Modding a Panasonic UJ232A 9.5mm Blu-ray Burner to fit in X200 or X201 ultrabase

[#1]

I ordered a refurbished Panasonic UJ232A and wanted to see if I could modify it to fit and work in the bay of the ultrabase for my X200 ThinkPad.

The drive's door does not fit the drive bay properly as it is rectangular and does not have the stair-step cut out characteristic to ThinkPad ultrabay devices.

Since the drive housing does fit perfectly in the Ultrabase x200, and the computer does recognize the drive correctly if I leave the door open for clearance, I decided to press ahead and modify the shape of the plastic door cover to fit the opening.

If you happen to have the drive placeholder, you might notice that the front of the placeholder is vertically the same size the whole way until you get to about a half an inch to the right front of the placeholder, which corresponds to location of the drive bay latch. In fact, the bay latch that helps you take the drive out is in the way. In order for the drive to close, the drive door on the right hand side would need to be in a shaped differently or in other terms cut out. All of the materials are very thin and hard at the same time.

The Panasonic UJ232A:

Because the plastic of the drive door is thin and brittle, care must be used to trim it.  I used a finger nail file of some type and a toe nail file and a lot of patience and bingo, I have a Blu-Ray Burner for my Ultrabase x200 for Thinkpad x201.

 
Since I have this drive now, I can take my old USB DVD burner/BluRay Player with me without having to unplug it from the ultrabase every time that I need to take it somewhere. I can leave the old one in my laptop bag for traveling. My desk looks less cluttered.