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Wyse Z90D7: SSD upgrade 

Sata SSD

In February 2017 I fitted a SSD to a Z90D7. This is described here.

In February 2021 I heard from Calvin who had come across a Z90S7 that had a factory-fit 60GB SSD. This is described here. Then in March I heard from Piotr who had come across the official Wyse drive mounting kit on a Polish auction site. I've appended the details to the earlier report.


DIY

U100 SSD connected to Wyse Z90D7

I was wanting to increase the size of the flash memory that was fitted in a Wyse Z90D7. In the first instance I fitted a 16GB SanDisk U100 SSD in place of the existing SATA SSD.

As the onboard socket doesn't have a great deal of space associated with it I connected it via an extension cable. From a quick look on eBay there don't seem to be any short cables available - the shortest ones seem to ~28cm (11") long.

U100 SSD fitted in Wyse Z90D7

In this case it wasn't much of a problem as I could fold the cables in a 'S' shape under the SSD and tuck it under the edge of the side panel fixing. As the SSD is very light this crude approach worked, with the springiness of the folded cable providing a small amount of pressure to keep the SSD in place.

SanDisk P4 8GB SSD

I subsequently bought a few SanDisk P4 8GB SSDs for under 3UKP each.

SanDisk P4 with label removed

The first step was to borrow my wife's hairdryer and use it to warm up the label and so soften the glue holding it on. It peeled off easily to reveal four fixing screws holding the red plastic top to the metal undertray.

Inside the SanDisk P4 plastic housing

Undoing the screws and removing the red cover revealed the internal SATA DOM that was a lot smaller than the 2.5" form factor of the housing.

SSD size comparison

The SanDisk DOM was a little longer than the original SATA DOM. One thing to note is that the mounting hole in the original DOM (which aligns with a small metal pillar on the motherboard) aligns with the memory chip on the SanDisk SSD. So, when in place, the pillar won't be shorting out anything on the DOM and so we don't have to take any steps to guard against this.

SSD fitted

The new SATA DOM in place. At less than 3UKP it's a lot cheaper solution than buying a standard one on eBay - assuming you can find one. It's also physically neater than using it in its original 2.5" form-factor housing.

My thanks to Ben Monilaws for pointing out this possible approach back in July 2016. (See here)

 


Any comments? email me. Added February 2017