The "padding" holding a think 320GB HDD on my new Thinkpad 530

Hello,

I just got a new T530. It came with a 320GB HDD and I want to replace it with a SSD.

However, the 320GB HDD is thinner than my other hard disk drives and SSDs and the padding to hold it in the computer is different from what I saw before. Please see the following picture.



You can see that there are some blank holes, which are for nothing except reduce the space to hold the hard drive.

Thus, the padding is not a fit for my SSD. I went to Best Buy to buy a regular "padding" and they dont have it.

What is this "padding" called? I went to Ebay and failed to find it either.

Thanks for any input!

Cheers.

 

Those things are called "rubber rails" or "rubber spacers." They pad the two sides of a drive. The driver itself is attached to a "caddy" that has a plastic tab at one end to ease detaching the drive from the SATA connector and pulling the drive out of the main bay.



Your new SSD must have the same height (or thickness) as that of the stock HDD.

A similar answer has been given earlier.

 

Thanks, Kaso.

 

Just to chip in, but I don't use the metal "cage" with my SSDs (Intel 330, 320), just the rubber rails. Works just fine for me. Both are 9.5mm height.

 

And I do the exact opposite...:hi2: "no" to rails and "yes" to caddy...to each his/hers own, obviously.

 

Eh, I figured that the metal cage didn't do much other than to block the view of the drive. And the rubber rails at least help with shock (SSDs don't care that much, but it's useful for mechanical drives at least).

 

Old habits die hard. PATA drives were a pain to insert properly without a caddy. And good luck getting out even a SATA drive out of a deep bay like ones found on 15" T6x units.

Not a problem with X6x tablets, though...

Agreed. With a conventional HDD I have everything in place, with SSD just the caddy.

 

Hmm speaking of which, I guess my letter didn't arrive yet?

EDIT: nvm, just checked my email.

 

With a SSD, as long as it won't get loose from the SATA connector, you're good to go anyways. There's a video on youtube where you can see someone giving an Intel SSD the basketball treatment and it working perfectly afterwards. I'd be more worried of the strain on the connector a loose SSD could have. I like both Kuroi and ajkula solutions, but even something as ghetto as cardboard to hold the SSD firmly in place would work, not en elegant solution though.

 

Yeah. No caddy, no rubber rails. For padding, if at all, I cut some of the foam material from the foam envelope that wraps the SSD in its original packaging.