Is my drive permanently stuck in my Thinkpad?

I just got my brand new T420s, and of course the first thing I wanted to do is get rid of the HDD and put my SSD in there. So I ordered a 7.5mm SSD and it came in today.

I screwed in the SSD into the HDD tray and put the side rubber grommets. When I was putting the tray into back into the Thinkpad, it was a real tight fit. I literally shoved it in there and somehow got it to be recognized by the BIOS. But then I thought, how am I going to get this out? I figured that probably the screws weren't tightened enough. So I decided to take it out and try to tighten them more, but I wasn't able to pull it out, in fact, I broke the black plastic tab in the proccess of doing so...

I don't mind right now, but if I decide to upgrade the SSD down the line, am I SOL?

 

I'm pretty sure you can pull the bezel off the top and the hard drive bay is right below where the palm rest would be. It doesn't have material over it so you can push from the inside out.

 

Or use some needle nose pliers to pull it out.

 

The needle nose pliers didn't work. It just don't have enough grip on the drive. I'll need to figure out how to remove the entire assembly, including palm rest and the speaker grill on the T420s. The keyboard screws on the bottom only remove the keyboard.

 

The hardware maintenance manual on Lenovo's website shows you step by step how to disassemble the entire laptop. Just pick which part in the table of contents you want to remove and it shows you from start to finish.

 

... and don't forget the two rules of hardware work: patience, and no shoving.

 

Yeah, lesson definitely learned. I shouldn't get so excited next time lol.