Nimitz 2nd HDD SSD Hard Drive Caddy for Lenovo Thinkpad T420 T430 T510 T520 T530 W510 W520 W530

On my T430, this caddy fits like a hand in a glove - no extra space and no jiggles. I move my laptop around quite a lot and the caddy itself feels pretty sturdy, I haven’t had any issues with it in three months. The disk seems just as snappy as it is with a traditional sata cable. I had no issues using it with Debian 9 or Ubuntu. Worked right out of the box. It’s worth noting that there is a disk indicator light on the side. It’s no annoyance but I wish it was green to match the Thinkpad aesthetic. If you need to get a caddy, don’t cheap out - pick this one up. Note: this caddy comes with rubber studs to keep the drive from moving around and they’re good quality as well.

Like many, I had trouble with the optical drive (which I seldom if ever use anymore) after "upgrading" to Win !0 and after installing Linux mint it was not any better so I bought this ultra bay and installed it with a SSD. It is the most useful addition to this laptop. It fit as though the factory had designed it. It latches tight and ejects with the factory eject lever. The indicator light was a nice afterthought also. I mounted the drive in Linux Mint and it works like a dream. Data transfer is good, no problems. The drive fits very snug and with the rubber "screws" and the drop down latch bar at the rear of the drive, it is a perfect fit. I am very happy with the way this tray works in the T430.

Got this from the seller called "outian". I was worried that the drive retention method was inadequate and might require some modification, but actually it's designed quite well despite it's simplicity. There are no metal screws, but instead you slip rubber "screws" into the drive mounting holes and then simply push the drive into its mount. Inserting the drive is very easy and it snaps reassuring into position, but removal requires a tool to pry the rear of the drive up and out unless you prefer to turn the caddy upside-down and shake (not recommended). I don't consider this a problem at all and am quite satisfied with the design. The drive /probably/ doesn't have as much shock protection as the factory slot, but that's hard to say without a lab test. My caddy seems to work flawlessly. I've noticed that the hard drive it contains seems to spin down far too quickly after an access (power-saving feature), but this probably has nothing to do with the ultrabay caddy itself. Since the caddy is simply connecting SATA to SATA, I doubt that it has any control logic of its own. I haven't disassembled it to find out. There are /some/ electronics inside, though, as there's a blue LED on the side that shows HDD activity. The light is quite dim and unobtrusive on my caddy. This caddy fits quite well into the ultrabay and matches the factory look. The bevel at the bottom is not exactly the same as the factory drive cover, but it's close enough that it doesn't matter. The reduced angle seems to strengthen the cover (it's thicker at the bottom), so it's probably better than factory.

I was hesitant but this world perfectly in my Lenovo T520 with a Western Digital Black 750GB drive. Plastic is thin and flimsy but fully functional. Includes rubber mounting bumpers to put in all the screw holes of the drive for a snug fit. Takes a little bit of patience to install the drive so that the bumpers are seated properly. Flip-down retention spacer should flip down all the way flat when drive is installed properly. It sort of snaps in place. No creaking sound as some people report, we'll maybe just a little, but not when installed. It did have some sharp plastic edges but a few minutes with a fine file, even a coarse nail file, took care of it. Drive recognized just fine. For those whose drives don't recognize, remember that you have to open the disk manager / partition manager and manually partition and format the drive if new and not formatted.

I bought this caddy bay for my Thinkpad T520 to mount the original drive because I installed a new SSD. On my T520 this thing looks and fits like it was made from Lenovo. There are no jiggles, no extra spaces and its flush upon installation. The disk reads just fine with no connectivity issues. I am running Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS and the only hiccup I had was drive permissions at first which was a simple fix in terminal. I cannot stress how happy I am with this product, the quality and ease of installation is great for $16. Don't buy anything cheaper if you can avoid it.

I bought this for a Lenovo W530 so that I could easily back up my primary SSD. I removed the DVD drive (it just slides out), put an SSD in the carrier and slid it into position. The fit is fine and it operates the way it's suppose to. I was able to access the SSD in the carrier and back up my primary drive to that SSD without any problems. A major reason I bought this is that Samsung will not update the firmware in one of their SSD's unless it's directly connected to the computer bus (having it in a USB enclosure won't work). I was able to do a firmware update with the SSD in this carrier.

As others have said, this adapter fits perfectly in the optical drive slot of our Lenovo T530. I use the drive as the home folder for all users, and it has worked flawlessly. I just replaced the HDD with a SSD, and expect that this will last the life of the laptop.

I've tried several of the drive caddy's for the T420 & T430 over the last few years and this one is by far the best! With this one, there is no need to modify the faceplate as is the case with almost all of the other drive caddy's I've used. This one is specifically designed to fit into the ultrabay slot for these computers, which makes using it interchangeably with the original optical drive so much easier. I also love the fact that there is no need for a screwdriver to secure the HDD/SSD into the caddy since there is a folding plastic guard that ensures the drive sits in the caddy nice & snug and isn't in any danger of flapping about inside, or becoming unhooked from the SATA port; ALL of the other caddy's I've used you need to have a screwdriver both to put the drive in and take it out. This caddy let's me swap out one drive for another with just a few quick steps and I'm back up and running! As long as it's a 2.5 drive it works!! Love, Love, Love this drive caddy!!