x220 Windows dual boot - msata?

[booysen]

Hi all,
after my adventures recovering & updating my X220 with Win 7, it appears my work is going to have me get used to Win 10 after all

To recap, I got the computer recently as backup to my T410. I really like the X220 - it's small, light, and running very well, apart from an inconsistent power on issue, which occurs every so often; a member here suggested it may be due to the on button on the keyboard, and I'm planning to swap in my T410's keyboard when I pull it down for cleaning & maintenance to check this, just haven't had time... (will post updates on this in the relevant thread) It came with Win 10 installed on the original 160GB SSD, which I then changed out for a 256GB Samsung 860 pro and installed Win 7.

Back on topic: I'd like to check out Win 10 on this computer, but would like to keep Win 7 as my main operating system.
I've been reading here about dual boot setups, and I quite like the idea of having Win 10 on an msata SSD Would this be a good setup? Or would it be better to install it on a partition or virtual machine on the main SSD?
As for the actual msata choice, installation & booting: it's proving somewhat difficult to find major brand msata's at a decent price, and I'm now considering a 128/256GB (?) Transcend 370S (https://www.transcend-info.com/product/ ... ds/msa370s). I recall reading that it's good practice to remove the main SSD when first booting to the msata?
Is there anything in particular that I should take note of when doing the setup?
ThinkPad Setup reports my bios as "UEFI BIOS Version: 8DET76WW (1.46)".

Any ideas and advice are much appreciated

Thanks,
Leon

[axur-delmeria]

It's an OK idea, just that mSATA SSDs can be rather overpriced.

See:

https://www.amazon.com/Transcend-Inform ... 07GMD5R7M/
37 USD for 128GB.

https://www.amazon.com/Kingston-KC600-2 ... 08ZNSNL1K/
58 USD for 256GB.

In contrast:

https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-MX500-25 ... B0764WCXCV
Only 45 USD for 250GB.

[booysen]

Thanks @axur-delmeria,
I found that Kingston KC600 on Amazon over here too, a 512GB for ca. 88 USD, which seems very well priced.
Then there are the Transcends, the 230s & 370s models: for 256GB, the former is around 60 USD, the latter about double that...
I was actually leaning towards the 128GB Transcend 370s - I don't require lots of storage, and it's MLC, which is more durable (?), though in practice probably won't make much difference to me.
Then I'd have to determine the best way to actually install Win 10 on the msata...

[booysen]

Hi all,
so I ended up getting the 128GB Transcend 370s for my mSATA Win10 endeavor.
I decided to install it today, following the instructions in the user guide (I additionally removed the SSD, read somewhere that it’s a good idea when first setting up the mSATA; will replace when I get the mSATA sorted).
But now I’m stuck at a silly step: removing the palm rest

I’ve removed the keyboard & all screws marked with the palm rest symbol as per the user guide; turned it over (open computer in front of me), undid the flip-lock ZIF connector, and then attempted to lift the top left and right edges of the palm rest. The right side popped up just fine (I see it has a little “u” clip under), but the left side (right above the display port) won’t budge!
I pulled on it pretty hard, with the plastic palm rest flexing noticeably, but no luck … I’m afraid of breaking it. From the way it’s flexing, it appears that it exactly the left top clip that’s the point where it’s stuck.

Before I put more force on it, or try to pry/ lever it off, has anyone here had a similar experience; any idea why it would be stuck?

I remember when disassembling my T410 some time ago, the palm rest was also stuck, but on the right (above the dvd drive), where a plastic tab was stuck under part of the metal frame.

[axur-delmeria]

The palmrest has a tab on the along the top left edge that hooks to the magnesium chassis just after the Expresscard slot, above the Displayport connector. What I do is push that corner very slightly to the right; meanwhile, my right hand is grasping the palmrest near that metal rectangle with the screw holes and pulling it up slowly. The combination of these actions will unhook the tab.

[booysen]

Thanks @axur-delmeria!
So it’s a bit more tricky that described in the manuals (and the Lenovo support videos, where it seems to pop off effortlessly).
I’ll try it soon as I’m back to the computer.

[axur-delmeria]

Thanks @axur-delmeria!
So it’s a bit more tricky that described in the manuals (and the Lenovo support videos, where it seems to pop off effortlessly).
I’ll try it soon as I’m back to the computer.

Even so, Thinkpad manuals are better than their competitors' -- one HP laptop service manual I read missed a screw that should be removed. If I had blindly followed that manual, the keyboard bezel would've been in pieces.

[booysen]

Worked like a charm!

