Compatibility with ssd for ThinkPad T20

[bobbelause]

Hi, i recently wanted to upgrade the hard drive in my ThinkPad T20, and i was wondering if there is any ssd that is compatible with a T20?
Though I am looking for a 60GB or bigger hard drive.

I am farely new to this website. Thanks in advance .

[MikalE]

This is just an example from a quick Google search:

https://www.memoryc.com/12057-64gb-king ... oller.html

[Droider]

You can get a cheap msata to 44pin adapter and a 64gb/128gb msata ssd. That is how i use my T23 which is identical. The adapter is the cheapest and works %100 fine. jm20330 chip.

[bobbelause]

Hi Droider,
Thank you for your response, and i will look into buying one of the adapters you mentioned. Thanks again.

[Droider]

Today i had to disassemble my T23 to solder the broken CMOS battery socket. Since i had the remove the entire palmrest, i thought i could improve the installation and removal of msata ssd I used a strong double sided tape on the original hdd caddy, marked the position of hdd pin with a pen on the caddy, since the pins are straight, it was so easy to align. No need to pay trible the money for the same adapter which comes with a cheapo plastic case. You can use the original caddy.

[cadillacmike68]

^^
That's looks real nice and anchoring it to keep the pins aligned is a great idea. I have lots of those white caddies lying around

I think I'll get a couple of these for my older T20 / T30 series.

[mxt3]

I want to share my recent experience with an mSata-to-IDE converter.

I bought an adapter on Amazon from the brand "Chenyang" brand for a T22 which I'm restoring. The product listing is a bit vague about the exact product number. It is sold as an mSATA mini PCI to IDE 44-pin adapter.
Although the interface in the T2x ThinkPad seems to be 40-pin IDE, this does not seem to be an issue. Below are some pictures of the product listen and pictures I took with the assembled device.
The adapter carries the (infamous?) JM20330 bridge chip.

The nice thing about this adapter is that it comes with a case. The PCB has similar size to a 2.5-inch drive, and together with the included white plastic case, fully assembled it has the shape of a classic 2.5" disk. This makes the adapter fit well into the ThinkPad HDD bay, after mounting it on the original HDD caddy. Although I had to carefully fiddle a bit before it clicked into the IDE connector.

The mSata SDD (Kingston KC600 256GB) is correctly recognized by the BIOS. I managed to format the drive and copy a basic DOS environment to the HDD from a Win 98 emergency floppy, from which it currently successfully boots. So far, it seems to work well, especially for the modest price. Unfortunately, I haven't really put it to the test at this moment. I will try to report in more detail on its performance and stability once I have a proper OS (Win 98 SE probably) installed.

Also interesting to note: there is no use going above 128 GB as the chipset of the T20-T22 does support LBA48 addressing (according to what I found in my research. I don’t know about the T23). I thus formatted the larger 256 GB disk into a single 128 GB volume.

Adapter, not assembled
Assembled, top view
Assembled, connector/bottom view

[RealBlackStuff]

You can make another partition on that SSD for use as storage.

[mxt3]

You can make another partition on that SSD for use as storage.

You mean to get around the 128 GB limit? I thought this was a hard limit at the protocol level of the chipset. Only from IDE-6 (ATA-6) and higher, LBA48 is supported (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ ... imitations).
Does the chipset of the T22 support IDE-6 ? ( I found this laptop has the intel 440bx chipset) Or doesn't it matter what the chipset supports, but is this a BIOS/OS-level thing?

[my03]

This is quite interesting indeed. I had to back-off from a 256GB unit earlier (https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.p ... 76#p871563) even if it was recognized by the bios (but not later on by w98).

Are there any steps absolutely needed in order to get it to work?

I did settle in the end for a 32GB PATA unit bought off Aliexpress and it works fine for now.

[thewaywardgeek]

Hey another note to consider in getting an IDE to mSATA Adapter, because it's a conversion TRIM might not work properly due to the controller of the adapter, only way to address the issue that I know is to turn of the TRIM Command and schedule it everytime System stars up.