Does Thinkpad P1 gen 7 support 8TB M.2 SSD:s?

[newac]

Hi all,


With previous Thinkpad P1 models, there has been an enormous scandal that the firmware blocked 8TB size M.2 SSD drives.

This rendered the Thinkpad P1 gen 3 etc. a useless piece of junk, only good to donate or throw in the garbage bin.


Can you please inform if the Thinkpad P1 gen 7 for which sales are starting soon, will allow one to install any 8TB M.2 SSD?

I have browsed the specs online and the information about this model is not clear. Somewhere I see it says "8TB SSD" supported, but also somewhere I see "2x 4TB" supported. 4TB SSD:s were supported by previous Thinkpad P1:s too.

It is unnecessary to spend 5,000 EUR on a laptop only to find it belongs in the garbage bin. Kindly clarify.

Thanks!

Crosspost with https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-P ... -p/5309088

[mikemex]

With previous Thinkpad P1 models, there has been an enormous scandal that the firmware blocked 8TB size M.2 SSD drives.

This rendered the Thinkpad P1 gen 3 etc. a useless piece of junk, only good to donate or throw in the garbage bin.

I understand your frustration, mein freund! But at the same time I believe you're over-reacting. It's really not what you say: "if you can't install a 8TB SSD, then a laptop is a piece of junk meant for the garbage bin". I have 1TB SSDs in all my machines... 8TB is really quite a lot of storage today.

See, if you want more capacity you can always install the SSD in an external enclosure and connect it via the Thunderbolt Port. It's not as convenient as having the drive inside, but it's not the end of the world either.

Also, you seem to be convinced that Lenovo being is malicious about not allowing you to install the 8TB SSD. But I wonder: maybe the limitation comes from something else? Sometimes, when capacity begins to grow beyond the initial expectations, something in the long chain of inter-dependent components falls short. For example, FAT32 doesn't support partitions bigger than 32GB. So when drives larger than that size came out, people thought the manufacturer were stealing space from them, when the reality was that FAT32 was the weak link in the chain.

Something similar happened with SD cards: they switched from SDHC to SDXC for larger cards, leaving a lot of devices unsupported.

Basically, I'm saying: there is the possibility that 8TB drives work in such a way they requiere special support. I do remember that machines from some time ago advertised "2TB+ support" in the BIOS as a feature.

EDIT: It seems like Lenovo officially supports 8TB. But it still isn't clear if it's a single module capacity or as a combination of both slots.

[newac]

@mikemex Back in the days of the P1 gen 3, there was an argument that 8TB drives are double sided (have chips on both sides of the PCB) and therefore are too high to fit in the M.2 slot. In practice that fitting argument was not really valid back then.

To make firmware with blocks for a historic circumstance is problematic. Also say a modder connects an M.2 slot to an external enclosure etc., this kind of guessing by some obscure department at Lenovo easily becomes ground for switching to other laptop brands.


The chart at https://liliputing.com/lenovos-new-thin ... ct-models/ appears to say that Thinkpad P1 gen 7 supports two 8TB drives, while in comparison Thinkpad P16v i gen 2 supports two 4TB drives. However the information or this interpretation may be incorrect.

Any further clarification much appreciated.


Refer here for photo of 8TB M.2 SSD plugged into the M.2 slot on a Thinkpad P1 gen 3: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-P ... =2#5753294. It looked perfectly fine on the Thinkpad P1 gen 3, and definitely will look no worse on the Thinkpad P1 gen 7.

[newac]

Does anyone have contacts to anyone who works for Lenovo and can clarify this matter about Thinkpad P1 gen 7's firmware *not* blocking 8TB SSD:s?

[newac]

If you own a Thinkpad P1 gen 6, please plug in your 8TB SSD and report if it works, thanks! viewtopic.php?f=81&t=136333

[newac]

I just saw in the Thinkpad P1 gen 6's spec document https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PD ... 6_Spec.pdf page 3 says "• M.2 2280 SSD up to 8TB, 4TB each" and "up to 4TB M.2 2280 SSD".

So it seems unbelievably the firmware crippling has continued to P1 gen 6, and supposedly then it's still in P1 gen 7. Unbelievable. Other laptop brands deliver more customer value for half the price.




If anyone has contacts to people at Lenovo to correct this. please share/DM.


Update: There is one user who reports success with a Corsair MP600 NH 8TB SSD on P1 gen 5: https://www.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/comment ... ?rdt=34661

[Ibthink]

I just saw in the Thinkpad P1 gen 6's spec document https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PD ... 6_Spec.pdf page 3 says "• M.2 2280 SSD up to 8TB, 4TB each" and "up to 4TB M.2 2280 SSD".

That is your misinterpretation of the spec sheet.

The specs just list the maximum configuration that Lenovo sells, not the technical maximum.

[H-Atkinson]

I just saw in the Thinkpad P1 gen 6's spec document https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PD ... 6_Spec.pdf page 3 says "• M.2 2280 SSD up to 8TB, 4TB each" and "up to 4TB M.2 2280 SSD".

So it seems unbelievably the firmware crippling has continued to P1 gen 6, and supposedly then it's still in P1 gen 7. Unbelievable. Other laptop brands deliver more customer value for half the price.




