Reddit mentions of ZTC 256GB Armor 42mm M.2 NGFF 6G SSD Solid State Drive. Model ZTC-SM201-256G

Hello, I'm a relative newcomer myself.

A few tips, having used FALCO in the past. I would buy a much larger SSD and upgrade it. Beyond unscrewing a lot of screws, it's not that hard. There are guides on Youtube for how to do that. Here is the 256GB model I purchased that worked just fine. You will need that Chrome OS backup you made to reinstall it after.


I'd recommend installing XFCE rather than Unity. It's more configurable (in my opinion) and will fly on that hardware, which Unity or Plasma might not. It also has a smaller footprint.

I would also start with the newer Xenial rather than Trusty. Even though it's unsupported, many here (myself included) have used it without hiccups (other than needing to lauch software centers with the gksu root). Doing that with XFCE also gets you the newest variant of that DE, 4.12. Here is command line I used:


sudo sh ~/Downloads/crouton -r xenial -t keyboard,xfce-desktop


Keyboard auto-sets up the Chrome OS keys (volume, brightness, etc) to be activated while holding down the "search" key at the same time. The desktop modifier starts you with some basic software (which you can uninstall later if you don't want it).


Regarding that site you linked to, there are some newer ones. I'll take a look.


Good luck! Let us know if you need more help.

RAM - No.

Hard Drive - Yes. It uses a M.2 42mm solid state drive. The SSD would look like this:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00YDHKIMG

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B016W1PP5K

I'd suggest a Thinkpad x270 with the i7-7600U (3.90 GHz - https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/97466/intel-core-i7-7600u-processor-4m-cache-up-to-3-90-ghz.html) and a IPS 1366x768 screen

MX Linux 18.3, antiX 17 and Absolute Linux work great on this laptop, plus it supports up to 32 GB of ram and the IPS 1366x768 screen is great. MX Linux 18.3 supports all the special Fn keys by default, it is not the case with antiX and Absolute

You can play GTA V with tons of mods at a reasonable framerate with Lutris

I have the version with the i5-6200U and 16 GB ram (originally the laptop came with 4 GB of ram, and a 256gb HDD I replaced with a 1tb WD hdd, am planning to add this M.2: https://www.amazon.com/ZTC-256GB-Armor-Drive-ZTC-SM201-256G/dp/B00YDHKIMG) and am pretty happy with it

I am running this one in my T470

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00YDHKIMG/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Hey mate, I'm not sure if you still need this question answered but the y410p uses the M.2 format of SSD. Specifically the 2242 size, so the 2280 you picked out would be too long. I grabbed a 512GB ZTC drive for my y410p, but that capacity doesn't seem to be available anymore. The 256GB drive is still around however.

Here is the mobile version of your link

I have a ztc 256gb 42mm NGFF you can have for pretty cheap, I had it in my Lenovo yoga but sold that and my new surface laptop doesn’t have a m.2 slot. I was going to use it with a USB enclosure but would rather just sell it.

this is the model

Woa! What happened with hard drives! haha. I've never even heard these terms before: WWAN, m.2 2242 sata card (???), NVME. Sheesh. Things have changed while I've been hiding under the covers from migraines.

Unless Win 10 is crazy hard drive hungry, a 256GB drive is just fine. All the files would go on the larger drive, which I'd want to be at least 2TB.

So I'd buy something like this little chip and pop open the laptop to find the WWAN slot, put in the chip and just install the OS on it? Is there any easy way to migrate the OS they give me onto this chip? Or extract the license or something to apply it to a fresh install?

Would I have to worry about the primary harddrive slot having partition size limits? Should 2TB be OK?

Does this link show the X270 I configured? Saved cart I think that has the 2.5" sata hard drives.

Thanks for your help! That was a lot to unpack from your comment, but extreeeemely helpful!

You can, but not from Lenovo. You can order it with an HDD and then install an M2 2242 SSD in the WWAN slot. That way you'll have both HDD+SSD.

Hello,

As ArthurRemington noted, the system as originally sold was configured to use the 16GB M.2 SATA SSD as a cache to offset the slow 1TB 5400RPM HDD using either Lenovo's [ExpressCache] (http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/ds104444)† software or Intel's Smart Response Technology software. If you did not install one of those after setting up the system then that the reason the computer is slow. It is loading everything off the hard disk drive and not taking advantage of the cache drive at all.

