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How to Install an M.2 SSD in the LenovoThinkPad T440sBy Avram Piltch, LAPTOP Online Editorial Director | Sep 19, 2014 12:22 PM EDT

When you think of notebooks with two storage drives, you probably imagine a bulky 17-inchsystem you can barely carry. However, a number of lightweight laptops, including the 14-inch,3.6-pound Lenovo ThinkPad T440s, have M.2 (formerly known as mSATA) slots which can beused to install a tiny SSD on a chip. You can pair this second drive with the 2.5-inch hard diskor SSD the T440s came with and even transfer the operating system to it so you can use it asa boot drive. Here’s how to install an M.2 SSD in your Lenovo ThinkPad T440s.

Before You BeginIf your ThinkPad T440s has a built-in 3G/4G modem, then the M.2 slot is already occupied andyou can’t perform this upgrade. If you don’t have a modem, but do have a hard drive, you mayhave a small, 16GB Flash cache chip in the M.2 slot, and you’ll need to remove it as part of theinstallation process.

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HyperX Savage SSDThe Fastest HyperX SATA-based SSD. Quad-core Phison S10 Controller.

When buying an SSD, be sure to purchase an M.2 drive that is exactly 42mm long, the onlylength that will fit in the ThinkPad T440s’s narrow slot. Though M.2 is the next-generation ofmSATA, it is not backward compatible so you need to make sure the drive is listed as M.2, notmSATA. We used a MyDigitalSSD 128GB drive, which costs $79.99 (Buy at Amazon), but youcan also find 64GB or 256GB drives for more or less money. We recommend going with atleast 128GB. You’ll also need a small Philips-head screwdriver.

MORE: How to Upgrade the RAM on the Lenovo ThinkPad T440s

How to Install an M.2 SSD in the T440s 1. Enter the BIOS setup program by hitting Enter repeatedly when the notebook boots. IfWindows loads, you’ll have to restart and try again.

2. Select Power under the Config Tab.

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3. Select Disable Built-in Battery and hit yes when asked to confirm. This will turn thecomputer off.

4. Place the T440s upside down on a table, with the power off and cord unplugged.

5. Remove the battery by pulling aside the clips.

6. Unscrew the 8 screws on the back using the Philips head screwdriver.

7. Pry the bottom off, starting at the lower left corner, pulling up the bottom, right side, leftside and top. Be very gentle, and, if you feel resistance, make sure all screws are completelyloose.

8. Locate the M.2 slot on the left side of the system, just above the hard drive bay, and foldback the plastic strip on top of it, without removing it permanently.

9. Remove the current Flash cache chip, if there is one, by unscrewing it and sliding it out ofthe slot.

10. Slide the M.2 SSD into the slot, aligning the teeth on the chip with the grooves on thereceptacle.

11. Put a screw in the hole just below M.2 stick and tighten it so that holds the SSD inplace. If you don’t already have an appropriately-sized screw, your SSD should come with one.

12. Put the back cover back on and tighten all screws.

You should now have an additional drive, but you’ll need to either format it to use it for data orcopy your entire Windows operating system to it so you can use it as a boot drive.

MORE: Windows 8.1 Tips and Tutorials

How to Copy Windows to the M.2 DriveIf your 2.5-inch drive is a mechanical hard drive, the M.2 SSD will be a lot faster so you maywant to use it as your boot drive. In order to do that, you’ll want to clone your original drive sothat Windows and all your programs get copied over. Before you do, you’ll want to make a fullsystem backup, just in case something goes wrong.

1. Install EaseUS Todo Backup Free and EasyBCD.

2. Reduce the amount of data on your 2.5-inch drive to 128GB or less, depending on thesize of your M.2 SSD. Since you will be cloning the whole drive, you need to make sure youdon’t have more data on the source drive than the target. So backup media files until after the

cloning. Alternatively, you can put all your media files on an alternate partition you don’t clone,but that adds some complexity.

3. Launch EaseUS Todo Backup.

4. Click the Clone button in the upper right corner of the window.

5. Select the source drive by checking the checkbox near Hard disk 0 (zero), which willchoose all partitions on the 2.5-inch drive, and click Next. There will be a number of recoveryand other small partitions that you may not recognize but you should leave those checked. Ifone of the partitions has nothing but your media files on it, you can skip it, but otherwise werecommend letting the program clone all of the partitions.

6. Select the destination drive, Hard Disk 1, and click Next.

7. Click Proceed.

8. Click OK when the software warns you that you’ll lose data on the destination disk. Thecloning process will begin and could take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour.

9. Close EaseUS Todo Backup after the cloning is done.

10. Launch EasyBCD.

11. Choose Select BCD Store from the File menu.

12. Navigate to the M.2 Drive (A: in this example) and select the BCD file from the /Bootfolder. If you can’t see the /Boot folder, make sure to enable “Show hidden files, folders ordrives” in Folder options under the Control panel. The program will load the settings from theM.2 Drives’ boot file.

13. Click Add New Entry.

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14. Enter a name for your M.2 drive (ex: “Windows 8.1 M.2″), select drive letter and clickAdd Entry.

