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What's DOS?
Posts: 4
Registered: ‎02-09-2014
Location: US
Message 1 of 5 (332 Views)

Installing SSD in hard drive bay

I'm want to put an SSD in the hard drive bay of my W530 but am concerned about size and the rubber rails that came with the original hard drive.  The hard drive thats in there now is a 7mm drive, and I think the SSD I'm looking at is about 9mm high.  Is it possible to get different rubber rails to accomodate a taller drive (9mm vs 7mm)?

 

Also, second, the drive I'm looking at is the Samsung EVO 500 GB SSD, which it says it measures 2.75" wide.  Will this fit or do I need to look for another drive?  I thought laptop drives were only 2.5" wide, but Samsung claims it's for a laptop.

802.11n
Posts: 204
Registered: ‎12-31-2013
Location: US
Message 2 of 5 (307 Views)

Re: Installing SSD in hard drive bay

Any 2.5" ssd will fit width- and length-wise  You'll only need the rubber rails with the <9mm depth variants.


W530 | 3840QM | 32g @ 1.35v CL9 1986z | 512g 840 Pro | 1t HGST 7200 | FHD AUO v.4 | Quadro K2k | GOBI 5k | Centrino 6300
What's DOS?
Posts: 4
Registered: ‎02-09-2014
Location: US
Message 3 of 5 (301 Views)

Re: Installing SSD in hard drive bay

Yes but aren't the rails designed to prevent the drive from rattling around during movement or transport? I know with SSDs they can tolerate a lot more vibration and shock since there's no moving parts. But I also don't want to have to worry about it sliding out of the connector during transport as well... maybe I could get some soft foam spacers to stick to the drive bay cover to keep it in place...
HDMI
Posts: 135
Registered: ‎06-17-2010
Location: Durham, NC
Message 4 of 5 (291 Views)

Re: Installing SSD in hard drive bay

Make sure your soft foam material is ESD resistant.

Guru
Posts: 1,389
Registered: ‎06-13-2013
Location: US
Message 5 of 5 (271 Views)

Re: Installing SSD in hard drive bay

I swapped out the 512GB SATA spinner in my W530 for a 512GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD.  Fit perfectly using the existing rubber rails.

 

Just be careful about the orientation of the rubber rails as they attach to the SSD.  I don't know if I consciously or unconsciously reversed them (from how they'd been placed on the original SATA spinner), but my initial install had them apparently backwards.  I hadn't noticed the two different pictures in the Hardware Maintenance Manual, and this is my first laptop and thus my first hardware change in a laptop.

 

And even after I did see the two different drive pictures in the manual (which apparently were trying to convey a difference in positioning of the rubber rails) it really wasn't clear to me what they were trying to say.

 

Anyway, my first "install" had the rails either upside-down or inside-out or something, but the drive itself ended up being RAISED above the power/data connector inside the drive bay cavity.  So although I though I had pushed the drive in firmly and could reattach the plastic bay cover holding the drive down, I had actually made ZERO electrical connection with the drive as it was a few millimeters raised from where it should have been and had obviously just slid right over the connector in the bay.

 

After booting failed to recognize the presence of any drive, I removed it entirely and re-visited the two pictures.  I then realized that the rails had a proper "orientation", and maybe they were trying to show a DIFFERENCE in how you used the rails depending on whether you had a spinner hard drive or SSD.

 

So I just reversed the rails, suddenly realizing that it had just LOWERED the drive a bit when inserted into the bay.  And NOW sure enough pushing the drive into the bay definitely felt like I was making contact with the power/data connector inside.

 

And now sure enough the next boot discovered the SSD present and I was finally off and running.

 

Don't forget to make use of Samsung Magician software, to optimize use of the SSD with Windows (Win7 Pro x64 in my W530).

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