Thinkpads Forum

I have set up my W520 to use an Intel 80GB mSATA SDD as its primary drive by the fairly simple process of 1) configuring the system as normal, 2) creating the R&R media, 3) removing the stock HDD, 4) installing the mSATA SDD, and 5) running the rescue-and-recovery process from the created media. Possibly the R&R process would offer to restore to the mSATA rather than a HDD, but since I am going to put in different HDD anyway, it was convenient to simply remove it and leave no room for doubt.

This would not work with the 40GB SDD as there is currently only about 20GB remaining free on the 80GB drive. This is broken down into a ~10GB R&R partition (which I will probably delete and try to recreate on the HDD), ~18GB for Windows, ~12GB for the page file which I think I can move to a HDD once I put one back in (I almost never used all the 8GB on my T61p), ~9GB for the hibernation file (not sure if I can or want to move it, but I suspect it could grow to 14GB: 12GB RAM plus 2GB VRAM). SWTOOLS can certainly be moved to reclaim its 3.5GB. Program Files, Program Files (x86), Program Data, and Users are between 1GB and 2GB each.

Hmm... the Disk Management tool shows that there is also a 1+GB "SYSTEM_DRV" partition (System, Active, Primary) at the front of the drive. I'll have to figure out whether I want that or not. There's very little on it... an empty "Recovery" folder and another "MFGSTAT" with a few items that seem mostly to be batch and log files related to the build process.

The Windows Experience score for the disk data transfer rate is 7.7; the ATTO Disk Benchmark shows it leveling off at around 16kB transfers with writes around 80MB/sec and reads around 210MB/sec.

I've found suggestions online that 1) I do *not* want to remove the nearly empty SYSTEM_DRV partition if I like having the computer actually boot, and 2) there is no way to move hiberfil.sys off the startup drive.

I have moved the R&R partition from the mSATA SSD to the tail end of the HDD, and it seems to be working just fine from the blue button at boot; I hadn't really expected it to, but I appreciate the effort of whoever wrote that code to search all drives instead of just bootable drives.

I moved the SWTOOLS folder to the HDD, too, and put a junction pointing to its new location back on C:\SWTOOLS. These files can now be accessed as if they were on C: (the SSD) but they are actually stored on the HDD. (I use Link Shell Extension -- freeware; donations accepted -- for this.)

In computer properties, advanced; Performance settings, I set a System Managed paging file on the HDD and reduced the SDD's paging file to the minimum (800GB) at which it would stop complaining.

In computer properties, advanced; Startup and Recovery settings, I moved the Dump file from %SYSTEM_ROOT%\MEMORY.DMP to D:\MEMORY.DMP (D: is the HDD)

C: now has 44.6 GB free of 73.3... far better than the 20GB I was starting with.

Disk Manager currently shows:

Disk 0: Basic, 465.76 GB Online
HDD_Internal (D:) 455.98GB NTFS (Page File)
Lenovo_Recovery (Q:) 9.77GB NTFS

Disk 1: Basic, 74.53 GB Online
SYSTEM_DRV 450MB (System, Active)
749MB Unallocated
Windows7_OS (C:) 73.36 GB (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump)

The unallocated space is from "Shrink"ing the SYSTEM_DRV. If I find I really need the extra .7GB, I may use a third-party utility to move the Windows7_OS partition down, but that will be somewhat tedious, even on a SSD.

Noting that the system still reports that crash dumps are going to the SSD, I found a way to deliberately generate one and was pleased to see that it was indeed written to the D: drive as I'd asked.

So far, things are looking pretty good.

We are looking for reviewers of mSATA products we are have for sale. These products are from Renice Technology. If you are interested in writing a blog about this product and you are using a Lenovo product. We give you a discount. Please contact me through this forum or through our site. Search in google for asiatechtrade.

I am trying to do pretty much the same and I am running into problems.
My W520 came with a 500 GB HDD that I want to keep as a secondary drive with the mSata.

I created a backup of the 500 GB HDD with R&R on an external USB drive (took several hours).
Then I installed the mSata HDD (Intel 80 GB) and removed the 500 GB HDD. (I read in another thread that R&R automatically recovers to the original disk if it finds it in the system.)
Then I booted into the external USB drive and R&R came up offering its backup and restore options.
Then I chose to do a full restore.
It started copying files.
At 3% it stopped with an error message that there is insufficient disk space to complete the restore.

My original HDD shows 51.7 GB of used space, with almost 14 GB of it being the hibernation and the page file. So there should be enough space on the SSD.
(However, if I try to shrink the Windows7 volume in Disk Management, I am only offered to shrink it down to about 210 GB, so it seems some system file is sitting pretty high up. Don't know whether that is relevant in any way.)

When I insert the original HDD again and boot into it, the system can see the SSD. (It installed a driver for it on the first boot.)
Disk Management shows two partitions on the drive, one with 1.17 GB, and then 73.36 GB of unallocated space.
It also shows that the disk is offline because it has a signature collision with another disk that is online - I assume my original HDD. (This might need to be fixed if I am successful with running the system from the SSD and using my original HDD as secondary drive at the same time.)

Any ideas what is causing my problems and how to solve them?

Thanks!

What you did is somewhat different from what I did. You made a backup of your hard drive and tried to restore that completed installation. I made the Recovery Media and reimaged the mSATA with the factory-wipe config from Lenovo. I did *not* back up the 320GB drive the system came with or try to restore that configured disc.

Certainly if you're very far into your system build on the HDD, it would be frustrating to go back to an out-of-the-box setup on the mSATA and start over. But if you haven't run the Create Recovery Media application to make your own disc set, you should probably do so anyway. Booting again from that HDD should allow you to do make the recovery discs... though unless you have a utility that will let you change your disk signature, it sounds like you may have to remove the mSATA to boot from the HDD.

