I got a T420s, questions about the machine before it arrives

[Hans Gruber]

Probably the last addition to my thinkpad collection for awhile. The T420s. I ordered a 120GB SSD 7mm drive. Ordered a backup 7mm HDD caddy from China. Is there anything I should know about the T420s or is it pretty much the same as the T410s besides the Msata SSD option, 7mm main drive bay size and SATA III bus.

It should arrive tomorrow or Friday at the latest. I will be running Windows 7 64bit. Any tips or things I should know about the T420s?

[Temetka]

Check this page:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T420s

You should also have 1 USB 3.0 port.

[ajkula66]

Unlike standard T420, the "s" variety will accept an UltraBay battery as well.

[Hans Gruber]

George, I got a 120GB $40 newegg special SSD. This time I got the ADATA Premier SP550 2.5" 120GB SATA III TLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) ASP550SS3-120GM-C

Probably a Sandforce chipset, this stuff is TLC memory. I have the OCZ Turion 120GB drive on one of my other Thinkpads. I upgraded the firmware on that one. I hear rumors of the OCZ SSD drives crashing or not functioning but have never encountered it myself. The updated firmware is supposed to fix that issue.

I have had good luck with ADATA from their days of DDR memory in the desktop PC.

Basically my take on these SSD's is that with the TLC and some of the SLC drives you get up to 560mb reads and usually 250's read speeds.

Depending on the performance of this ADATA drive, I may have to take out my (128GB) Q series Toshiba drive. A true diamond in the rough performance wise.

I was going to get a 240/250/256GB SSD drive for the T420s but I couldn't justify the cost. I am waiting for the black friday deals and Cyber Monday deals. I have a 240GB Corsair SSD that reads 560's and mid 200's write speeds. The Toshiba is a 520mb write and mid to high 400's read drive.

I will report back on the performance I get from the T420s. With the SATA III bus I may end up switching SSD's based on performance. The 420s has a 2.6ghz CPU and 8GB of ram in it already.

[Tasurinchi]

And don't forget to put the FHD Mod in your list

[RealBlackStuff]

If you do your homework, you'd have found that on Nov. 13 WOOT was selling new 256GB Crucial MX100 SSDs for $74.99.
High quality at a very affordable price!

[Hans Gruber]

Can I use a T410 caddy without rubber rails temporarily until the T420s caddy and rubber rails arrives in a week? The T420s arrived but I am still waiting for the SSD.

[hhhd1]

most likely Yes , if you can keep the hdd/ssd in place , stable and doesn't rattle around,
you can use peices of paper or cardboard to balance it in position.

[Hans Gruber]

It didn't fit in the right way. I would have had to flip the SSD on the tray. I just put the SSD in without any tray or screws. I checked the packaging of the SSD and it's a 7mm drive. It's just a tight fit. Have not seen what the T420s caddy and rails look like. I will just run it as is until the caddy and rails arrive in a few weeks.

Right now loading Windows 7 64bit. I am looking forward to seeing the performance difference with SATA III and the SandyBridge i5.

[Hans Gruber]

This T420s is nice. Looks very much like the T410s. My 120GB Adata SSD has 553mb reads and 391mb write speeds. I am a bit confused with the UEFI bios setup. I have both UEFI and Legacy support enabled with UEFI as the primary boot. It's supposed to have faster OS loading speeds.

[wpyh]

Hi Hans,

I hope you are enjoying your Thinkpad T420s. Do you have the following problems:
1. Right Shift key sometimes touching the Prev or Next keys.
2. The lid latch cannot or difficult to close without sliding the latch release slider.

Because I had those problems on my T420s. And I've somewhat reduced / fixed those problems with some crude hacks... Would love to know if it's just my laptop that's affected.

And no, I read somewhere on the net that UEFI doesn't boot faster than BIOS.

[Hans Gruber]

Hi Hans,

I hope you are enjoying your Thinkpad T420s. Do you have the following problems:
1. Right Shift key sometimes touching the Prev or Next keys.
2. The lid latch cannot or difficult to close without sliding the latch release slider.

Because I had those problems on my T420s. And I've somewhat reduced / fixed those problems with some crude hacks... Would love to know if it's just my laptop that's affected.

And no, I read somewhere on the net that UEFI doesn't boot faster than BIOS.

I think your right shift key may have been removed at one time and incorrectly reseated. I am speaking from previous experience as I have destroyed a keyboard or two replacing keys. Sometimes when I put the keys back on they were crooked or not centered or seated correctly.

I have no problems with any of the keys on the T420s keyboard. No latch problems.

I have not seen any benefits to using UEFI settings as of yet. I am very happy with the snappy performance of the SATA III bus speed and this new ADATA 120GB SSD drive that has write speeds a little above 400mb and reads of 550mb+.

[ajkula66]

UEFI only works on W8 and later when it comes to MS operating systems...so if you're running W7 you're better off with having just the legacy mode enabled.

