 320 series (the X-25M will work but it's old, and the RealSSD C300 can also work but you have to void your warranty to do so) since those are the only SSDs that are 7 mm in height (T420s won't take 9.5 mm high i.e. EVERY SSD OUT THERE drives).

Actually, if you have the cash to do so I'd recommend the Intel 320 120 GB drive, or the 160 GB one but that's quite a bit more expensive.
The 320 80 GB drive is equal in speed to the Intel 310 80 GB mSATA drive.

@Q Ball,
Nevertheless, i still prefer a more economical mSata 80gb. However, i am having a very hardtime find one from the internet? Has anyone got any clue when will it be available again or where i can find one? If it is out of stock for a really long time, then may be intel 320 is a better option.

Thanks for the feedback. I hadn't been aware that the microSSD would take up the WWAN space -- nothing I saw on the Thinkpad website mentioned that one. Between that and how long it's taking them to release the microSSD as an option, I went ahead and ordered a T420s with the smallest conventional hard drive option and separately picked up one of the Intel 320 drives. Lenovo's running a little behind on delivery but it should be a solid combination. Next up, trying to figure out when the slice battery will be available!

As a continuation of this, has anyone used an mSATA drive with their T420s? I plan on doing the same thing and I was wondering if the firmware currently supports booting to it. Reading around the internet and checking the firmware revision history it appears it can be done with the vanilla T420 but information on if this can be done with the T420s is limited. To top that off talking with a Lenovo rep yesterday he seemed to be under the impression that it wasn't possible to boot to mSATA drives currently, but that they were adding that into a firmware update.

Basically, does anyone have a T420s that they boot from a mSATA drive on?

Q-Ball wrote: Actually, unless you need 250 GB of hard drive space, it's even better to replace your hard drive with a 2.5" SSD instead. It's faster, bigger, and you don't have to bother with dual drives. The installation is way easier since you have 5 screws to remove and that's it.

Yep, and you can get the ultrabay hard drive adapter and stick the stock hard drive in your optical drive bay. That's what I did with my T510.

Like Greenform I'm also wondering what's going on with the mSATA SSD market. Can't find the Intel 310 80gb available anywhere, and there don't seem to be any other good options. Is mSATA something that just failed to take off with SSD makers/consumers or can we expect to see them offered again in the future?


I'm also wondering if there are any T420 owners here who have an mSATA SSD, and if they can tell us how it's going, and if they had any difficulties getting it set up as the boot drive.

mike135 wrote:Like Greenform I'm also wondering what's going on with the mSATA SSD market. Can't find the Intel 310 80gb available anywhere, and there don't seem to be any other good options. Is mSATA something that just failed to take off with SSD makers/consumers or can we expect to see them offered again in the future?


I'm also wondering if there are any T420 owners here who have an mSATA SSD, and if they can tell us how it's going, and if they had any difficulties getting it set up as the boot drive.

They are just pretty new still. I have only been able to find 3 different people with ones on the market. Intel is one and the other 2 are companies I have never previously heard of.

I hope you're right, but I'm a little concerned because there's no 80gb Intel 310 entry on Amazon.com (not even an out of stock one), and I found posts where people were saying it was out of stock from as far back as March.

Also, I'm not sure if this is technically an "mSATA" drive or not, but it's the same form factor anyway: http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-mini-p ... a-eol.html

The fact that OCZ has discontinued it without having a replacement product on the market doesn't look like a good sign to me..

Response I got from Intel, if anyone's interested:

Intel® is working hard to meet the current demand for the Intel® SSD 310 80GB, mSATA 3Gb/s, 34nm, MLC. While we are unable to predict exactly when this availability issue will be fully resolved, every effort is being put forth to do so. We apologize for any inconvenience this issue has caused.