From looking at the ThinkPad Yoga 460 FRU-BOM, the ThinkPad Yoga 460 is only offered with a M.2 2242 SSD, which means SATA and not NVMe as LocalHostRulez noted. Since M.2 2242 SSDs use single- or dual-chip NAND flash memory solutions, they are going to be slower than SSDs which use physically larger boards, like M.2 2280, because those contain morec hips across which the reads and writes can be spread. For this reason, I'd recommend against going with a 128GB M.2 2242 SSD, which are probably going to operate in the lower-300-400 MB/s speed range and instead go with a 256GB part, which should get you into the 400-500 MB/s speed range. Here some compatible replacements:

Manufacturer|Model|Capacity|Amazon.Com Link

---|:---|:---|:---|
MyDigitalSSD|MDM242-SB2-0256|256GB|https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MXMQQ7Z/
Transcend|TS256GMTS400|256GB|https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KLTPUG4/
ZTC|ZTC-SM201-256G|256GB|https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00YDHKIMG/

Transcend also has a 512GB model, but you are paying a premium. ZTC had a 512GB model as well, but I didn't see a listing for it on Amazon. If you can find one at a decent price, though, you might want to consider that.

Any good quality 2.5" SATA SSD (Samsung, Intel, etc.) would be even faster, though. However, that would mean giving up the 2.5" 1TB HDD.

When you're ready to perform the upgrade, download the Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga 460 Hardware Maintenance Manual, which explains how to disassemble and reassemble the unit. I also found a YouTube video here of someone doing the same thing.

In the meantime, probably the best thing you can do to increase performance is to wipe both the SSD and HDD drives inside the ThinkPad Yoga 460 and reload the Windows 10 operating system using the Lenovo factory recovery media, which you should be able to download from the Lenovo Digital Download Recovery Service. Check to verify eligibility before you erase the drives, though. You will need a 16GB USB flash drive to create the recovery media.

With the recovery media, you will be able to get the system back to the way it was running when it first arrived. Ever since the SuperFish incident, Lenovo pretty much gave up on installing any third-party software on their systems (aka bloatware). You can read the announcement from their company here about that. By the way, it was never installed on any ThinkPads, just their consumer offerings. Lenovo still does load some non-Microsoft software, but it's for things which aren't natively-supported by the operating system (For example, if you bought a Lenovo computer with an Intel RealSense 3-D camera, it would have the Intel RealSense 3-D software on it, since Microsoft doesn't provide that software as part of Windows 10.), maybe a trial version of anti-malware software. You'll also see a couple of pre-loaded programs like Lenovo Settings (for managing the computer's hardware) and Lenovo Companion (for customer support), but those are Windows Apps from Lenovo, and can be easily removed. Oh, and maybe some Lenovo wallpaper. Traditionally, ThinkPads have not had much in the way of bloatware, anyways, since they are sold to enterprises for corporate use.

In the words of the Immortal Bard‡, you kind of played yourself by loading a vanilla version of the operating system instead of sticking with the factory pre-load, which was relatively bloat-free (maybe just uninstalling any third-party security program if you wanted to use Windows Defender).

Even if you do not plan on reinstalling the Lenovo pre-load of Windows 10 to the existing 16GB SSD + 1TB HDD, I would strongly suggest making the recovery media. That way when your replacement M.2 2242 SSD arrives, you can use that to perform a clean install of the factory pre-load, and get any Lenovo drivers or software needed for the machine to operate at full potential.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky


^†I ^believe ^Lenovo ^actually ^licenses ^it ^from ^Condusiv
^Technologies^.
^‡DJ ^Khaled.

I'd get whatever model Chromebook you want with the 16gb storage option and upgrade the storage with something like this.

If 256gb is too big, the 128gb option for $50 is a killer deal. That's about how much it costs to upgrade from 16gb to 32gb, but instead of an extra 16gb you get an extra 112gb.

Get this :

ZTC 256GB Armor 42mm M.2 NGFF 6G SSD Solid State Drive. Model ZTC-SM201-256G https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00YDHKIMG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_E0..ybS2ZR0VP

Then if you wanna get a little kooky you can mod the screen:

https://www.laptopscreen.com/English/screen-part-number/LP116WH7(SP)(B1)/

Thanks to:

/u/totallyboringusernam

And this thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/chrultrabook/comments/5krtpw/upgrade_the_c720p_or_c740_display/

For $20 extra double the size: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00YDHKIMG/ref=psdc_1292116011_t2_B075P1LD28