My computer had the PCI express WWAN card in the slot, which I’ve now removed and installed the mSATA. What to do with the loose antenna cables, just wrap the contact with electrical tape and leave them to dangle around there above the mSATA?
Or try to tie them to the frame somehow?

[axur-delmeria]

I've found that heatshrink tubing works much better than electric tape. Just don't heat it too much, or else it will be tricky to remove.

[booysen]

Great info, @axur-delmeria!

I got a bit carried away and reassembled with the contacts taped with electrical tape, but will find some heat shrink tubing
I've started it up, and the mSATA shows up in the boot list, so seems I'm otherwise set to go.

I did manage to introduce a small hairline crack on the palm rest during reinstallation though
The manual instructs to first clip the top left and right corners in, and then to press along the lower edge to clip the rest... well, while pressing the lower edge, the thin part below the touch pad did not enter the lower half properly, but went over the front, causing that thin part to bend outwards and crack. I quickly got it off again and resinstalled, carefully checking from below that it goes in properly all along the front edge. Now the little crack is barely noticeable, but just thought I'd share.
When I pull it down again to fit the heat shrink, I'll see what I can do to address the crack too.

[booysen]

I'm back for more help!
This time it's more of a software issue, suppose not really appropriate in the hardware forum, but here goes:

After installing the mSATA and confirming that it shows up in the boot list (I previously removed the main Win 7 SSD), I set out to determine how to actually install Win 10 on it. I searched around here a bit, and then the very nice McDonnell Tech dedicated X220 site, where it's stated that one could do a clean install (preferred) or upgrade from Win 7 (apparently still possible ...). In the latter case, it's advised that one uninstalls all Lenovo software and driver before attempting the upgrade, and then reinstall these later. In fact, my X220 was running Win 10 when I got it (still present on the original SSD), without any ThinkVantage tools, Lenovo recovery partition etc.

For some reason, the upgrade from my beloved Win 7 appealed to me, so I set about installing Win 7 on the mSATA using my recovery DVD set. This went smoothly, and after many updates/restart cycles, everything seemed to work well, and I set out to remove the Lenovo software in order to prepare for the upgrade. I removed ThinkVantage tools (PC doctor), the Power Manager, Synaptics, and Rescue & Recovery, to name a few.
But now I'm running into trouble with the Win 10 upgrade ... the Windows Media Creation tool just won't run. I've tried quite a few guidelines for resolving the error code, on both MS & other sites, under clean boot, tried to decode it without much luck (its also not present in most error code lists), and I won't go on too much about these details here. At this point, it's become quite frustrating, and seems I'm headed for a clean install.

To cut to the chase: I've read that similar error codes may arise from unused drives or partitions, and I'd like to test whether the Lenovo_Recovery (Q) partition that was installed with Win 7 (and still present) could be the cause of this error. So I'd like to remove/reclaim this partition, since I also don't feel that I need it on the mSATA for my purposes (to test run Win 10), but not sure how to go about this? Can it be simply deleted?

Any help, suggestions or info would be very much appreciated. Obviously, I'd be more than happy to provide more detailed info about the error code etc., but then I'd better head over to the Operating Systems forum
Thanks!

[RealBlackStuff]

In W7 click on the Start button, then type in: diskmgmt.msc
When it shows up at the top, rightclick it and select: Run as Administrator.
Once in, select the Recovery partition (probably Q: drive) and delete it.

[booysen]

Thanks RealBlackStuff

I’ll delete the partition, try the upgrade, and report back.

[booysen]

Update on this project:

After what seemed a ridiculous amount of tinkering, I eventually managed the Win 7 -> Win 10 upgrade on my mSATA
I did remove the Lenovo Recovery (Q) partition (thanks again RBS ), but seems there were actually two other issues with running the Windows Media Creation tool: one with enabling TLS 1.2 (had to modify registry/easy fix), and the other some DISM package manager issue with insatalled languages (suspect because I had the Win 7 pro multilingual version; found this running the System Update Readiness tool).
I'll summarise this over in the Operating Systems/Win 10 (or guess Win 7 would be more appropriate, as these were downlevel issues?) forum soon.

Well, Win 10 appears to be running fine for now, just have to get the Power Manager to work, but I'll resolve this in time.
Now I'll reinstall my main Win 7 SSD, and then I guess I'll have to set the boot priority so that I get Win 7 on normal startup

Thanks again for the input so far;
I'll keep posting developments here!

[booysen]

A few weeks in, and my dual Windows setup is (still) running pretty well
So far, Win 10 doesn't seem that bad, still figuring stuff out. Haven't gotten the power manger to work properly (can stop the charging at some upper limit, but not a range), but I'll get it sorted.

