Thinkpads Forum

Does anyone have any numbers on the performance (or not) of the BTO 16GB mSATA option?

I've been thinking about getting that and matching it up with a 1TB (or perhaps 2TB) hard drive.

Any ideas?

Hi kittyjessica. I am not sure but maybe you might find a thread(s) or other relevant information if you enter in the keywords into the 'search' feature the forum has (link is located at the top of the page). Sometimes a question will take some time to be answered. The search for keywords might answer your question before a helpful and gracious forum member posts a response

16GB is too small to install the operating system and basic software. The idea is that you use the mSATA drive to run the most critical stuff and use the spinning drive just for storage.

If I were you, I would order the largest spinning drive for the main bay and buy an mSATA drive elsewhere. But that depends a lot on price; if too high I would just order the cheapest spinning drive and buy both things elsewhere. In theory you lose warranty for the drives but if you buy new you should still get warranty from the manufacturer so it's not such a big deal.

By the way, the largest 2.5" drive for a notebook is 1TB and just recently got 9.5mm tall (they used to be 12.7mm). They are 5400rpm, though.

The CTO mSATA SSD 16GB is configured by Lenovo as a "file cache," not a regular drive. You can always change the BIOS setting to treat it as a regular drive, but it would be too small for either a Windows or a Linux installation.

Alternatively, you can CTO a ThinkPad without the cache, then install an mSATA SSD 64GB (about $70) or 128GB (about $110) as your boot/OS/programs drive and keep the stock HDD in the main bay for file storage.

You can "put the bits" on the mSATA SSD in one of 3 ways: (1) clean installation, (2) restore from the factory recovery discs, (3) clone the stock HDD using a software tool such as Acronis or Apricorn.

I'm typing this on a ThinkPad that has a Crucial M4 mSATA SSD as boot/OS/programs file. System boot time and program launch time are simply awesome.

Kaso wrote:The CTO mSATA SSD 16GB is configured by Lenovo as a "file cache," not a regular drive. You can always change the BIOS setting to treat it as a regular drive, but it would be too small for either a Windows or a Linux installation.

Alternatively, you can CTO a ThinkPad without the cache, then install an mSATA SSD 64GB (about $70) or 128GB (about $110) as your boot/OS/programs drive and keep the stock HDD in the main bay for file storage.

You can "put the bits" on the mSATA SSD in one of 3 ways: (1) clean installation, (2) restore from the factory recovery discs, (3) clone the stock HDD using a software tool such as Acronis or Apricorn.

I'm typing this on a ThinkPad that has a Crucial M4 mSATA SSD as boot/OS/programs file. System boot time and program launch time are simply awesome.

I thought that would be the case as it seems to small for a "full fat" Windows 7 install, but I have seen rather funky split installs before and was wondering if, as part of the Lenovo Enhanced Experience 3, they had chosen such a install, but as they have not, I agree that the move to a 128GB mSATA as a boot drive seems like the best course of action. I'm guessing of course that one can not configure the system to "turn off" the platter drive when one is using the mSATA alone (for example for when, if you have installed a Linux or BSD to one and Windows 7 to the other), but it seems like the way forward.

I suppose that any improvement from a 16GB file cache would be a drop in the ocean when teamed with a 1 or 2TB drive *heh*, just a shame that I can't get it without the 16GB (part payment for work, from the company store, sadly) seems a shame to have to write that off, but I will for that level of performance. No matter what it comes with, it will be a notable improvement, for my work thinkpad, I happen to use a X61t and my personal workhorse is a lower end T400.

I can't wait till it's delivered and I thank you soo much for your help.

kittyjessica wrote:I've been thinking about getting that and matching it up with a 1TB (or perhaps 2TB) hard drive.

If you've got the T430, it uses a 7mm single platter hard drive, the biggest of which is 500GB right now, though you can still put a 9.5mm drive in the modular bay with the caddy.

ZaZ wrote: If you've got the T430, it uses a 7mm single platter hard drive, the biggest of which is 500GB right now, though you can still put a 9.5mm drive in the modular bay with the caddy.

That's a bit of a bummer but I suppose the ultrabay caddy is still less inconvenient than a external drive or I might hold off upgrading the drive till a single platter 1(or 2)TB drive is available. Thanks for the heads up.

Without even trying, I can get a windows install with office and web browser in 9 GB. If all you want are basic programs, you can do it in 16gb but you will have to remove or relocate your page file and not use hibernation or system restore. That said, how much is the 16gb option? There are sporadic sales on msata drives, the latest of which was the crucial M4 128gb for $90 USD. Its a good price on a sata III drive, but I havent seen the hard limit on msata yet of Sata II. However, even sata III drives on the market yet cant saturate the 4k r/w speeds of sata II, so your OS will still feel faster but your sequential performance will be capped at sata II speeds. If you want real space, go with a 128 or 256 msata for your primary OS, a 7mm 320 or 500 gb for your hard drive and a 1tb 9.5 mm for your ultrabay.

ducky2802 wrote:If you want real space, go with a 128 or 256 msata for your primary OS, a 7mm 320 or 500 gb for your hard drive and a 1tb 9.5 mm for your ultrabay.

And a real disaster if you you don't figure out a practical way to backup so much data...

Hey, since no one is answering your question- performance from an mSATA drive will be about 250 MB/sec, since it uses SATA II (PCI) not SATA III. You can find lots of drives for this at the usual computer stores. If you are asking about Intel RapidStart/ SmartStart, etc.... then you can use a very small mSATA drive to speed up your PC as a kind of buffer to load things first. Not sure what you are asking in this regard, but there you have it.

Sorry to hijack and bring up an old thread, but I am looking at the Lenovo ThinkPad T430 and had a question about the cache drive:

If I were to order one without a cache drive, how hard is it to install one? Is it the same as just popping in a new stick of RAM? Or would I have to backup everything and then re-load it?

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I am pretty "computer illiterate." The only option is a 500 GB HDD and I want to keep that and use it for all my storage, and just add an aftermarket mSATA cache to help bring up often-used programs quickly...

KtrainHurricane wrote:add an aftermarket mSATA cache to help bring up often-used programs quickly...

Instead of getting the cache drive, get the mSATA SSD. Once it's installed, Windows sees it as a regular hard drive on which you can install the OS and applications for speed. It's a far better setup than a cache drive.

ZaZ wrote:

KtrainHurricane wrote:add an aftermarket mSATA cache to help bring up often-used programs quickly...

Instead of getting the cache drive, get the mSATA SSD. Once it's installed, Windows sees it as a regular hard drive on which you can install the OS and applications for speed. It's a far better setup than a cache drive.

Thanks, but my question is about the actual installation of either one...is it as simple as it is to add RAM (i.e. pop it in and you're good to go)? Or does it require everything to be backed up and then re-loaded?

I ask because I am torn between buying a new Lenovo E431 with a 1 TB HDD and 24 GB cache, and buying a refurbished Lenovo T430 with a 500 GB and no cache. If adding a cache drive (or mSATA SSD, even though I don't know what the difference is between the two) isn't "plug-and-play" with a skill level of 1 or 0 for beginners like me, then I am just going to go with the E431 in order to save myself the time and trouble of taking the computer to a shop and paying someone to add the extra drive for me...