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My x60s laptops come with about 1-2mm higher 2.5" HDD than newer x220 models. This is totally stupid when one would like to reuse the old drive in the newer laptops. I bought newer 2.5" 320 Intel SSDs and they seem to have such 1-2mm gap to unscrew but I am unsure whether it is meant for opening.

Could someone instruct what to do here? Look the manufacturer has started changing the old good 2.5" drives into slightly different versions, now it means slow compability issues to fix or totally new 2.5" drives.

Ideas how to proceed?

A) Is there any way of Unscrewing newer 320 drives or are some other versions of 2.5" drives meant for x220? Does there exist some sort of racks to get drives working between different comps?

B) Perhaps booting from laplink is currently the easiest solution to get things working when changing harddrives between comps? More about laplinks' usage in backuping the fresh W-OS here to your server.

Intel 320 SSD and X220 related issues

Some hacks here, shop here, more screws here, a physical hack here to the x220 slot and perhaps related marketing (it looks like my ultra SLIM Seagate in X220, stupid idea -- reuse to the best, I would have chosen different laptop if I have known this...)

Summary M2 3mm screw with an OEM head of less than 3.5mm wide -- to get the Intel 320 SSDs to X220 which voids your warranty (or avoid the monopolies).

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There is another standard of drive height called "Z height" which is 7mm thick. The standard thickness that most manufacturers use is 9.5mm (no special letter designation that I'm aware of). Not all drive manufactures even have these 7mm thick drives in production yet. Hitachi is the only platter based drive on amazon that is 7mm. Seagates only offering is the Momentus-XT and Western Digital doesn't even make 7mm 2.5 inch drives.

You can go ahead and unscrew the picture frame part that is making it too large to fit. According to this Intel rep it won't void your warranty.

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  • ...I wish where to look for the screws...
    – user114739
    Mar 22, 2012 at 16:11
  • any idea what is the techincal specification for the screws? Perhaps DX has them?!
    – user114739
    Mar 22, 2012 at 18:00
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    @hhh You will need M2 3mm screw with an OEM head of less than 3.5mm wide. Also read the rest of that forum post an admin stepped in later and mentioned it would void your warranty... seems stupid to me since you would figure the point of the damn picture frame part is to fit in 9.5mm thick bays and 7mm thick bays. Sorry I couldn't give you the answer you wanted. the choices are void the warranty and find the screws or return the ssd.
    – Supercereal
    Mar 22, 2012 at 18:19
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Also, you can just slip your 9mm drive into the X220 sans-HDD caddy.

i just slipped my OCZ vertex3 into my new x220 no problem. Just dont use the caddy. It's a snug fit, and won't bounce around or anything.

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  • ...did you cushion the left-and-right side somehow? +1 for thinking out of the box. I tested also and Intel 320 with spacer does fit into the X220 hole without the caddy -- and yes it's snug fit but it has room to move on the sides. May I ask how are you taking the SSD out of the X220 later? You must surely open the X220 or did you attach some sort of strobes or tape to get it out?
    – user114739
    Mar 24, 2012 at 19:20
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    if you pop the keyboard off (undo the screws on the bottom of the laptop) you can easily just push on the SSD from the back and it slides out. i wouldnt worry about the SSD bouncing around too much, as it seems to be a snug enough fit that it will actually prevent lateral motion. been running my X220 in this way for the last 5 months, and i havent had a single issue.
    – user107049
    Mar 28, 2012 at 3:25
  • Man, you saved my day! It fits perfectly. I also made a little "handle" from duct tape to allow to remove it later. It is a tight fit (it's scratched a little from the magnesium cage inside, but nothing serious). The tape is kind of "fix" to disallow motion towards the enclosure "door".
    – Tomáš Fejfar
    Jun 21, 2013 at 10:44
  • I've actually been using this successfully for the last 5 years up until I bought new SSD last year.
    – Tomáš Fejfar
    Jun 23, 2019 at 12:25

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