Lenovo ThinkPad T450 laptop SSD upgrade / replacement

Connect a new SSD to your laptop using SATA USB adapter. Clone your existing drive onto new SSD to avoid reinstalling OS and other apps. I was using bootable usb drive with Ubuntu. I spent 45 minutes to copy 128Gb of data. Turn off laptop and disconnect new SSD drive.


Now we need screwdrivers. Highly recommend you to use these little ones from iFixit toolset:

Put laptop on a table, turn it over, remove battery and unscrew 8 screws using PH1 screwdriver:

Unmount bottom plastic shell. Seriously, this was a toughest work I ever done with electronics. Don’t really know why Lenovo makes it so hard to disassemble. Use additional screwdrivers to unpin all the lockers you have on the perimeter:

Here we are. Congratulations! After 30 minutes I finally made it. Can you see SanDisk SSD in left bottom corner?

Unscrew the only one screw from the left and disconnect SSD drive from SATA interface:

Remove plastic cover from SSD drive:

Install new SSD into that plastic cover and then connect SSD to motherboard (make sure you connect it properly):

Start a screw on the left and use a screwdriver:

Attach bottom plastic shell, drive all 8 screws in place and put battery back in slot:

Turn on laptop, make sure SSD drive is found and your OS is loading without any issues. Then resize/extend your partition to a bigger size if needed. I boot from USB flash drive with Ubuntu and used GParted Partition Editor:

That’s it, folks! By the way, the cost of 1GB SSD now is nearly 1 NZD. Tags: #havingfun

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Ivan Grigoryev's Blog
Living in New Zealand. Blogging about the country, beautiful places, everyday life.
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