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1. drewg1+(OP)[view] [source] 2020-07-23 13:22:08
TL;DR: Anybody know if Lenovo is locking-down NVME by PCI id, the same way they do wifi cards on their new Ryzen 4000 laptops?

I've been looking at Ryzen 4000 based laptops. I need a pointer stick / eraser stick (I hate touchpads), and Lenovo is the only choice I've seen with Ryzen 4000 and a pointer stick.

The Lenovo T14 is pretty compelling. However, I just can't stomach paying roughly 4x the market rate for NVME storage. They want $719 for a 1TB NVME drive (where I don't even know the vendor), when I can buy a 2TB drive from a vendor I trust for 1/2 of that. If I knew I could just open the thing up and replace the NVME drive, then I'd get it. But I"m afraid they've BIOS locked it to whatever OEM drive they ship.

replies(3): >>earths+H >>risho+91 >>numpad+7j
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2. earths+H[view] [source] 2020-07-23 13:25:29
>>drewg1+(OP)
I don't know about the T14 specifically but I just put a third party 2TB NVME into my T480s and had no problems, and I've not read about such a limitation on any of the forums.
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3. risho+91[view] [source] 2020-07-23 13:29:14
>>drewg1+(OP)
I bought an amd based t14s with the base 128gb NVME drive and replaced it with a 2tb samsung 970 evo plus and it works fine. If you are planning on using linux you are likely to have a sub optimal experience unless you are okay with using a bleeding edge rolling distro like arch due to needing newer kernels for the best levels of support.
replies(1): >>drewg1+8f
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4. drewg1+8f[view] [source] [discussion] 2020-07-23 14:59:15
>>risho+91
Awesome! Thank you so much! Would you mind putting up the output of lspci -vvv to pastebin or something similar and linking it here?

FWIW, my goal is to run FreeBSD-current on it.

replies(1): >>risho+lD
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5. numpad+7j[view] [source] 2020-07-23 15:20:47
>>drewg1+(OP)
I think the rationale for locking down WLAN/WWAN is adding random cards break promises around radio certifications. NVMe drives shouldn't so idk but the motivations are weaker.
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6. risho+lD[view] [source] [discussion] 2020-07-23 17:06:14
>>drewg1+8f
https://pastebin.com/v6BbEpbK

You can also run an additional m.2 ssd in the WWAN slot which works just fine assuming you grab the correct type. It's not the standard m.2 though. It's weird and has 2 notches instead of 1. My understanding is when it comes to this slot only specific drives will work properly. I grabbed an SN520 512gb (2242 size by the way, the standard 2282 is too big and 2232 is too small) off of ebay and I'm booting from it as we speak. https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/pc-s...

So when it comes to the standard m.2 slot my understanding is that there are no limitations, but the using the WWAN slot as an ssd slot can lead to issues unless you get the correct one.

Unfortunately I don't have any insight about running freebsd on this machine, so good luck to you there.

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