Thinkpads Forum

I am going to update the 320gb drive in the x230 to an SSD I was just going to drop in a Crucial M500 480GB in the SATA drive but my curiousity is getting the better of me. Is there any advantage to putting the OS on a smaller 120GB mSATA SSD and putting a 240GB SATA SSDA in for saving thinks. Common sense tells me the OS being on set drive means that SSD will perform and last longer in the long run because its not constantly erasing data. But other than that is there an advantage. Speed, boot up or anything else?

Thanks, Thomas

There is no measurable performance advantage, notwithstanding that the SATA bay can run SATA III whereas the mSATA connector is SATA II.

There is, however, an "aesthetic" and logical benefit in physically decoupling the OS from transient and user data ... and, to that end, if you decide to place the OS on its own drive, then consider moving such things as "My Documents", Outlook files, etc., including swap and temp files, off that OS drive.

I find it advantageous to put the OS on the msata purely from the perspective of maximizing your available storage.

Unless you need WWAN the slot will be unused, and has been said the different between SATA II & III is negligible. It also makes it easy to upgrade the 2.5" drive, I hope to replace mine with a 1TB sometime in the future.