List of drives that are compatible with the x220

I have, however most are for standard drives it would appear. I figured with all these guy using the 9.5mm drives that somebody might want to get rid of their stuff for a 7mm drive.

 

Guys help! I'm in trouble!

I was running CrystalDiskMark on my Renice X3 (that I installed a few weeks ago, with seemingly no problems) and my X220 restarted and froze at the Lenovo POST screen.

I turned it off by holding the power button down, then turned it back on, and it seemed to take a long time to get to the POST screen, then after a while it tried to boot from the LAN card. I restarted and went into the BIOS (which loaded after a real long time) and my X3 disappeared from the BIOS.

Has this happened to anyone? Is my computer dead? Any ideas?

 

What are your system specs?

It's possible that you will need to wait for the next X220 BIOS update:

Re: X220 with USB3.0, no mSata SSD possible ? - Page 8 - Lenovo Community

You might try cleaning the drive (I used Parted Magic, booted off a CD, option "dd", for this), and then restoring your disk image.

Also, I'd go easy on the benchmarking:

Guide How it is very easy to cause severe issues with a brand new SandForce based ssd drive

OCZ and Corsair both recommend ATTO for benchmarking.

 

I can't see the drive in the bios, so I don't think parted magic will work, but I could try it.

This was only my 3rd benchmark in a month, I wouldn't have expected that to be such a big deal.

I ordered an mSATA to SATA 2.5" adapter, so I'm going to try and see if that works. My only concern is that the 2.5" adapter will be of 9.5 mm height and not fit in the x220 hd bay.

Thanks for the suggestions

 

Sorry my system specs are:

4286-CTO
Core i7
8 GB of Ram
Win7 Pro x64
BIOS 1.17

I realize I might have to wait for the BIOS update, and I'm happy to do so... if I knew that would fix it. But I'd hate to wait around if the update takes a long time to come out, or if it doesn't fix it.

 

This thread is a good history of the X220 / mSATA issue:

X220 with USB3.0, no mSata SSD possible ? - Lenovo Community

It seems that the issue only affects systems that have a Lenovo WAN antenna pre-installed. You would have seen the wires for this antenna near where you installed your SSD. If you didn't see anything looking like antenna wires, then your problem might be different.

The bad news is that it seems that very few people have had luck getting their mSATA drives to work, have had to make do without, and are waiting for Lenovo's next X220 BIOS, 1.18.

The good news is it might be close to release. At least one X220 owner reports getting a beta version of 1.18 from Lenovo, for a mSATA-related issue.

 

I'd note that you mean unattached antenna wires. The WiFi wires run through there as well, so you will always see some antenna wires.

 

Seems hit or miss. I had a Gobi 3000 WWAN card from the factory installed on my machine. I'm now using the Intel 310 80gb with the 7200 hd just fine. I did install the latest chipset inf from intel... don't know if that helped at all though. Just recognized it on first boot.

 

I realize there is an issue with the mSATA drives and the X220. I'm just scared because the system detected the drive and everything worked fine for a month, and then it wasn't recognized all of a sudden, and no one seems to have had that problem.

Plus Renice is in China, so I'm not sure how an exchange/return will go. I contacted them today and they told me to check the lights on the SSD to determine if it was the drive itself that was bad or it was a BIOS issue. I asked them how I was supposed to look at the lights on the drive if I have to take the system apart and put it back together to install it and turn the system on.

 

Update: Since installing this drive, my system developed mouse pointer hangs and BSOD's. Turning off LPM vastly increased my system stability, but I still get hangs / BSOD's every day or two. Others are having problems with the Corsair Force 3 120GB, so a faulty drive is starting to appear to be the culprit, although chipset, SATA 3 controller and / or driver or BIOS might be the problem:

Force Series 3 Users Having Issues with a Replacement Drive READ HERE PLEASE - Page 11 - The Corsair Support Forums

System: X220, Core i7 2620M, USB 3.0, Corsair Force Series 3 120GB (post-recall model)

 

Hi,

Firstly, I have read through every page of this thread but cannot find a definate answer. Can anyone help confirm if this drive is modifiable (like a spacer mod for the c300) to fit the Thinkpad X220.

