Mystery 16GB SSD in X250

[fishybawb]

Bit of a strange one... I bought a secondhand X250 and noticed a SanDisk 16GB U110 SSD showing up in the BIOS. Cool, it must have an extra SSD in the WWAN slot I thought. Except it doesn't, there is no card in the slot and I can't find the SSD anywhere! Is there another slot on the other side of the board?

[dr_st]

I think it's the cache drive. Could be the "3rd NGFF adapter" mentioned in the X250 HMM, page 78 (absolute 84):
https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobi ... f30022.pdf

[fishybawb]

Ah, thank you! It seems some systems were configured with a 16GB SSD where the smart card could go. Mystery solved, much appreciated.

[axur-delmeria]

I've encountered a few that had 32GB SSDs. One time I helped a friend replace it with a 128GB one to install Windows on while retaining the 500GB HDD. These SSDs usually get installed in the WWAN slot though.

The "3rd NGFF adapter" is an additional part that goes in place of the smart card reader. It allows for the installation of a second M.2 2242 SATA SSD. IIRC it's compatible with the T440/T450 and X240/250, possibly the rest of the T/X/W models of those two generations as well.

[fishybawb]

Thanks for the additional information.

Having 3 possible boot drives in such a compact chassis is pretty impressive.