I suppose it's possible that Lenovo's R&R can handle only copying to *larger* drives, not smaller? I don't know this; I've always used other utilities for disk copies. I don't suppose you have access to a utility like Acronis Disk Director that can copy and resize on-the-fly?

Thank you for the clarification. Now I don't have to wonder whether there is anything broken with my system or backup.

I did create Factory Restore Disks right away when I got the laptop, and I was able to make a restore to the SSD with the HDD removed.
It seems that assigns a new disk signature, because after reinstalling the HDD now I can boot into each of the two disks when bringing up the boot menu with F12, and the other one is online.

Now I am wondering how to just clone the HDD Win7 partition to the SSD Win7 partition, because I have built the system already too far to start from scratch if I can avoid it.

I don't have the Acronis software that allows you to make partitions smaller.
I checked out the Intel Data Migration Software that you can use with an Intel SSD and that's from Acronis, but it only allows you to clone the whole drive (with reducing partition size), which I don't want any more at this time. I'm concerned it might affect the alignment created by the Factory Restore.

I did a defrag on my HDD Win7 partition, and now I only use 40 GB of space on it, but some unmovable system file seems to be located at about 200 GB, because I can't shrink it beyond that number with Win7 tools. Otherwise I would have reduced the partition size so that it fits into the SSD partition.

So I'll have to look some more for a solution...

I ended up rebuilding from the Factory Reset Installation, too.

Before that I was actually able to copy over the larger Windows partition from the HDD to the smaller one on the SDD with a free tool (Mini Tool Partition Wizard). After that I could boot either into the mSata SSD or the HDD (using F12 boot menu).
But at that point already the setup was a bit confusing as to which drive letters were assigned to which partition. It seemed to change depending on the system I booted into, and I didn't like it.

And when I tried to use the same tool to change the partitions on the HDD (convert the SYSTEM_DRV and the Windows partition into a data partition) things got corrupted, and even when booting into the SSD I had problems. I probably could have avoided the corruption issue by using a boot CD for making these changes (which is available for the tool).

So in the end I restored the factory settings to the SSD, made the HDD into a data disk, and rebuilt my system from there.

That worked well.

Using the SSD as the system disk bumped the WEI for the primary HD from 5.9 to 7.7.
(Increasing RAM from 4 to 8 GB had already increased the memory index from 5.9 to 7.6 and - surprisingly - the graphics index for the built-in Intel graphics from 4.9 to 6.7.)

Thanks for the additional data point. It does seem to be the path of least resistance... thouguh hopefully someone who buys the mSATA a few months into owning the machine can come up with something better!

thinkstone wrote: (Increasing RAM from 4 to 8 GB had already increased the memory index from 5.9 to 7.6 and - surprisingly - the graphics index for the built-in Intel graphics from 4.9 to 6.7.)

This is really surprising. If it's not too inconvenient could you please run some graphics benchmark on the Intel graphics with 4gb and 8gb. If 8gb does translate to an actual performance increase I'll buy 4x2 gb instead of the planned 2x2.

Thanks.

davidhbrown wrote:What you did is somewhat different from what I did. You made a backup of your hard drive and tried to restore that completed installation. I made the Recovery Media and reimaged the mSATA with the factory-wipe config from Lenovo. I did *not* back up the 320GB drive the system came with or try to restore that configured disc.

Certainly if you're very far into your system build on the HDD, it would be frustrating to go back to an out-of-the-box setup on the mSATA and start over. But if you haven't run the Create Recovery Media application to make your own disc set, you should probably do so anyway. Booting again from that HDD should allow you to do make the recovery discs... though unless you have a utility that will let you change your disk signature, it sounds like you may have to remove the mSATA to boot from the HDD.

I suppose it's possible that Lenovo's R&R can handle only copying to *larger* drives, not smaller? I don't know this; I've always used other utilities for disk copies. I don't suppose you have access to a utility like Acronis Disk Director that can copy and resize on-the-fly?

I'm not sure what you're trying to say?

What do you mean recovery media? What does recovery media do for you?

You must backup and restore the image of your HDD to your SSD?

BNHabs wrote:What do you mean recovery media?

I mean the set of four DVDs created using the "Create Recovery Media" tool once I had the system up and running on the factory-shipped HDD.

BNHabs wrote:What does recovery media do for you?

It allows you to load the original factory image that shipped with the machine to a new storage device. In my case, to the 80GB mSATA SDD.

BNHabs wrote:You must backup and restore the image of your HDD to your SSD?

No, I did not do this. But I also didn't have anything on the HDD I wanted to keep.

davidhbrown wrote: I have moved the R&R partition from the mSATA SSD to the tail end of the HDD, and it seems to be working just fine from the blue button at boot; I hadn't really expected it to, but I appreciate the effort of whoever wrote that code to search all drives instead of just bootable drives.

How did you move the R&R partition? Is it complicated to do?

The tool I used was Acronis Disk Director 2010, with the SATA interface set to compatibility mode. It's not hard to do, but you'll want to read the online help first and know what you're doing. Working with drives that have nothing important on them is nice for getting the hang of tools like that. Taking the time first to read Wikipedia articles on topics like the MBR is worthwhile.


Continuing the thread in a somewhat different direction, I'm interested in trying to set this computer up to use the faster UEFI instead of the legacy BIOS. I have a "spare" mSATA SSD drive to play with, but Acronis states that Disk Director 2011 (with GPT support) does *NOT* work with EFI systems, by which I presume they mean UEFI (Wikipedia says it's the same thing). So I'll be looking for other tools to play with partitions. Suggestions welcome. I notice Paragon is on sale...