Samsung 470 256GB SSD
Firmware - AXM06D1Q (Supports Trim Under Windows 7)
Model - MZ5PA256HMDR-010D1

It is a 9.5mm height but according to one user reply you can remove one of the cover to reduce the height down to approx. 6mm and use the drive without voiding warranty.

I am looking at the Samsung 470 which will cost me $325 USD ~ $1.26/gb or the Crucial M4 @ $455 ~ $1.78/gb but am leaning towards the Samsung because of the 40% price difference although the M4 is Sata3 but shouldn't be that different in Real Life feeling/noticeably.

Any other suggestion is welcome but within similar budget.

Thanks
Nick

 

Just dropped a 1TB 9.5mm Samsung drive into my X220 using the Russian diagonal insert method. Also popped in 8gb of ram, running Memtest86+ now. Hope the mSATA drive ships soon so I can get Debian installed on this thing either through a functional mSATA port or on the platter drive itself.

For the 9.5mm drive, I removed both rubber spacers, but cut up some bike inner tube to wedge between the drive and the panel door. Drive doesn't seem to be that loud but I haven't actually tried accessing it yet.

 

RunCore outs T50 6Gb/s mSATA SSD, SandForce speeds included -- Engadget

 

On which PC's is the mSATA interface SATA III? The ones I know of are all SATA II.

 

Can someone please explain why exactly you need to remove the rails/rubber spacer when using a 9.5mm drive? If the only difference between 7mm and 9.5mm drives is the height...how on earth does removing rails off the side change anything? I just don't get it.

 

With the rubber rails it won't fit as they make the drive bigger.

 

You need to do more than that. I can't find the site now but it's linked to somewhere here on this forum, it's Russian.

Basically the rubber spacers are strictly big enough for 7mm drives. The tray also adds some height to the drive.

There are teeth which seem to serve no purpose at the opening of where the drive slips in that are about 1mm long. The options you have to stuff a 9.5mm drive into the slot is to either do what I did and take the keyboard off, pull off the plastics on the inside and slip the drive in sideways, or take a Dremel and grind off the teeth.

 

The "nibs" are an attempt to enforce a ~1mm "guard band" between the case and the drive itself, allowing the rubber rails to provide some limited shock protection.

It's not a big deal to evade that for a SSD that doesn't care about shock, but for a rotating disk, well, you might be buying yourself a nice head crash if you defeat that. I can get the Momentus-XT into the slot but I'm not going to for this reason.

My Vertex (original) 120GB drive does fit snugly, it is a bit of a challenge to remove but not insurmountable, and both works perfectly and is quite fast.

 

WD is now shipping 1TB 9.5mm Scorpio Blue drives.

Western Digital now shipping 2.5-inch 1TB Scorpio Blue HDD in standard height -- Engadget

 

The WD 1TB drive is $30 more than the Samsung at newegg. As much as I love WD, I can't see anyone choosing it.

I cancelled the provantage order for the Z5K500 yesterday. Ordered 06/14 and still hadn't shipped. I was curious how it would perform, but storagereview's recent review showed it's one of the worst performing drives released in a long time. Moreover, for not much more you can pick up the 9.5mm 1TB Samsung.

 

Interesting. Will that fit straight in or require a bit of work? And how is power consumption compared to the 7200 HDD that comes with the X220 if you select it?

 

Despite the big price difference, I might end up with the WD as the Samsung is conspicuously absent from Canadian shops (even Newegg's Canadian site). The posted price at a local shop is $123.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/7641528-post522.html

It's right there in the link below. Buy it soon if you want it, price went up on newegg.com by $5 today. Still at $90 on newegg.ca.

Newegg.ca - SAMSUNG Spinpoint M8 HN-M101MBB 1TB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

 

Haha thanks... You just saved me $30+. I swear it wasn't there two days ago. There are double the amount of Samsung drives there used to be...

edit: ordered at $90!

 

Since it's mainly for storage, I don't care much about the performance. I just want something quiet. That's what concerns me about getting a 9.5mm drive. Despite it not being big enough, the best thing about my current drive is it's very quite.

 

All the 5400rpm drives are very quiet. The Toshiba I'm using is inaudible, and so are the WD Blue drives I've used.

 

That has not been my experience. This is particularly true of smaller machines like the X220, which shield little noise. When I had my X200, I put a Samsung 640GB in there. It was just as noisy as a 7200RPM.

