I'm currently debating whether I should just get a portable external usb 3.0 drive for added storage & backup to complement my Intel SSD in the main bay, or get the caddy and a 9.5mm SATA drive for the Ultrabay. I'm leaning towards the latter and just wondering if anyone can recommend a good HDD with respect to speed and noise level? I've read that HDDs in the ultrabay can be noisy, has anyone experienced this?

thanks for any feedback.

I think as a general rule, though it can vary a bit from one drive to the next, a 5400RPM drive tend to a bit more quiet. They don't spin as fast, which cuts down on the noise and vibration. Since you're already got a SSD for the boot drive, speed isn't as critical for storage. Plus, 5400RPM drive go up to 1TB while 7200RPM drive are limited to 750GB if that's a concern.

Whether a drive fails down the road probably comes down to dumb luck more than anything else. I would say I think the best support experience is form WD. If you give them your CC #, WD will send you a new drive right away then you can send the old drive in the same box as the new one came in. As long as you return it within 30 days, they don't charge you. Most other drive manufacturers require you to send the old drive in first before sending out a replacement, which can lengthen the time your without the drive to a couple weeks, while it's a few days with WD. That has value in my opinion.

I have a WD Scorpio black 750G in the W520 bay via a Newmodeus adapter. This is a 7200 rpm drive but barely raises the noise profile of the nearly silent W520. If you move your ear close to the keyboard, you can identify the sounds of the cpu fan, the stock seagate 7200 rpm drive and the Scorpio, but none is prominent nor particularly noticable at arms length.

I also use a Samsung spinpoint 1-terabyte 5400 rpm drive in a vantec usb3/esata enclosure. The noise profile seems similar to the other drives, quiet but not quite silent.

In my informal benchmarking I don't notice extreme differences between these Seagate, WD, and Samsung drives, nor the interfaces (internal, bay, esata, usb3). The interfaces are all faster than the drives and I get sustained writes at > 100 MB/s to all of them.

thanks for the responses guys; good point about the 5400 RPM option, and that WD Scorpio black is definitely enticing. akitaen: how significant is the feel of the additional weight with that HDD in the ultrabay? and do I understand correctly that one can also add an mSATA SSD in the WWAN slot? that's an interesting option as well, although I guess that wouldn't make much sense when my priority is storage.

W520 weighs about as much as a house, 2nd laptop drive doesn't hardly change that.

I will guess that the silentest mechanical drives ought to be single platter 5400 rpm ones, more platters and heads should only mean more energy and noise. But with my limited experience with modern drives I'm neither aware of the silent models nor have I experienced an objectionable 2.5" drive recently. In theory 7200 rpm drives should have less latency in a server application, but bigger drives make up much ground in data density. With my linux systems I don't see gross performance differences between my drives anyway. I booted a live CD to make 2 backups of my system partition; the first backup proceeded at over 100 MB/s, the second was nearly instantaneous because the entire source partition was already cached (!), and the writeback gets cached too, pending forced syncronization.

mSata is brilliant, but IMO need not be considered until you know you need it.

Go for the UltraBay option as one can also set the power settings (Windows/Power) to have the drive spin down after 5 minutes or even less, if desired. This will take care of any noise from the drive. Since the drive will be used for backup/archives it will not be used very often, I assume. It only takes a moment for the drive to spin back up when called.

good point on powering down the HDD via power management. think I will go for the ultrabay option with the scorpio black drive. as far as comparing the data transfer speeds between the two options-- i.e. external usb 3.0 drive and ultrabay HDD @7200RPM-- would there be a huge/noticeable difference?

I replaced my internal drive with a 750GB Seagate hybrid drive, and also use one in the ultrabay adapter for backup. Both drives are extremely quiet.

just to provide an update: I ended up going with the 750GB Scorpion Black HDD with a newmodeus adapter and I'm extremely pleased with the result. The Scorpion drive is extremely fast and quiet. I'm also quite impressed with the quality of the newmodeus caddy and the fact that they even provide a carrying case which now contains the DVD drive.

thanks much for all the helpful feedback.

Funny you mention the carrying case, I was pleased to get that too. And really surprised because when I ordered the Lenovo part for my T410, it didn't come with one and I just placed the DVD into an anti-static bag. It's a thoughtful touch that they include the carrying case with the adapter.

agreed-- the carrying case is a very nice, professional touch on the part of newmodeus (I have no connection to the company whatsoever btw.) pretty pathetic lenovo doesn't provide one, especially when they're charging $60; you'd think they could throw that in...

In the past there were these Ultrabay pouches with velcro on the flap.

Ah, found it:
Part 05K4843



I still have some of them unused form a very temporary Ultrabay Battery adventure that went south after 20 cycles.

EDIT: The ones I have were sold as 05K4562

EDIT: It might be possible to drive the optical drive in an external enclosure from the eSata/USB combo port with a single cable.

here's one final question on the topic of an ultrabay HDD-- how can I access power management settings for this particular device? i.e. to spin down the drive when idle after x minutes? Within the "advanced settings" of the power options, I see "turn off hard disk after..." for battery and ac, but ideally I'd like these settings to apply only to the ultrabay drive, not the primary drive (intel SSD.)