Replacement hard drive **** up

Fairly sure I've just wasted a decent bit of time money and effort.

Hard drive on Lenovo t570 seemed to be a failure. Ordered a new HD and it was SATA, opened the laptop and the hard drive connector is this

Googling around says SATA will work on this model but I can't see a port and don't know what to look for.

And just in case there might be a simple answer, I also managed to break a bit off the motherboard. It's the bit where the ribbon connector from the HD was connected.

So, anyone got words of inspiration or shall I go ahead and chalk it up to experience?

yoyo

Not much that can be done other than get somewhere able to do microsoldering reattach the torn out connector. Even then hard to know if the damage is more severe from photo/traces ripped out of the board. If laptop is modern enough, you may be lucky and it has a M2 SATA slot also (https://www.howtogeek.com/320421/what-is-the-m.2-expansion-slot/) but I'm not sure if the ripped out connector will render the thing unbootable :(. Another option, if laptop is bootable is you could try running Windows off a USB drive: https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-run-windows-10-from-a-usb-drive

niallb

You might be very lucky as that Lenovo model might support adding an M2 drive in the Wireless WLAN slot.

Can you zoom out a bit?

As you suspect, you probably won't ever get a SATA drive working with that laptop again.

pah

https://youtu.be/I3BbWc9Zilk

Looks like it was an m.2 SSD in a 2.5" caddy size with a proprietary connector. Odd setup. Not sure you can do anything

Capt'n Midnight

service manual https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/t570_p51s_hmm_en_sp40j65584_03.pdf

Page 72,73 both the SATA and M2 options use ribbon cable into the missing connector this does not bode well - found the connector for sale at Mouser.com, but I couldn't get the contacts soldered correctly. The individual contacts are on 0.5mm centers

Thread with part numbers for 2.5" SATA brackets and cables - https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-T400-T500-and-newer-T/Upgrade-ThinkPad-T570-from-SATA-HDD-to-M-2-NVMe-SSD-Samsung-960/td-p/3686521

It might be possible to install some sort of HDD into the WiFi card slot and use tiny USB WiFi card.

WiFi card should be mini PCIe but too many are just USB and finding a compatible drive that physically fits is another issue. Check if the existing WiFi card is true PCIe

There's stuff like this to tap into the mini PCIe socket - no idea if it would work - or fit.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003520914238.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.7e051fe6Tx6uYs&algo_pvid=661b8cce-541e-4111-a057-408543ec424f&algo_exp_id=661b8cce-541e-4111-a057-408543ec424f-5&pdp_ext_f=%7B%22sku_id%22%3A%2212000026155235424%22%7D&pdp_npi=2%40dis%21EUR%21%2115.69%21%21%21%21%21%402101e9d316519232207541970ed0bb%2112000026155235424%21sea

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000220465884.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.7e051fe6Tx6uYs&algo_pvid=661b8cce-541e-4111-a057-408543ec424f&algo_exp_id=661b8cce-541e-4111-a057-408543ec424f-3&pdp_ext_f=%7B%22sku_id%22%3A%2210000000858705323%22%7D&pdp_npi=2%40dis%21EUR%21%214.07%21%21%21%21%21%402101e9d316519232207541970ed0bb%2110000000858705323%21sea

EDIT - this might be an option if you want to use M.2 and the cable is long enough "Since the micro interface is a PCIE 1X signal, the  is  1X, and the full  of SSD cannot be run. The read and write  is about 100‑200MB/s," YMMV a lot

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001451335125.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.577e42c2dRfZNZ&algo_pvid=9de09b53-f03f-498d-8f7f-24a9ed7d671e&algo_exp_id=9de09b53-f03f-498d-8f7f-24a9ed7d671e-2&pdp_ext_f=%7B%22sku_id%22%3A%2212000016163815708%22%7D&pdp_npi=2%40dis%21EUR%21%2111.7%21%21%21%21%21%402101d64d16519237640501779e2876%2112000016163815708%21sea