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Comment by dathinab | Hacker News Reader

Thinks have slightly changed since then.

"Keep Your Drive" is now a non-free (but not that expensive) "service upgrade". Disks are still removable on most models and it's not hard, but you still have to open the bottom of the laptop. (For ThinkPads, through ultra thin models like the X1 or "unusual" models like the ThinkPad Yoga might be more problematic.)

EDIT: Through it also depends on you service/guarantee contract. If you normally have a service contract where a technician will come to you but for some reasons that currently don't work you probably can keep your drive anyway etc. Also KYD extends to some other cases.

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>"Keep Your Drive" is now a non-free (but not that expensive) "service upgrade".

It's almost more of a donation in my experience. Don't pay it, remove the disk, no consequence. It's also a good idea to put the OEM ram back in the machine if youve upgraded. One of the few things they may balk at and return it unfixed.

In the case where you're sending it in for a repair under warranty, I imagine for some classes of problems the manufacturer could refuse warranty service if you've removed the drive, especially since most designs now make it really easy to accidentally damage something while doing that.

In the US they would have to prove your removal of the drive is what caused the damage,

I am not sure how it easy to damage something when removing a NVMe drive, it is trivial to remove the drive and should not even come close to damaging anything

Put the OEM RAM back? Hard to do otherwise when it's soldered to the laptop.

Well then you also couldn't have upgraded it which was a condition he specified for putting the OEM RAM back.

Clearly. But it's a complaint along similar lines of laptops being harder to work on.

My first computer repair, (epson 486) I left the drives and extra memory in when I sent in for repair. It must have had something really wrong as I got back a new machine without the hard drive and extra memory I had installed. It took a little bit to discover what was going on. Long hours on the phone trying to get those back (or something back.. that machine was maxed out at 16mb? of ram..)

M.2 drives are still removable in the X1 Yoga Thinkpads. The notable difference from thicker T series is that RAM is soldered.

Yes but some of the more special models are harder to open.

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