T400 Ultrabay SSD?

Hi guys,

I have a T400 with a 250 GB fujitsu HDD. The lid for the hard drive is super glued on (it broke off), so I can't remove the drive. Part of this hard drive is corrupted, so I've been thinking about getting a SSD to put in the ultrabay to use as a boot drive.

I've been thinking about getting an Intel X-25-V 40 GB drive to put into the ultrabay. Will I get the full speed of the drive from this? Also, I've been looking on ebay for generic adaptors, since Lenovo charges a crazy 60 bucks for theirs, will this work just as well and does anybody have any experiences with these sorts of adaptors?

 

I just recently bought and recieved yesterday actually a "generic" adapter from Ebay for about 20~ dollars. Works great. The seller's name was "thinkpan" I believe and I'll post pictures and a review soon.

 

Super glued? Was that your idea? The hard drive cover on the T400 is a $1 peice of plastic for heavens sake.

 

Super glue...? Yikes.

Well, if you do put an SSD in the UltraBay, I don't think you can load the OS on there, so there's not too much point. Best option is probably to figure out some way to carefully cut out the hard drive cover piece that you super-glued on there, install the SSD, and buy a replacement cover.

 

Well, I dropped the laptop, and it happened to fall on its corner, causing basically the entire chasis around the lid to crack, to the screw threads that allow the cover to screw in place broke off, and part of the palmrest warped too. It was only a 2-3 foot drop too =/.

Is the reason why I can't load a second OS on there because there's no CD drive to put the install disc in? Can't I just install windows using a flash drive or something?

 

Yes you can install Windows using a USB Flash Drive, you may find that installing Windows in this method is actually much faster than the standard DVD. Check out the instructions here.

I think you should get the palmrest replaced if it's warped as well as the hard drive cover. There should be plenty of spare parts on auction sites such as eBay. The T400 shouldn't be too hard to take apart, check out the hardware maintenance manual for instructions on how to do this - link.

 

You can use the ultra bay as a boot drive, just make sure you format the main drive or you'll be press the think vantage button to boot to the SSD in the Ultra Bay.

 

I've been using 2 SSDs in my T400, one in the Ultrabay, without any speed penalties.

You can set the boot order in the BIOS.

And yes, it will boot from the Ultrabay without any problems. Mine have been.