Thinkpads Forum

I'm wondering if I can put those SSDs in it:

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ ... -spec.html

What about the one which has height of 3.73mm ?

Thanks for insight.

Not unless you intend to buy a SATA to M.2 adapter caddy for either the 2.5" primary SATA bay or ultrabay (and the necessary SATA ultrabay adapter), such as this: https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-2-5in-A ... J7U20?th=1

The extra port you're seeing in the W520 isn't M.2, it's mSATA. mSATA on the W520 uses the SATA-II standard, so your throughput will be limited to ~285 MB/s. If you need faster raw transfer speeds, then the only options are drives that live in the primaray SATA bay as it is SATA-III.

W520 is mSata, not M.2 Buy something like a Crucial MX200 mSata; available in 250 and 500 GB. And the *ugh* Samsung Evo 850 exists in 1TB mSata as well.

theterminator93 wrote:Not unless you intend to buy a SATA to M.2 adapter caddy for either the 2.5" primary SATA bay or ultrabay (and the necessary SATA ultrabay adapter), such as this: https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-2-5in-A ... J7U20?th=1

The extra port you're seeing in the W520 isn't M.2, it's mSATA. mSATA on the W520 uses the SATA-II standard, so your throughput will be limited to ~285 MB/s. If you need faster raw transfer speeds, then the only options are drives that live in the primaray SATA bay as it is SATA-III.

The Ultrabay is SATA-III as well

Thanks both for your thorough and helpful answer

I just bought a W520 with quad-core 2.5 i7 and maxed ram to upgrade my T420s, what intel ssd do you recommend to put in the msata port?

For the primary SATA bay, am I good going with this one: https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/www/u ... -spec.html

Thanks again for outstanding technical information!

gauthier wrote:Thanks both for your thorough and helpful answer

I just bought a W520 with quad-core 2.5 i7 and maxed ram to upgrade my T420s, what intel ssd do you recommend to put in the msata port?

Does it have to be an Intel?

For the primary SATA bay, am I good going with this one: https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/www/u ... -spec.html

My two suggestion would be SanDisk Extreme Pro or Samsung 850 Pro. I like Intel drives generally speaking, but I don't like TLC NAND.

Thanks Ajkula, I think I'll get a intel 730 (I use one with my T420s), I'm somehow leaning toward intel wrt. SSD drives and thanks for the notice about TLC which I wasn't aware of.

gauthier wrote:Thanks Ajkula, I think I'll get a intel 730 (I use one with my T420s), I'm somehow leaning toward intel wrt. SSD drives and thanks for the notice about TLC which I wasn't aware of.

730 is the last Intel SSD worth owning, IMO. I've gone through a few and they were excellent.