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X1 Carbon with 1TB SSD

X1 / X1-Carbon (X1C) / X1-Extreme (X1E) Series/Generations
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karotlopj
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X1 Carbon with 1TB SSD

#1 Post by karotlopj » Sat Apr 17, 2021 6:20 pm

Can I install a 1TB SSD on a 2nd, 3rd or 4th Gen X1 Carbon ThinkPad?
My ThinkPad Graveyard:
600 * 2, X220, X61 * 2, T61

RealBlackStuff
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Re: X1 Carbon with 1TB SSD

#2 Post by RealBlackStuff » Sat Apr 17, 2021 11:32 pm

Even up to 2TB without any problem.
Lovely day for a Guinness! (The Real Black Stuff)
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w0qj
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Re: X1 Carbon with 1TB SSD

#3 Post by w0qj » Sun Apr 18, 2021 12:07 pm

We have X1C4 (X1 Carbon Gen 4), and can confirm that it supports NVMe SSD for both 1 TB, and also 2 TB, done via Product Recovery.

We also have X1C3 (X1 Carbon Gen 3) which *does*not* support NVMe, because it uses a tech deadend ACHI interface of dual sided SSD which is out of production,
we did not bother to try other SSD on it.
Heard that you can add in "Sata" type of "2280" dual sided SSD into X1C3 albeit at slightly slower SSD speeds, but we have never tried this ourselves.

In short, if you wish to at least future-proof your NVMe SSD storage solution, stick with X1 Carbon Gen 4 or later models.
Daily Driver: (X1E3) X1 Extreme 3rd Gen | mobile broadband (WWAN)
Current Thinkpads: X1E3 | X1E1 | X1C10 | X1C9 | X1C4 | X1C3 | X230
Retired Thinkpads: X250 | T410 | T42 | 560 (circa 1996)

karotlopj
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Re: X1 Carbon with 1TB SSD

#4 Post by karotlopj » Mon Apr 19, 2021 1:47 am

RealBlackStuff wrote:
Sat Apr 17, 2021 11:32 pm
Even up to 2TB without any problem.
Can you provide details about which 2TB drive works?
My ThinkPad Graveyard:
600 * 2, X220, X61 * 2, T61

RealBlackStuff
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Re: X1 Carbon with 1TB SSD

#5 Post by RealBlackStuff » Mon Apr 19, 2021 2:12 am

Samsung PM981.
Lovely day for a Guinness! (The Real Black Stuff)
Lenovo: X240, X250, T440p, T480, M900 Tiny.

PS: the old Boardroom website is still available on the Wayback Machine
.

w0qj
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Re: X1 Carbon with 1TB SSD

#6 Post by w0qj » Mon Apr 19, 2021 12:51 pm

We used Samsung 970 Evo Plus (NVMe PCIe "2280" single-sided), both 1 TB & 2 TB confirmed to be OK on X1 Carbon Gen 4 (X1C4).

karotlopj wrote:
Mon Apr 19, 2021 1:47 am
Can you provide details about which 2TB drive works?
Daily Driver: (X1E3) X1 Extreme 3rd Gen | mobile broadband (WWAN)
Current Thinkpads: X1E3 | X1E1 | X1C10 | X1C9 | X1C4 | X1C3 | X230
Retired Thinkpads: X250 | T410 | T42 | 560 (circa 1996)

betonhaus
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Re: X1 Carbon with 1TB SSD

#7 Post by betonhaus » Mon May 03, 2021 3:09 pm

Yeah i have the X1 3rd gen and it will see NVMe drives and read/write from them, but it refuses to boot from them. Apparently you can make a bootable USB drive with Clover installed (an open source bootloder, primarily used for making Hackintoshes) to boot a NVMe SSD, but so far I've been unsuccessful in getting it to work. I'm planning on loading it onto a tiny Cruzer Fit USB drive as i have a spare 1TB NVMe drive I'd like to use instead of the smaller drive in the laptop now
https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-X ... -p/4487943

w0qj
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Re: X1 Carbon with 1TB SSD

#8 Post by w0qj » Wed May 05, 2021 11:46 am

The X1 Carbon Gen 3 (X1C3) was designed to support NVMe during the planning stages--until Samsung suddenly announced that its PM951 (3D NAND PCIe "2280" SSD max 500 GB) suddenly will not support NVMe as Samsung was not ready. And Samsung announced this just before X1C3 was about to be announced/launched.
Hence X1 Carbon Gen 3 only supported the tech deadend ACHI SSD, or the slower SATA "2280" SSD.

I've never seen any details as to how ThinkPad disabled the NVMe support for X1C3:

a) Purely BIOS disabling NVMe support?
Perhaps. Very very early Lenovo Forum poster claimed that he could get X1 Carbon Gen 3 to boot into NVMe SSD, by pressing [ESC] during bootup error.
Then a BIOS patch shortly after that disabled even this above function.
ie: X1C3 cannot bootup from NVMe SSD anymore after that.

b) Hardware removal in X1C3 to remove NVMe support?
No idea if ThinkPad did this either.

betonhaus wrote:
Mon May 03, 2021 3:09 pm
Yeah i have the X1 3rd gen and it will see NVMe drives and read/write from them, but it refuses to boot from them. Apparently you can make a bootable USB drive with Clover installed (an open source bootloder, primarily used for making Hackintoshes) to boot a NVMe SSD, but so far I've been unsuccessful in getting it to work. I'm planning on loading it onto a tiny Cruzer Fit USB drive as i have a spare 1TB NVMe drive I'd like to use instead of the smaller drive in the laptop now
https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-X ... -p/4487943
Daily Driver: (X1E3) X1 Extreme 3rd Gen | mobile broadband (WWAN)
Current Thinkpads: X1E3 | X1E1 | X1C10 | X1C9 | X1C4 | X1C3 | X230
Retired Thinkpads: X250 | T410 | T42 | 560 (circa 1996)

betonhaus
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Joined: Fri Apr 23, 2021 10:18 pm
Location: Calgary, Canada

Re: X1 Carbon with 1TB SSD

#9 Post by betonhaus » Sat May 15, 2021 12:42 pm

I think I know something that might work and I'm going to pull apart my system to try, but any details I can know in advance would be helpful.
I have a ssd that has a clean install for that computer because I tried installing, but it refused to boot. If I boot from the installer and open command prompt, I should be able to clone the efi partition to the USB drive, delete the original partition, and it will boot from there. The partition will already point to the correct bootloader on the os partition, but I might need to edit a line so it points to the correct drive.

betonhaus
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Joined: Fri Apr 23, 2021 10:18 pm
Location: Calgary, Canada

Re: X1 Carbon with 1TB SSD

#10 Post by betonhaus » Mon May 17, 2021 5:19 pm

I asked around and got this advice
NavyLCDR;2223820 wrote:I have an NVMe SSD. I just inserted a USB flash drive with a FAT32 partition on it. My Windows on the NVMe SSD is C: drive. The USB flash drive got drive letter F:. I just ran the command:

Code: Select all

bcdboot C:\Windows /s F: /f UEFI
I rebooted my computer from the flash drive and it booted into Windows on my NVMe SSD. That's all you need to do.
Trying that but now my computer refuses to boot to even the USB installer when the nvme drive is installed :/

i get the error on detection ssd error that tells me to hit escape, then I can click the enter menu but then I just get a black screen. i feel like the instructions would work, if I could just get the installed usb to launch so i can enter command prompt

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