Solved 2.5" drives hights...

[Cr00zng]

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T430 with a Seagate Momentus 320GBs HDD, pretty much OEM setup as far as the hardware is concerned. The laptop had pretty good speed with Windows 7 Ultimate, but had been updated to Windows 10. The system is noticeably slower and some of the programs didn't work, despite the fact that MS stated otherwise prior to upgrading. It seems that time to update the HDD to an SSD, or just roll back the update.

Since I have an OCZ Vertex 3 laying around, not a problem, just swap the drives. And that's where the roadblock showed up and in addition, it confuses me to no end...

The Seagate website lists the Momentus as "Thin" and shows the physical dimension as:



The actual height measurement does show 7mm (0.276"), while the Vertex shows a little more ~9mm (0.37"). Some of the websites do show the Vertex as 9mm height, if it's still available.

With the advent of "ultra laptop", was there a new standard height for the 2.5" drives? The Vertex 3 had been released about five years ego, so, it is possible that the "Thin" had became the standard since then.

Can anyone confirm the dimension change for the 2.5" HDD/SSD? I'd hate to purchase a new SSD that also would not fit in the bay.
TIA...

 

[whs]

I confirm these measurements. I just verified that on 2 SSDs that I had lying around - one is thin (7mm) and the other one is normal (9mm). For the thin one I have an extra adaptor to bring it up to 9mm.

 

[Cr00zng]

I confirm these measurements. I just verified that on 2 SSDs that I had lying around - one is thin (7mm) and the other one is normal (9mm). For the thin one I have an extra adaptor to bring it up to 9mm.

Thanks VHS! Off to buy an SSD...

I've used the Vertex SSD as USB 3 external drive for creating an image if Windows 10 via Macrium Reflect. While this is not a good transfer speed for the USB 3 port, especially with lot of small files, it's not too bad:



Close to 60MB/s on average, but the HDD was hammered to 100% utilization. I'll retest it after getting the new SSD...

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Standard heights for 2.5" drives are 7mm, 9mm, 12mm, and 15mm. The ones most people will encounter, such as the ones used in laptops, etc. are the smaller two.

You usually cannot install a 9mm drive in a laptop that uses a 7mm drive (especially the thinner ones) but you can install a 7mm drive in a laptop that previously had a 9mm in it. In some cases, you may need the adapter Wolfgang (whs) mentioned, which usually is just a 2mm spacer.

If you want more speed when booting up the computer and loading programs, I would get a good SSD, such as the Samsung 850 EVOs (unless you are on the computer a solid 8 hours a day or more, in which case I recommend the Samsung 850 Pros).