Thinkpads Forum

Has anyone ever heard of such a thing? I found a third party one for the E520, but I wasn't sure if that would fit this machine or not. I wouldn't worry too much about it was flush against the edge; I'd just like it to be functional.

I'd really love to get a small SSD in the primary bay to boot with and keep programs on and keep the 500GB drive for media storage. Any help with a way to do this would be awesome - thanks!

The capability to swap the optical drive and replace it with a second hard drive (or battery in some cases, etc) is called Ultrabay. The E430 specification sheet says that the optical drive is fixed and can't be removed. That's one of the features they cut from the Edge series for cost reasons.

That said, your E430 does have an mSATA slot, so you might want to check around on the web and see if other folks have had success with the Intel 310 mSATA 80gb drive (if you can get it in stock) - that would let you boot from the mSATA SSD and retain the 500gb drive for storage and apps. There are other manufacturers of mSATA drives - just using the Intel as an example as it's mentioned here often. Good luck!

Thanks for responding! I believe that the connector used for the optical drive should work with most of these third party caddies as long as they physically fit the opening in the case; I'm looking for more of a permanent switch than a hot-swapping option like UltraBay.

However, the only reason I stopped looking at mSATA drives was because I didn't think you could boot from them with the e430. If I was wrong on that front, I'd definitely take a second look at them. Any thoughts on that would be appreciated as well!

Gotcha. Regarding the mSATA, here's a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9rVFqQ9Z3s) of installation on an E420. In the comments folks are saying they could boot from the mSATA drive. Now the E420 is not the E430, so I guess it's possible they could've removed that capability.

Lenovo made a big deal of their partnership with Sandisk for cache SSD for the mSATA slot on the E430 / E530 models. The Hardware Maintenance Manual for the E430 is available here: http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/product ... D=UM014301. It appears on page 29 to mention that if an mSATA drive and a hard drive are installed at the same time, not to use the mSATA as a boot drive, but as a cache drive. I wonder if this is because they've pre-configured something like Intel Smart Response Technology...

Wondering if any forum members would know if that could be user disabled on the E430 to allow you to use mSATA drives as a boot device? To the OP sorry for the bum steer!

Looks to be Condusiv's ExpressCache caching software that Lenovo is using: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/lenovo ... 15896.html. Additional information on ExpressCache here: https://www.condusiv.com/partners/oem/t ... resscache/.

Would see that you can disable Express Cache in the BIOS - but I don't know if the E430 BIOS exposes that option. Also would require the disabling of the Conduciv software. Anyone know more about this?

wolfman wrote:The capability to swap the optical drive and replace it with a second hard drive (or battery in some cases, etc) is called Ultrabay. The E430 specification sheet says that the optical drive is fixed and can't be removed. That's one of the features they cut from the Edge series for cost reasons.

That said, your E430 does have an mSATA slot, so you might want to check around on the web and see if other folks have had success with the Intel 310 mSATA 80gb drive (if you can get it in stock) - that would let you boot from the mSATA SSD and retain the 500gb drive for storage and apps. There are other manufacturers of mSATA drives - just using the Intel as an example as it's mentioned here often. Good luck!

I just received my E430 in the mail today. And contrary to what the manual says the dvd drive can be removed, when you remove the access panel you'll find a single screw holding the drive in place. Whether or not it can be swapped is an entirely different matter.

Unfortunately I was unsuccessful installing the 2nd hard drive caddy made by Newmodeus that I previously used in the Edge 14. While the caddy and the dvd drive share identical dimensions the msata connector on the caddy is few millimeters to high.

You can always try generic optical drive caddies which are designed to replace SATA optical drives in any laptop. Just make sure you have the correct height/thickness and connector.

Good news ladies and gentleman! The hard drive caddy sold by newmodus for the Thinkpad Edge 14 is compatible with the new E430.

To install it I removed the keyboard and top case assembly. Although removing the top case assembly probably wasn't necessary.

Here are some pictures I took:

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a241/ ... 02_HDR.jpg

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a241/ ... 30_HDR.jpg

Admin edit: Removed large inline images. Please keep them <50KB.

Can you make a photo from the outside (with built-in ODD caddy)? Does it fit optically? I mean: did you find a bezel that fits properly without loooking strange?

pustekuchencak3 wrote:Can you make a photo from the outside (with built-in ODD caddy)? Does it fit optically? I mean: did you find a bezel that fits properly without looking strange?

As the pictures illustrate it isn't pretty. But if I wanted something pretty I would have bought a different notebook.

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a241/ ... 22_HDR.jpg

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a241/ ... 154732.jpg

Admin edit: Removed large inline images. Please keep them <50KB.

Thanks a lot for the fast reply & pictures

Of course this isn't the pretiest laptop, however it doesn't mean to emphasize this by adding an ODD with an incorrect bezel

But obviously there are caddies which allow to use Lenovos ODD faceplate: http://whrl.pl/Rdi2Jy

Hi all,

I have a 128gb sada hdd mount on my E430, and as you can imagine, it is not enough.

Can any of you help me choose a caddy that will defiantly work from http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_nos ... ve%20caddy

I don't care that much about the design or ant, I just want it to fit & work.

Ideas?

Thanks in advance,
Romeo