If anyone has contacts to people at Lenovo to correct this. please share/DM.


Update: There is one user who reports success with a Corsair MP600 NH 8TB SSD on P1 gen 5: https://www.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/comment ... ?rdt=34661

Please stop regurgitating this conspiracy theory. I have 3 colleagues with P1 Gen 5s or Gen 6s all running 8tb drives with 0 issues.

[newac]

@H-Atkinson Thanks for confirming that 8TB drives work on Thinkpad P1 now! Great. So it's a buyable computer.


@ibthink The past Thinkpad P1 did not support 8TB, and the marketing specs were formulated the same then, so I was rightly concerned.

[TPFanatic]

i'm wondering who even needs 8TB on an ultrabook

[newac]

i'm wondering who even needs 8TB on an ultrabook

@TPFanatic Probably a lot of people.


Related topic: This is also why the Thinkpad T14s Snapdragon is a second-class laptop: It does not have a 22x80mm M.2 slot, but only 22x42mm, so it does not support big SSD:s. It also requires users to buy separate SSD:s for the laptop as everyone's SSD:s are 22x80mm and will not work in the laptop. Hopefully Lenovo will fix this.

[TPFanatic]

On this forum, you're the only one. It's unclear if you have even purchased a P1 G7.

8TB is a lot of storage, very expensive. You may do better to purchase 16 500GB spinners for $5/ea and plug them into a server and remote into that from any Ultrabook... no $3000 P1 G7 necessary.

[axur-delmeria]

Some thoughts:

1. An 8TB BIOS/UEFI limitation sounds unlikely, given that >10TB HDDs already exist.
2. 8TB is far too close to the previous 2TB size limit; the one before that was 137GB.

[newac]

@axur-delmeria Back in the time of P1 gen 3, I believe then, the M.2 socket had a height that only accommodated a single-sided M.2 SSD. And, the 8TB SSD:s were all double-sided.

For a guess, I believe that motivated Lenovo to put a blockage in their firmware so 8TB SSD:s not could be used at all. And then in a later P1 generation, they switched M.2 socket to one that fits double-sided SSD:s, and that may have been when they removed the blocking of 8TB SSD:s in the firmware too.

[axur-delmeria]

If you have an older generation P1, you can test the presumed firmware lock yourself by using an M.2 extender along with a double-sided 8TB SSD.

Without that, it's all speculation, unless the UEFI firmware has already been disassembled and the 8TB lock found.

[Edward Mendelson]

Without that, it's all speculation, unless the UEFI firmware has already been disassembled and the 8TB lock found.

Indeed. In this whole thread, there isn't any evidence that such a lock ever existed.

[newac]

@axur-delmeria and Edward: I actually fit the double sided 8TB SSD into the Thinkpad P1 gen 3, and the SSD was not identified by the machine.

The way I fit it in was by removing the thermal pad put by Lenovo on the motherboard. And it just fit like that, even if it was not according to spec.

I had the experience and dumped the P1 gen 3 for that reason.

[Edward Mendelson]

@axur-delmeria and Edward: I actually fit the double sided 8TB SSD into the Thinkpad P1 gen 3, and the SSD was not identified by the machine.

Did you try a single-sided SSD?

[mikemex]

Rare and expensive!

I put 1TB drives on all my machines 1-2 years ago. I thought that, by now, 4TB drives would be cheaper and allow us mere mortals to actually afford them. But I'm now seeing that Solidigm (former SK-Hynix) P44 Pro SSD tops at 2TB!

I mean. I can't even buy a 8TB drive, even if I wanted to...

8TB... is simply unrealistic at this point. And it's really an astronomical amount for us who have seen drives with capacities rated in MBs...

8TB is a lot of storage, very expensive.

[axur-delmeria]

The cheapest 8TB SSD I found on Amazon is 600 USD (WD Black SN850X) that had a 32% discount from its listed price. It costs more than the 2 newest Thinkpads I got on the second-hand market.

[TPFanatic]

I think you can rent cloud storage for a lot less than that and pay it in perpetuity.

What the hell are you storing on 8TB?? Even my 100% legal fun videos collection fits on an ancient spinner.

[axur-delmeria]

What the hell are you storing on 8TB?? Even my 100% legal fun videos collection fits on an ancient spinner.

I didn't buy it
Just did a quick search cause you guys said it's rare and expensive. But yeah, it's pricey as heck-- I'd rather buy two >10TB enterprise HDDs for less.

[newac]

@axur-delmeria and Edward: I actually fit the double sided 8TB SSD into the Thinkpad P1 gen 3, and the SSD was not identified by the machine.

Did you try a single-sided SSD?

8TB SSD:s are only made in two-sided PCB variant. This was the case back around 2021 when I test, and to my best awareness the situation is the same now. To my awareness, 4TB SSD:s have been made with single-sided PCB from when they started to be manufactured.

As I said, the 8TB SSD did fit into the Thinkpad P1 gen 3, but Lenovo's firmware blocked it.

[TPFanatic]

It’s probably same situation as my P71 legally supporting 128GB RAM, but Lenovo won’t release a BIOS update to make more than 64GB usable.
In any case I dont even use the full 64GB so i dont care enough to do anything more about it.