T420s Loadout Advice

[shukmeister]

Hi all,

I'm brainstorming ways to set up my craigslist t420s purchase. It came with a 400GB HDD. I thought of two configurations but am not sure which one to pick. Anyone have input from experience?

Option A)
400GB HDD in main slot
mSATA SDD for boot / apps (limited to SATA II)
ultrabay battery OEM (http://www.ebay.com/itm/OEM-Ultrabay-Ba ... 2091669593)

Option B)
SSD in main slot for boot / apps (SATA III)
400GB HDD in ultrabay

The options comes down to SATA III vs ultrabay battery. Is the SATA II vs SATA III difference very noticeable? I use my computer for everything: music, spreadsheets, videos, games, 3D modeling, picture editing. Does SSD speed influence games and 3D modeling?

Thanks

[theterminator93]

I've got something similar to your option A in all my 20 series machines, and I've grown to like it quite a bit. The SATA-II speeds for the SSD is plenty to make me happy in everyday use. The raw increase in speed in 4k access times is the real benefit that helps speed everything up; the sequential R/W will saturate the bus but how often are either the OS or applications reading or writing huge amounts of data sequentially long enough for that to make a noticeable difference? CPU starts to become a bottleneck here. If there is a real world difference between identical (SATA-III capable) SSDs on the SATA-II and SATA-III bus, it must be only worth a second or two on startup.

Load times will be much improved, but otherwise you won't notice games or 3D design run faster as a result of running them off an SSD. That is, unless your system has much less physical memory to give these applications than they need and they go to the pagefile for working memory - in which case you'll see a drastic improvement with the much improved R/W performance of the SSD.

In the W520 I keep a blu-ray recorder in the ultrabay with a 2.5" SATA adapter handy for reading old HDDs, a 1TB 2.5" platter disk in the 2.5" slot, and a 512GB mSATA disk for the OS and most programs. The T420 has a 500GB HDD in the 2.5" slot and a 256GB mSATA, and the X220s have 128GB mSATA disks. 128 (or 120) is the minimum size I'd recommend for the OS and light applications based on my experiences. You could make 64 work but you wouldn't have much room for programs.

[Saucey]

I think the mSATA capabilities are really neat for Thinkpads, given that rival EliteBooks and Laititudes of this era didn't have this feature!

I'd go with option A.
If you're fine with buying used SSDs, mSATAs are not that much more expensive than a 2.5" SATA III.
For me, I really don't notice much of a difference of SATA II and SATA III speeds on a laptop.
The real difference is PCIe SSDs on a desktop if you're looking for bleeding speed.

[axur-delmeria]

Go with option A. An mSATA SSD is probably cheaper than a SATA SSD + Ultrabay HDD adapter.

[bit_twiddler]

You can put a drive in the ultrabay with this model, but you might want to consider
leaving open the option of putting an ultrabay battery in there, which is
possible with this model.

The main battery is actually pretty limited in capacity, at something like 44WH.

[shukmeister]

Thank you everyone for the awesome advice. I wasn't expecting such informative replies..

Now, to see if I can find a SATA II mSATA ssd and save a few bucks....

[TonyJZX]

My 420s is spec'ced out as the main 7mm drive as the booter... i have a crappy msata in the slot as a dump drive... the sata2 bothers me

and I have a ultrabay hdd free which i use for whatever i need for the day