 

Well you can go on user feedback this time. The Toshiba in my machine is extremely quiet, you can barely here it spinning in a totally quiet room and there's no seek noise at all. LastSilmaril has the 1TB Samsung in his machine, you can ask him for feedback on that one. WD Blue drives have always been exceptional in noise and vibration.

 

Can someone please confirm Crucial / Microm M4 C400 works ???

Does it come 7mm stock or has to be modded ???

Will it void the warranty ?

 

I can verify that the Samsung 470 fits. The top case just snaps on and there is no sticker so it is easy to remove and reapply if needed. Fits perfect with the rubber spacers.

Great all around drive 250 MB/s read 220 MB/s write with great battery life.

Hope that helps someone.

**Please add the drive as an approved modifiable 9.5mm drive to the 1st post.

Thanks

 

@bing281
Just to make sure.

Can you confirm that this Samsung 470: Amazon.com: Samsung 64 GB Solid State Drive MZ-5PA064: Electronics

fits?

You just removed the top cover and installed it without it right? The SSD doesn't use screws?

thanks!

 

@bing281

Can you please confirm if your Samsung 470 is the Retail version or OEM version? Retail = Silver + Orange casing.. OEM = dull black plastic casing.

So far I know the Retail version will fit with a simple removal of the top cover. However, I plan on getting the OEM version and would like to know if the case is designed the same way and will indeed fit as well.

Thanks in advance.

 

@nickichino

Is it hard to remove the top cover of the Samsung 470?
Do you have first hand experience with removing the top cover or did you only read it somewhere?

I'd just like to make sure that it really works, before I buy the 470 and I am stuck with a non-working 9.5mm SSD again (;

Thanks a lot for your reply!

 

Does anyone have experience with either the Corsair Performance 3 Series or Force Series GT SSDs (are they even 7mm drives?)? I would really like to get a Force 3 120GB but despite the recall and update I'm still hearing stories of that drive being defective.

 

Just swapped my X220 tablet HD with the Crucial M4 128GB and can confirm that it works. On IDE:

Sequential Read : 244.025 MB/s
Sequential Write : 178.572 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 227.235 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 169.228 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 21.489 MB/s [ 5246.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 48.275 MB/s [ 11785.8 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 26.703 MB/s [ 6519.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 100.213 MB/s [ 24466.0 IOPS]

After turning on AHCI:

Sequential Read : 386.453 MB/s
Sequential Write : 191.381 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 330.836 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 188.430 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 18.650 MB/s [ 4553.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 50.017 MB/s [ 12211.3 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 234.630 MB/s [ 57282.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 175.792 MB/s [ 42918.1 IOPS]

I removed the spacer, did not use any electrical tape, did a fresh Win7 64Pro install using the 'ABR' tool to re-activate with the original OEM key and did not have any 'LPM freezes' sofar.

 

I was worried about the stuttering / freeze issues with this model. Please let me know if you encounter any, cuz I'm seriously considering the 512GB model

 

I don't mean to sound impertinent, but is there really a need to quote the entire post above your own in its entirety?

 

Was there any "warranty void if removed" sticker ???
Can they tell you opened it up ?

 

Anyway, I can confirm that the Corsair F60 does NOT work with Thinkpad X220.

The SSD doesn't even get detected :\ (it's 9.5mm as well, toug you can remove the keyboard and bezel and put it in that way.

 

No stuttering/freezing at all, been using it for 3 days now. Seems like the 0002 firmware has solved this according to a lot of people over at the Crucial forum.

No waranty sticker on mine, they will probably be able to tell I've did something with it if they would look closely at the original screws.

 

Thanks! I think I'll choose M4 instead of waiting for Intel's reaction towards the 8MB bug I have seen sticky threads in other forums regarding stuttering resolved by 0002 firmware. Did you update the firmware yourself, or did it came with the 0002 firmware when you bought it?

BTW, is there any chance that you could post any mini review (regarding performance) of M4 inside X220? I'm curious to see if X220 gimps the performance

 

Is anyone still updating the OP? This isn't the first drive I've seen discussed in later pages that isn't on the front page (e.g. the M4).

 

After 5 days of running my X220 with a Renice K3VLAR 120GB from My Digital Discount, the mSATA drive just died.

