T420s and OCZ Agility/Vertex/etc (9mm)

Hi everyone! My new T420s will be coming in the mail soon, and I wanted to replace the 320GB HDD with an SSD. I am moving from an older computer which has a 120GB OCZ Agility 3 SSD in it, so I was hoping to just use that one in my new laptop.

I realize these OCZ drives are 9mm and the T420s requires a 7mm drive. Are there any modifications I can make to my SSD so I can securely fit it in the new laptop?

 

Maybe if you remove the housing on the drive it might fit in the laptop. But beware that you run the risk of voiding the warranty and if you are not careful static will fried the drive.

edit: remove the enclosure of the hdd and expose the pcb and the ram chips

 

I'm looking at my Agility 2...there are no spacers to make it 7mm.

 

Alright, well I already went ahead and removed the housing earlier... so warranty has been voided.

Would the bare SSD fit snug inside the laptop with the rubber rails that come with it? Or is there anything I need to do to better secure it? I figure I could probably get some anti-static material to wrap around it.

 

If you don't need WWAN, perhaps you pick up an mSATA drive and sell your Agility. That way you'd get a SSD for the boot partition and a platter based drive in the main bay for storage where speed is not as important.

 

Also see this thread which describes various solutions for squeezing a 9mm drive into a 7mm bay.

John

 

Just to point out, I have never try this before, I just know that it is possible. I guess you could just remove the front cover(leave the back cover) and I don't think it is nessary to add a anti-static material if you are careful with the install, unless you are constantly taking the drive out, I just don't see the reason of putting an extra protection to the drive.

 

Alright, I'll definitely try fitting it in there. I think the best option however is an mSATA drive, as it allows the HDD to be used as a large storage sink. Are they limited to SATA 3 speeds due to it being a PCIe card?

I'll report back tomorrow when I try fitting my SSD inside!

 

They're more akin to SATA II speeds, but I wouldn't give it too much thought. The real benefit of a SSD is the near instantaneous seek times. That won't change going from SATA II to III. My R60e running Linux and with a SATA I controller boots in seven seconds.