Replacing HDD with SSD

[alosito]

I want to replace the HDD in my T420i with an SSD and move the HDD to the DVD-ROM slot. I have read that Lenovo’s base SSD is a BiTMICRO 3.0Gbps. Does it mean that it doesn't make much sense to get yourself SATA III standard when choosing an SSD? Or will T420i support, for example, Crucial M4 SATA III SSD just fine and I will be able to take a full advantage of 6.0Gb/s bus speed?

[wolfman]

Hello, you can get a SATA III SSD for your T420i and it'll run at SATA III speeds (in the primary slot or the ultrabay slot). The mSATA slot is SATA II in case you look at those.

I've done exactly what you mentioned, bought an Intel 520 series SSD for the primary drive bay and added a 750gb, 7200 RPM Hitachi drive in an ultrabay adapter (see signature below). In my case, the Intel 520 is a SATA III drive and the 750gb is a SATA II drive, but the bay could've used a drive at SATA III speeds if I had one...

Lenovo does ship with SATA II drives, but the machine is SATA III capable for the primary and ultrabay drive slots.

Regarding the ultrabay adapter, I bought mine from the folks that advertise at the top of the page - the T420 needs a 12.7mm adapter and the Lenovo part from my old T410 was the Lenovo part for the T420 (at least current as of March, 2012) and it is a 9.5mm adapter and left a gap at the top that I did not want. There is no gap with the newmodeus product and the fitment and color match the Thinkpad just fine.

[alosito]

Thank you for the reply. So you think this SSD will work with t420i and run at a full speed of 6.0 Gb/s just fine?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... slicinc-20

One more question. Does it make any sense to put an SSD instead of the HDD and move the HDD to the ultrabay slot? Or you can just put an SSD to the ultrabay slot and make your system load from the SSD? Trying to make my laptop run faster.

[wolfman]

Yes, that drive will work fine and it's a very good price actually.

You can put the SSD in the ultrabay without moving the internal hard drive, however, I wouldn't recommend it. If you are booting from the SSD, you'll want that in the fixed drive bay. That way later on, if you need to use the DVD drive the machine came with, you can swap the HDD out of the ultrabay and replace with the DVD drive (for a software installation or a backup or whatever).

Because of that, I went ahead and put my SSD in the fixed bay and the HDD in the ultrabay. Also, another consideration on my part was I store Virtual Machines on my HDD drive and in the future I might need additional HDD's, so it makes it easier for me to swap HDD's with them in the ultrabay.