Adding SSD hard drive, and recommendations

[xluke]

Hello,
Regarding my w520...
I'd like to add an SSD hard drive for my operating systems (ubuntu and windows 7) -- what is the best way to do this? I presently have the lenovo 500gb hard drive. My guess is I would have to move the 500gb lenovo into the optical bay using an adapter, and then add the SSD to the main hard drive location. Is this correct?

Is there an easy way to transfer the contents of the 500gb to the SSD so I don't have to go reinstall everything from scratch? (I remember using "Ghost" back in the day to to do this...)

Finally, any recommendations on what SSD drives are the best? I think I would go with a 128gb drive...

Thanks!

[Harryc]

Another option you may not have considered is installing an mSATA SSD drive. That way you can leave your hard drive where it is and still take advantage of your optical drive.
Here's a 128GB msata drive from our forum sponsor.
http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/mydigi ... msata-ssd/
...and a discount coupon - http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=99568

[xluke]

Great thought! I am going to go this route (128gb msata ssd).

I presently have ubuntu linux and windows 7 spread over partitions on my 500gb hard disk. Any suggestions on a way to move this data seemlessly over to the msata without having to reinstall everything (basically ghost a drive but from a larger to smaller)? I have less then 128gb total on my drive but I imagine the different partitions and different drive size make this more difficult.

Thanks!

[Colonel O'Neill]

Go to Windows Backup, choose Create System Image, and make the image. Restore with a bootable disk. Not sure if this will get the non-NTFS/FAT partitions, though.

[awolfe63]

I have successfully used Acronis Trueimage many times to clone Thinkpad drives. It can resize partitions in almost any reasonable way.

[davidhbrown]

Another vote for Acronis for moving/copying partitions. It's been keeping both Lenovo and Dell recovery partitions working for me. I particularly like the way you chain together multiple steps as if you were doing them but then have a "commit" button. Lets you see the final result before you change a thing.

Make sure you get the latest version 11 (Disk Director 11 Home), though... earlier versions don't like the normal setting of the SATA controller. They'll work for HDDs if you set the SATA controller to "compatible" in the BIOS, but then you can't see the mSATA. (Or at least I couldn't.)

I am a little jealous of these newer faster/bigger mSATAs. I have the Intel version. 70MB/s write into 80GB isn't bad, but it's not 200 into 120.

[xluke]

I bought disk director and am waiting for it to arrive but meanwhile am playing with the trial version so I can do things quickly when the software gets here.

I tried to do a 'demo' disk clone by right clicking source volume and saying clone. Then a diaglogue popped up and I chose my source drive. My Source disk says: Disk 1 (Capcity 465.8gb, used space 85.52gb) and the target disk is Disk 2 119.2gb capacity (only 90mb used up). When I select that a warning comes up that "The selected target disk is too small. Please select another disk."

I'm confused because I thought this could dynamically resize partitions down to a smaller disk. I'm not using more than 120gb total on the new disk. The only thing that I could think of that could be confusing it is a 90gb ubuntu partion that shows up as "not formatted" even though it is as it is my second OS.

Any ideas? Should I try to cancel my order and go with another option?

Thanks!

EDIT: I don't see a manual mode -- am I missing something?

[awolfe63]

It should be able to downsize partitions. Try manual mode and see what it is telling you.

Where is the ubuntu partition? The source disk or the destination?

[xluke]

Thanks for your reply,
I didn't realize there was a manual mode... I will look for that.

The Ubuntu position is on the source, i presently have a dual boot system on the 500gb hdd that i would like to migrate to the ssd.
Also, I was reading the manual (must be getting old) and it said there was an NT copy option, I presume that i should not take this option as it will block me from being able to use my hdd as a secondary drive, is that correct?

I appreciate any thoughts!

[xluke]

Update:
I booted into ubuntu via startup USB drive and resized the ubuntu partition from 90gb to 20gb. I rebooted into win7 and loaded acronis and it was able to scale it down to the new drive. I'll need to wait for the full version to execute it but it looks like it will work. My guess is that it was unable to scale the ext4 (ubuntu) partition. It still refers to the partition as "not formatted" but is moving 20gb chunk so I presume that will work.

One more question, is there anything I need to do to preserve the boot record or will this just fire right up once I change the boot order in the bios to go to the mSATA first?

Thanks again all!

[awolfe63]

Sounds right. Acronis probably could not tell how full the Ubuntu partition was and can only copy the whole thing.

The MBR should copy fine. That's the big benefit of clone mode in Acronis. The new disk should just pop in and boot.


Also - I don't tend to customize Ubuntu much - so I often remove it then just reinstall it after cloning. Sounds like you won't need to do that - but it is an easy option.

[xluke]

Hello,
Unfortunately after the copy if I choose to boot from the new clone (SSD) it resets the bios and returns to the default loader -- my guess is that something is wrong with Ubuntu's GRUB boot loader but I'm not sure. Any thoughts?

Thanks!

[TuuS]

One thing I've been told but not confirmed is that your windows OS (perhaps even more so with linux) may not setup the SSD drive correctly if you clone from a non-SSD drive. I'd imagine it would detect the hardware and make necessary changes, but I've been warned it's best to do a full install so you can make sure it's setup properly.

At very least I'd disable any automatic disc maintenance that's performed. You definitely don't want to run a defrag on an SSD, it won't help and will shorten it's service life.

I would also ask in ubuntu's forum if a cloned OS will work properly on an SSD if it wasn't installed on one.