Cutting to the chase: a while back, I started getting automatic chkdsk on switching OS/boot drive. It was scanning lots of files and reporting the following (among other text):
"Deleting extended attribute set due to the presence of reparse point in file xxx.
...
xxxx reparse records processed."

After some searching on the internet, it appears this was due to some "fast startup" feature that is somehow not compatible with Win 7.
I turned off the fast startup feature following the instructions below, and haven't had this happen since. This issue has probably been covered here, but just thought it could be useful to someone doing a similar dual setup

https://support.lenovo.com/gt/en/solutions/ht501793

[mikemex]

Devices designed to run off SSD cards (like modern M.2 based) take power consumption and power dissipation (heat) into account. Ventilation is usually a design consideration.

The same can't be said about mSATA cards. I'm not aware of any dedicated slot for them, so they usually share slot with WWAN cards; devices that consume less power and placed inside the case accordingly. For this reason most manufacturers recommend using them for storage / low intensity loads only. Not for OS installation. In the end, they were an after thought concept that only lasted a few generations because they tend to overheat and fail if used intensively.

I know it first hand because the mSATA on my T420 failed. Be warned.

[axur-delmeria]

I disable fast startup because it's a Windows 10 hack to make it appear that it boots much faster than Win 7. In essence, it's just hibernation.

It's not good for dual-booting because the filesystem is not in a "safe" condition when Windows 10 "shuts down" (actually hibernates). On Linux/Win10 dual-boots (like in my X220), Linux will only mount the Windows 10 partitions in read-only mode when fast startup is enabled.

[booysen]

Devices designed to run off SSD cards (like modern M.2 based) take power consumption and power dissipation (heat) into account. Ventilation is usually a design consideration.

The same can't be said about mSATA cards. I'm not aware of any dedicated slot for them, so they usually share slot with WWAN cards; devices that consume less power and placed inside the case accordingly. For this reason most manufacturers recommend using them for storage / low intensity loads only. Not for OS installation. In the end, they were an after thought concept that only lasted a few generations because they tend to overheat and fail if used intensively.

I know it first hand because the mSATA on my T420 failed. Be warned.

Interesting, mikemex!

I recall reading somewhere that it was not recommended that one installs the OS on the mSATA (user manual?), but thought this was more due to the small storage capacities of these at the time (64GB, or even smaller), and that they were intended as cache drives in combination with an HDD.

I'm using mine (128GB) to get familiar with Win 10, since my institution makes use of software that apparently will require this OS from sometime next year. If all goes well, I'll move my main SSD over to Win 10 when/if required.
Nevertheless, I'd prefer not to have the mSATA fail prematurely. But when preparing for my dual setup, I also remember reading of members/X220 users who specifically used their mSATA for the OS and larger HDD for storage, though some of these threads were from quite some time ago. Some noted that while their mSATAs were running hotter than main SSD, the difference was not of concern to them.

I'd be interested to know more, also from X220 and related model users who have or are still running similar setups, regarding heat, reliability, etc.

[booysen]

I disable fast startup because it's a Windows 10 hack to make it appear that it boots much faster than Win 7. In essence, it's just hibernation.

It's not good for dual-booting because the filesystem is not in a "safe" condition when Windows 10 "shuts down" (actually hibernates). On Linux/Win10 dual-boots (like in my X220), Linux will only mount the Windows 10 partitions in read-only mode when fast startup is enabled.

Thanks, axur-delmeria.

This is exactly the kind of stuff I'm hoping to learn about with my Win 10 "test run".
Guess more issues that will come up with time, or some that I'm not yet aware of...

[thelash]

In reply to comments about heat and wear, sometime around 2017 I set up my X220 with a MyDigital 256gb msata card and installed win10 on it. It was my daily driver for a few years and gave me no problems. (I kept the 2.5" 500gb HDD that I bought it with as storage.) Gave/sold it to my son and kids about 2 years ago, and it is still being well thrashed as a media server/old gamer and general knockabout. It is running a bit warm overall as neither of us has ever done a repaste on it, but in typical X220 style it just keeps on keeping on. I still enjoy a bit of web surfing etc on it when I visit, as I do like the classic keyboard and my present machines have the 6 row. Just bought an X230 on Trademe for $NZ200 which I consider a bargain as it has 16gb ram and a Samsung 850 Evo msata card - rare as hen's teeth here and pricey. Now I need to find a non dodgy dealer with a genuine IPS screen...

