T420S: HD buying advice

[sde]

I hope this is an appropriate forum in which to ask this question... I'm (hopefully) about to buy my first ThinkPad (I'm 50, and I've wanted one since the IBM days).

I'm configuring a T420S for purchase. This is my first laptop. My 5-year-old desktop has a 350GB HD. So I gravitated toward getting the 320GB HD... until I saw that they might take > 4 weeks to ship.

So I started thinking about the 160GB SSD instead. Assuming that I'm willing to spend the additional $, does that make sense? I'm not a gamer. Most of the space on my HD now is family video. I suppose I could just offload that to an external USB 3.0 drive. But I admit that I'm skittish about getting a drive that's half the size of what I have now.

Might anyone offer any advice? Should I wait for the larger drive? Is the speed improvement noticeable with the SSD?

Thanks so much,

David

[killer]

Welcome to the forums, David.

Recently I bought a 1TB external HD from Amazon for the equivalent of USD 120. As that included delivery and 20% VAT I was happy.

In many ways it may be better to store photos, videos, music, etc. on an external drive. Well, that's what I do!

[sde]

Thanks, Killer.

The T420S comes with an Ultrabay, correct? I know I can swap out the DVD drive for an additional battery. Can an additional hard drive be swapped into the Ultrabay, if I chose to get one?

David

[underclocker]

Another welcome to the forum!

I've helped a couple of clients configure T420s machines. BTW, they love them.

First and foremost, an SSD is the most noticable performance increase for pretty much any machine. It makes 5 year old ThinkPads perform most tasks more quickly than brand new ThinkPads with mechanical drives. If you have a pulse, you will notice the difference!

Regarding your need for storage space, only you can tell what you're currently using and what you might need down the line. Cost aside, there are two ways you can go the SSD route. 1) Buy a T420s with any size mechanical drive and install an aftermarket SSD, Intel offers excellent replacement drives up to 600GB in capacity or buy a T420s model with an SSD, right now 160GB seems to be the maximum available, or 2) configure via Lenovo or aftermarket, a T420s with an mSATA SSD as a smaller boot drive plus a larger mechanical drive for the storage of data. Here's a link re: mSATA, there are several threads on this and other forums, too --> http://www.storagereview.com/new_lenovo ... s_everyone

Option 2 is the most cost effective way to have both SSD speed and lots of inexpensive storage, but it's slightly more complicated on the ordering/configuring end. The nice thing is that it leaves your Ultrabay free for an optical drive, extra battery or third hard drive!

Yes, Ultrabay's on T420s models can take the second battery, additional hard drive or optical drive.

Good luck.

P.S. My clients have opted for the 600GB Intel SSDs, which were costly, but keeps backing up via cloning simple (only one drive to clone).

[sde]

Thank you so much for all of this information, underclocker. I really appreciate it.

I have an unrelated question re: docking stations. It seems that (unless I'm missing something) there is no docking station available for the T420S with USB 3.0. That seems rather a shame.

What might my options be there? Does anyone think that Lenovo will make such a docking station available in the near future? Alternatively, is there such a thing as an aftermarket docking station with USB 3.0 that could plug into the ExpressCard slot?

Thanks,

David