Buying T420 No Hardrive

Have the opportunity to buy a second hand T42 with no hard drive, I think its an ex company one so they take the hard drives out.

on the assumption I buy a new hardrive...(can it support SSD?) and insert the drive what if any software will be on the laptop?

Any IBM bloatware?....is there any other area of the laptop with the obvious exception of the missing hard drive where programs are stored?

 

well if it has no hard drive and no mSATA SSD installed on it, there wont be any data that come with your laptop.

and yes the laptop does support SSD. if you are installing from a recovery disk then yes it will come with all the bundled software. but that's easy to bypass by installing from a clean windows disk.

 

OK so its just a matter of inserting your replacement drive and putting a new windows 7 disc in the optical drive and away I go?

There will be no software/restore discs supplied so not sure where to find all the relevant drivers?

Pressume all the ThinkVantage stuff will be gone and Norton etc?...in other words a totally clean sheet? (which is what I want).

 

you can find all the driver on lenovo's website, yes everything will be gone unless the installation disc you use comes with bundled software lol.

 

Do check if you get the Hard Drive Mounts and Rubber Rails if the system comes with no drive, if it doesn't then you can source one from eBay where luckily its not expensive. Also have a quick check under the battery bay to see if the Windows 7 Product Key is located there, if it does have one it saves you from having to purchase a separate key.

And yes a clean installation means you start from scratch. I would recommend obtaining the video and network drivers as a bare minimum, the rest you can obtain easily using the Lenovo System Update application.

 

Thanks for the advice!...I have now a clean drive and have done a new install of W7 64 bit.

I seem to be missing some drivers



I can't connect to the internet as get the message "windows did not detect any networking hardware"....I tried both via wifi in my home and connecting what I think is some kind of cable (ethernet?) direct from my internet router to the laptop but to no avail.

I guess I need to copy the drivers to usb via this laptop then 'feed' them to my lenovo?

Any idea which drivers I actually need to get things working?


PS/Edit.....used the usb to sort the wifi....now all done....great stuff....love the ThinkVantage system update facilty thats doing all the hard work for me!