15. Select Edit Boot Menu, make sure your new entry is set as default and click SaveSettings.

16. Enter the BIOS Setup program after rebooting the T440s.

17. Select Boot from the Startup tab.

18. Move the M.2 Drive to the top of the boot order. The drive is usually labeld as AT HDD1.You can move it up by highlighting it and hitting the + button.

19. Hit F10 to save and exit.

Your ThinkPad should now boot off the M.2 drive. You should be able to erase the Windowsfolder from your original drive or even reformat it.

Start Button Doesn’t Show Start Menu

With Windows 8.1, Microsoft has resurrected the Start button ... by placing it in the "PetSematary." Unfortunately, the reborn button just isn’t the same as before, as it simply takes youback to the tiled Windows Start Screen rather than the Start menu, which is still dead andburied in Windows 8.1. Considering that there are already half a dozen ways to get to the Startscreen and that Windows 8 also took you back to start if you hovered in the left corner, there’sno point to this widget. Sometimes dead is better.

Fix It: Fortunately, there are a number of third-party Start menu alternatives that come withtheir own Start buttons. If you’re willing to pay $5, we love StarDock’s Start8, but Classic Shellis a good free alternative.

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AUTHOR BIOAVRAM PILTCHThe official Geeks Geek, as his weekly column is titled, Avram Piltch has guided the editorialand production of Laptopmag.com since 2007. With his technical knowledge and passion fortesting, Avram programmed several of LAPTOP's real-world benchmarks, including theLAPTOP Battery Test. He holds a master’s degree in English from NYU.

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BT Says: October 9th, 2014 at 11:07 pm

Can I not use the M.2 to boot and use it as an extra storage device?

I heard that M.2 is slower than an SSD in the 2.5 slot. is that true?

Alex Says: December 29th, 2014 at 3:25 pm

Hi,I got a Lenovo, which however has the 3G/4G modem. In the post is said that havingthat means we can’t use the slot for an SSD. My question is, isn’t it in fact possible toremove the modem (which disables using a SIM card) and still upgrade to an SSD, or isin fact having a modem means that it is no longer a proper M.2 slot?Happy holidays!

Bytesize Says: January 5th, 2015 at 1:25 pm

Incorrect location to install the M.2 provided

under the battery is the correct location.

Dennis Says: February 21st, 2015 at 10:15 am

Hi, I followed your excellent instructions but I am confused at steps 11-15 when usingEasyBCD.

I do not see a folder on A: called BOOT ( I see other hidden folders). You switched to“/BOOT” in the text. Is it a hidden partition rather than a hidden folder?

Can you explain a bit what result you want to achieve with easyBCD? Why shouldn’t Ijust switch the boot drive order in the BIOS and reformat the old C: drive (HDD)? Areyou trying to maintain a dual boot option?

Avram Piltch, LAPTOP Online Editorial Director Says: February 21st, 2015 at 11:02 am

Hmm. The goal is to add the M.2 installation as an option on the Windows boot menuand name it “M.2″ so you know you are running the OS off of the M.2 drive rather thanyour original SATA installation. I found, in my installation process, that the system stilltried to boot off the SATA drive even when the boot order was changed. I wouldn’trecommend reformatting the SATA drive entirely b/c the laptop may still look at theboot file on it and if that file isn’t there, you may not be able to boot.

Dennis Says: February 24th, 2015 at 10:28 pm

I ended up re-installing from the factory recoover partition in the end.

I think my mistake was at step 1. I installed EasyBCD but did not execute until after Ihad already cloned my hdd to the ssd. Maybe that’s why I did not find a boot folder toconfigure at step 11???

Everything is working well now with the m.2 ssd as boot, and the entire 1TB HDD as a

storage drive.

Emeric Says: February 25th, 2015 at 8:08 am

Thank you very much.For me, i don’t modify nothing with the second soft (easy bbc). I only change the bootorder in the tp boot.

Emeric Says: February 25th, 2015 at 8:11 am

I forgat the following precision :In Windows 7, the /boot folder don’t appear, even after selected “Show hidden files”.The solution : search “bcd” in the windows under new drive, and the folder appears.

Spiral Says: March 28th, 2015 at 1:32 am

I followed this instruction to install m.2 ssd and transfer windows 8.1 from 2.5″ HDDto T450S. I have no problems in hardware and software procedures. However, after Iset the M.2 as the boot drive and boot, the m.2 drive label changed from “A” to “D”,which is very strange. Also, the boot up speed is slow, and windows freezesfrequently. The files on the desktop is still linking to C drive, but I believe the OS driveis D (M.2 SSD) since it has a windows logo on top of it. Can someone help me on this?

MJ Says: April 20th, 2015 at 10:37 pm

What drive letter did your M.2 end up having after the procedure above? I think I washaving some issues similar to Spiral. What to do with the original drive?

JennyM Says: May 2nd, 2015 at 12:29 am

I’m searching for answers, want to buy the Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga (12.5″, S1 series Ithink), with a 256 SSD. But I want to install 1 TB HDD just for storage.

Does anyone know for SURE if it has 2 drive slots? Lenovo chat won’t commit to ananswer. But I saw on some review video that you could add another drive. (2.5″ 7mm).

Any help is appreciated!

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