T420 uses 7mm or 9mm SSD?

Hi,

Apologies for asking a novice question. What ssd should I get if I were to buy to T420. I want to make ssd as my primary drive and have mechanical drive to hold secondary things like media. Will use msata slot to put in the ssd

I believe T420s uses the 7mm one which is difficult to find?

Much appreciated.

 

Any 2.5" 9.5mm SSD will fit in a T420. T420s uses a 7mm 2.5" drive.

I'd recommend Intel or Samsung for the best reliability. Intel 510 or Crucial M4 if you are looking for speed.

 

Unless you need WWAN, I'd get the mSATA and a platter based drive for the main bay.

 

If moving the laptop around a lot, I do not recommend putting a mechanical HDD into a laptop. HDD is too vulnerable to shock damages, even with ThinkPad HDD Protection and G-force techs.

 

That's not been my experience.

 

Not a good experience to have, of course! In order to reproduce such obvious effect, simply drop your ThinkPad with a mechanical HDD from 1 meter height, then run MHDD to scan for latencies of each block over the whole HDD (each block = 255 sectors). There will be lots of green blocks, and even red / bad blocks if unlucky. If you repeat such procedure (while the laptop is powered on) I'm sure you'll eventually destroy the HDD before the laptop is broken.

However if the laptop is running only with SSD but not HDD, then the laptop will most likely be broken before the SSD is damaged in such repeated tests.

 

That is an EXTREME scenario. Most laptop users don't dribble them like basketballs. The user that lands in that scenario repeatedly should be using mil spec hardware.

 

Why would I want to do that? I don't think I've ever dropped my notebook. Perhaps I've been lucky, but I would not recommend someone stay away from platter drives because they might drop it. The answer to that question is to have a good back up.

 

That's just the quickest way to have it. If you handle your laptop like fragile goods all the time with care, then of course there's little chance to break the HDD. However if moving the laptop around a lot, especially when the laptop is running, it wears out the HDD at a relatively faster speed. Also, accidental damage due to falling is a risk that is exclusive to HDD, while SSD is a lot safer. What I'm saying is that SSD is more reliable (i.e. shock resistant) and I recommend getting rid of HDD when the price is right.

 

Tempered, I could accept the suggestion with the qualifier "when the price is right", though you shouldn't imply that HDDs are not perfectly fine in most environments for most consumers. I am on the go often, from meeting to meeting, and do not wait for the heads to park prior to manipulating my laptop. Even so, my HDD's often outlive the original laptops as they endure for several laptop purchases.

 

LOL
the guy just asked what to put in

if you get the msata, the 7 vs 9mm question will now be for your HDD, not the SSD. the msata SSD is very small and goes into a slot different from the HDD slot.

once you have the main HDD bay empty, you can leave it blank or put in a HDD there. Or you can use the ultrabay with an adapter and put your HDD there.

I've been using the SSD+HDD option for years now, and have had no problems. and yeah, I don't play ball with my laptop, either.

 

I too have been doing the SSD+HDD for a while now, on a MBP (with Optibay) and now with my T420. I've had no problems, and I keep regular backups (all the important stuff is on the MBP backed up with Time Machine).

As for the T420, it will take standard 9mm drives, whether SSD or HDD. Go for a Crucial M4, as the T420 has SATA 6Gbps speeds (SATA 3.0). The Crucial M4 is a 6Gbps drive, and the speed is fantastic. I've got a 128GB one as my main boot drive (just recently installed) and I moved the 500GB HDD that came with it to the optical bay using a caddy.

 

The msata drives are so expensive, I can't warrant getting one. I opted for the Intel 160GB instead. I can't imagine needing more on my laptop.

 

I got the 160GB Intel 320 for my MBP, and it's great. The drive is a 3Gbps drive, and my 2010 MBP only has 3Gbps SATA, so it works out.

 

There are a few $1/GB rebates up on newegg right now. So...beautiful.

 

Love to jump on that, but all my funds are going to a wedding/honeymoon right now until January.

 

I wish I could too but I just bought an X220 tablet. And my current SSD is still doing awesomely.