![]()
Hard Drives
Drive Rails and Caddys for the ThinkPad W700's internal drive bays
Users commonly want to install their own second hard drive in the W700, often to save money compared to what Lenovo charges, or to install a drive not offered by Lenovo. Here's what you need to do. The W700 has two hard drive bays. If the laptop is open and facing you, the hard drive bays are located behind a panel along the left edge of the laptop. The panel wraps from the side of that edge and then down and around to the bottom of the laptop, where it's held in place by a single screw. The system hard drive occupies the rear-most bay, and the secondary drive occupies the front-most bay. You can buy a 2.5" notebook hard drive from the vendor of your choice, and install it in the secondary bay. But first you have to install the drive inside a "caddy," then attach rubber drive rails to the side of that drive/caddy combination, before sliding the resulting assembly into the bay. I've read of users who've tried to just install the rails without the caddy, but in many cases they've then had difficulty getting the drive to operate properly (the rails fit rather loosely around the drive without the caddy, resulting in a sloppy fit, allowing the drive to wiggle around a bit within the bay). Note that the rubber rails provide some shock protection for the drive. The question then arises of where to buy the rubber drive rails and the caddy. There is apparently currently no way to buy the proper caddy from Lenovo or IBM without buying it already attached to a hard drive. (As best as I have been able to determine, Lenovo/IBM distributes a parts kit, FRU # 42W2421, which may previously have contained a caddy but no longer contains a caddy.) There seems to be much confusion over caddies in general at Lenovo/IBM. Below, when I refer to the "OEM caddy," I'm referring to the one from Lenovo/IBM. Here are several vendors:
IBM Thinkpad Hard Drive Caddy Rubber Rail T60 T60p T61p
The above link may change from time to time. So if that link fails to work, go to the main page of Millionpart's store and look for the T60 rails/caddy in the parts catalog beginning on that page.
Hard drive caddy Thinkpad Lenovo T400, T500, R400, W500
Call IBM's Mechanicsburg, PA Parts Center, at 800-388-7080. My impression is that this is the number that service technicians call to order ThinkPad parts. They take phone orders 24 hours a day, although their recorded phone message says there's a $399 service charge for orders placed after 10 p.m., and before 8 a.m. EST on Monday thru Friday, or that are placed anytime on Saturdays, Sundays or holidays! So don't call at those times. Parts I've orderd via this center shipped out of Carlisle, PA, although the phone operator told me they may ship from other locations depending on where the parts are in stock. You can also order over the web, although it's more complicated in that you have to set up an account, etc. Here's a web page at which you can search their parts database: To order the rails, ask for one set of IBM LENOVO THINKPAD LAPTOP NOTEBOOK HD RAILS (rubber rails), FRU # 41V9756. I've ordered these before from them for $38 plus shipping, although the price may change over time. I ordered via 2-day shipping at 10 a.m. EST, and the woman who took my order said I should recieve the order either the next day or the day after that. I actually received them at about 10 a.m. PDT the day after I ordered them.
They seem to operate via more than one domain name, and the two I saw were acsoutlet.com, and thinkpad-parts.com. Their shipping was more expensive than IBM's Parts Center, but their price for the rails was much cheaper, although ACS is more expensive for some other parts. Go figure. I didn't order from them, so I can't vouch for them as a vendor.
![]() Would you like to know when I add new reviews to the site? Here's how to do that using Google Alerts. (1) Click on the link below to open the Google Alerts page. (2) Enter your email address. (3) Press the "Create Alert" button. Google will send you a confirmation email, then an email whenever a new review appears at Buy-a-Thon! (Make sure your spam filter doesn't block emails from google.com.)
Click here to open the Google Alerts page.
Buy-a-Thon is not sponsored by, endorsed by, or affiliated with Google, and the views and opinions expressed here do not represent those of Google or Google personnel.
Did you find what you were looking for? If not, enter the name of that item here, and click submit:
Copyright © 2008 GORILLAgent®. All Rights Reserved. |