[hhhd1]

@ajkula66

UEFI does work on windows 7, although it is really pointless, unless you have boot HDD of size larger than 2TB.

but you must install from a media that support UEFI, and verify that the partition table is GPT and not MBR

BIOS -> MBR partition table
UEFI -> GPT partition table

[Hans Gruber]

I had it set for UEFI first and legacy second boot order. I went into the bios and disabled UEFI and now it's running in legacy mode only. Thanks for the information.

[hhhd1]

if you just changed BIOS settings to legacy mode, and it continued to boot normally, that means that windows was not set up with UEFI+GPT at all in the first place.

if you still want to experiment, find, a genuine MS Windows ISO, like the ones floating around the internet that came originally from MSDN, burn it unmodified to a DVD, and then install from it while UEFI enabled in BIOS.

if you tried to burn it to a USB instead of a DVD, it will not install as UEFI, it must be a fully unmodified DVD.

[Hans Gruber]

if you just changed BIOS settings to legacy mode, and it continued to boot normally, that means that windows was not set up with UEFI+GPT at all in the first place.

if you still want to experiment, find, a genuine MS Windows ISO, like the ones floating around the internet that came originally from MSDN, burn it unmodified to a DVD, and then install from it while UEFI enabled in BIOS.

if you tried to burn it to a USB instead of a DVD, it will not install as UEFI, it must be a fully unmodified DVD.

I have Win7 retail copies of Home, Premium and Pro with 32bit and 64bit versions. I installed Win7 Pro 64bit with MTB because I installed before you posted that I would need GPT. When I installed Win7 I had a dual boot in my bios with UEFI and Legacy bios both installed. On my boot screen it shows two bios versions and two separate bios version codes. In bios it has a first boot order of UEFI followed by legacy mode.

I thought dropping UEFI would necessitate reinstalling Windows 7 but because it was a dual boot install I didn't need to do anything. It said my hibernate data was lost and did an Intel ME uninstall and booted normally.

[hhhd1]

I thought dropping UEFI would necessitate reinstalling Windows 7 but because it was a dual boot install I didn't need to do anything. It said my hibernate data was lost and did an Intel ME uninstall and booted normally.

Strange .. but it sounds like it was installed in normal BIOS mode, or your computer is still booting now via UEFI..

When I installed once windows 7 with UEFI accidentally, I had to reinstall again.

Check the partition table, in device manager, right click on the hdd/ssd, then properties, then "volumes" tab, then click populate, then check out the value of "partition style"
it is either MBR or GPT,
if it is MBR, then you didn't install in UEFI mode.

[Hans Gruber]

I finally received by T420s caddy from China. I have a 7mm SSD but the fit with the caddy is very tight. It took me 3 or 4 times to jam it in without having the rubber rails slide out at the ends a bit. I know it's the right size because the 9.5mm caddy won't fit at all. Anybody else here find it difficult to fit the T420s caddy in the HDD slot?

[thinkpadcollection]

Issue is the rubber rails. I wanted to know how to know one where to get is good one that does not bind on me when trying to slide the drives in any thinkpads.

I always noticed that all rubber rails that I have are softer ones are not the problem.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

[Tasurinchi]

I finally received by T420s caddy from China. I have a 7mm SSD but the fit with the caddy is very tight. It took me 3 or 4 times to jam it in without having the rubber rails slide out at the ends a bit. I know it's the right size because the 9.5mm caddy won't fit at all. Anybody else here find it difficult to fit the T420s caddy in the HDD slot?

Actually the SSDs in the T420s don't use the standard metal caddy but red plastic rails (called SSD spacer, FRU# 04W1717)

[Hans Gruber]

I finally received by T420s caddy from China. I have a 7mm SSD but the fit with the caddy is very tight. It took me 3 or 4 times to jam it in without having the rubber rails slide out at the ends a bit. I know it's the right size because the 9.5mm caddy won't fit at all. Anybody else here find it difficult to fit the T420s caddy in the HDD slot?

Actually the SSDs in the T420s don't use the standard metal caddy but red plastic rails (called SSD spacer, FRU# 04W1717)

The red ones are the same rails as the black spacers just a different color.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Original-7- ... Swl8NVVUZZ

Mine fits fine it's just the rubber rails become a tight squeeze and they are pretty flexible and thin causing minimal tearing of the rails if you are not careful.

[jaspen-meyer]

You can make a caddy, for any machine, with a piece of plastic and a piece of rubber.
The packaging from ice cream or sliced cheese works and an inner tube from a bicycle tire also works.
Grab a drill and scissors and five minuets later you'll have a caddy.

[Tasurinchi]

The red ones are the same rails as the black spacers just a different color

They look the same but the red rails are made of hard(ish) plastic (at least the two sets I have are so), while even the sturdier rubber rails are much softer. I also tried with different sets of rails in mine and never got comfortable with the rubber ones. Of course YMMV...