[booysen]

Sounds like a good deal you got on that X230, @thelash!
They pop up frequently over here, but often bashed up (guess ex lease?), and definitely without any of the goodies you got. Or otherwise expensive.

Thanks for sharing your experiences with this type of setup.
I'm going to keep running my mSATA too, keeping it minimal with no important data for now, also since I still prefer Win 7 on my main SSD.
Haven't had any issues since that automatic dskchk due to Win 10 fast startup.

[booysen]

Side note: I've been thinking about the mSATA failure on @mikemex's T420; interestingly, the HMM shows that on this model, the mSATA slots under the DIMM slot cover on the underside of the computer - same place as the WWAN PCI express card on my T410. Of course, on the X220 (other X series?) it on top, under the palm rest.

As mikemex pointed out, both computers were likely not designed with heavy mSATA use in mind, but I'm curious if the different locations on X vs. T series played a role in the overheating and failure on the T420.

Anyone here had an mSATA fail on an X220, or any X series for that matter?

[axur-delmeria]

Anyone here had an mSATA fail on an X220, or any X series for that matter?

The Kingston mS200 60GB (Sandforce SSD controller chip) in my X220 failed after around 5 years. My dad's X220 had the same SSD model, and it failed a while later.

I think the overheating issue on the T420 is due to the mSATA slot's proximity to the RAM slots. On the X220 and X230, it's beside the WLAN card, which doesn't heat up as much.

[benlimanto]

Anyone here had an mSATA fail on an X220, or any X series for that matter?

The Kingston mS200 60GB (Sandforce SSD controller chip) in my X220 failed after around 5 years. My dad's X220 had the same SSD model, and it failed a while later.

I think the overheating issue on the T420 is due to the mSATA slot's proximity to the RAM slots. On the X220 and X230, it's beside the WLAN card, which doesn't heat up as much.

So no mSata on it? Or msata only as expansion? Uhmm..

[axur-delmeria]

So no mSata on it? Or msata only as expansion? Uhmm..

Personally, I'd stay away from mSATA SSDs. The high price per gigabyte isn't worth it.

[booysen]

Thanks for sharing, axur-delmeria
- even if it kind of blows my suspicion/"theory" that the mSATA's run fine on these X machines out of the water

But 5 years is not an unacceptable service life I guess, and particularly interesting that they failed pretty much contemporarily on different computers.
Also, it's true of course that these SSDs are way more expensive than the M.2 ones, but these don't fit in the X220.
So, appears it might be better to go with a partition on the main SSD for dual boot setups on the X220 after all - it's just that for some reason I fancied the idea of having my Win 10 on the mSATA. Also since my X220 has a relatively small SSD - 256GB Samsung 860 pro that I installed as soon as I got it.

[dr_st]

I think the overheating issue on the T420 is due to the mSATA slot's proximity to the RAM slots. On the X220 and X230, it's beside the WLAN card, which doesn't heat up as much.

It's quite plausible. The Kingston SUV500 240 mSATA SSD in my T430s runs @~45C, which is ~15C hotter than the SATA SSD in the main bay. It's been there for slightly over 2.5 years. Let's see how long it lasts. It is a Marvell 88SS1074 controller.

Then again, your experience shows these drives also fail in X-series, so maybe it's not so much due to heat but due to other issues...

[axur-delmeria]

Then again, your experience shows these drives also fail in X-series, so maybe it's not so much due to heat but due to other issues...

Sandforce SSD controllers are DRAM-less, so it's possible that its NAND flash simply wore out. Note that these were 60GB SSDs, which generally have lower write endurance.

[shawross]

In my X220 I have an MSata drive as my system drive and so far there doesn't seem to be any heating issues.

As discussed I think the location is important.

On my other drive I did have Linux Mint in a dual boot config but this was posing issues for backing up my main system which is W7.

I am still happy to use the system image backup in W7 which works for me.

Although it wanted to back up both drives as they are required in boot.

I fully intended to just use Linux but that hasn't been my want. If I reinstall an OS on the standard drive bay then I will just use the function key to
select this on boot up. I might have to remove the MSata to set it up but far cleaner in the long run.

[booysen]

Great info so far, guys!

Mine's a Transcend 370S (128GB), no idea about the controller etc.
The spec sheet reports an operating temperature range of 0-70 degrees C, as does those of axur-delmeria's Kingston mS200 & dr_st's Kingston SUV500... Not sure how relevant this is though, suppose cooler is probably just better for service life.

@dr_st: how do you monitor the temperature of your mSATA?
I'm using tpfancontrol for Windows, and it just reports the CPU temp.