Debian came back out of sleep and apps were acting weird, after poking around I realized my file system was mounted as read only. Poking around a bit more the system locked up completely. After cold booting the BIOS was moving very slowly, eventually it decided whatever was plugged into my mSATA port wasn't really a drive and tried to boot off of my platter drive. Looking into BIOS setup it's not listing anything for the mSATA port.

I took the drive out and popped it into the SATA adapter card, tried to read it off of USB. It somehow made any SATA to USB adapter I plugged it into not want to be recognized by either Debian or Mac OS. I pulled my platter drive out and tried to plug it into the straight up SATA port on the X220, again the BIOS acted really slow then eventually gave up reading the drive.

I am annoyed. Anyone dealt with doing RMAs through My Digital Discount?

 

What would you like to know? I've got:

- X220 tablet (4296-2WU) I5 2520, 8GB, Crucial M4 128GB
- Fresh Win 7 64 bit fully updated
- Thinkvantage System Update fully updated
- Full Office Enterprise installation
- Rainmeter and Omnimo skin
- Usual thingies (Altbinz, Quickpar, Foobar, Winrar, Gimp, Zend, Angrybirds etc..)

Boot times (taken from eventviewer logs, including FP logon):
BootTime: 20074ms
MainPathBootTime: 6674ms

WEI:
Processor: 7.1
Memory: 7.4
Graphics: 5.7
Gaming graphics: 6.3
Primary hard disk: 7.9

CrystalDisk:
Sequential Read : 386.453 MB/s
Sequential Write : 191.381 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 330.836 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 188.430 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 18.650 MB/s [ 4553.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 50.017 MB/s [ 12211.3 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 234.630 MB/s [ 57282.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 175.792 MB/s

I'm pretty happy with it, opening any application is snappy, so snappy that I usually open two IE windows by mistake

Completly offtopic: Does any one know where to find the 'fish pond' screensaver? It was there when I got my X220, but gone after the fresh install.. I thought it was a default Win 7 screensaver but it seems to be an extra Lenovo (tablet?) thing. I do still have the original HD with the SWTOOLS folder intact.

 

@ThiPaX40: many thanks for the mini review! These scores are pretty astonishing! Only Random Read/Write 4KB (QD=1) seem impaired by CPU C states but that's np for a laptop at all. I think I'll be getting one or two of the M4 soon, for my X220 and desktop

 

+1 for the M4. I've just put a 256gb inside my X220 and I'm very happy with the performance:



The PC Mark Vantage score is pretty impressive too:



i7, 8GB RAM.

 

is this the M4 drive you guys are talking about?
Newegg.com - Crucial M4 CT064M4SSD2 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

I'm quite interested in installing this but im really apprehensive, im not worried about the hardware component of installation (there are videos on how to assemble/disassemble) what deters me from jumping ship is the installation of software (windows). Seems like there are many intricate permutations you could go about doing it...problem is idk which is best. I don't even know what you guys are talking about when "aligning the drive". Pardon my ignorance...but can anyone here assure me that everything will be fine? (noob status)

 

but after this you have deleted thinkpad recovery partition, so recovery throught thinkpad button or F11 doesn't work.
Is any way to restore this partition when doning clean windows install (not from recovery dvd) ??

 

Mine arrived today, and I'm testing it right now on eSATA before installing it. I can't yet compare the Samsung and the 7mm Hitachi on even footing, but I can easily say that the Samsung provides a far more pleasant sound. Chattering sounds (while actively r/w) are only barely audible, and that's if you have your ear right over it. At idle, I only hear the standard spinning sound. Meanwhile, the Hitachi audibly ticks away every 5-8 seconds while not even being used, and puts off more chatter when in use.

 

I can confirm that the 64GB version of the Crucial M4 works like a charm with the X220. There also is no sticker (Bought it at Amazon Germany: Crucial CT064M4SSD2 64GB interne SSD-Festplatte 2.5: Amazon.de: Computer & Zubehör)

Removing the frame works like a charm - all you have to do is remove 4 screws and if you are careful there is no way they can tell, that the screws had been removed.

Furthermore I didn't purchase the 3mm M2 screws, instead I simply used some electrical tape to fixate the cover. Finally I screwed the SSD in the harddisk frame and put the whole thing into the X220. Works like a charm and takes you 5 minutes.

Under Fedora 15, using hdparm it gives me 522.6 mb/s average read rate and ofc < 0.1ms access time.