Setup of mSATA drive in W520

[Davidhs]

I am about to install an Intel 80GB mSATA SSD on my brand new W520 and I intend to run Windows from there.

In the last couple of weeks I have read in some forum somewhere that one can use the Thinkpad factory recovery partition to build a Windows system on the SSD. It was further stated that the factory recovery system is "SSD aware" and will set things correctly for an SSD, but the forum entry did not explain this further. .... but, sod's law, my browser crashed and I cannot find the item again.

Does anyone on this board know enough about the TP factory recovery system to comment or has anyone tried this?

I have created the DVDs from the factory recovery partition (and for good measure will create a USB memory stick version as well.

I would appreciate any tips on how to achieve this as painlessly as possible.

Thanks.

[Q-Ball]

I'm pretty sure that all you have to do is remove the hard drive, install the SSD, and toss the first recovery disk in the DVD drive to start the recovery process.

Once it's done, putting the hard drive back in will give you that space again.

[Davidhs]

Thanks Q-Ball,

That is encouraging.

I think an important question that I omitted in my post is whether TRIM is set to function appropriately if one restores from the recovery DVDs.
Does anyone know the answer to that?

The mSATA SSD is still stuck in transit to me despite being promised for today (Friday).

[Foss]

Hi David,

I installed a mSATA drive in my W520 using the recovery disks. It worked very well. TRIM is enabled and all partitions are correctly aligned.
I'm extremely happy with the mSATA. Hope your drive will arrive soon.

Best regards
/Johan

[Davidhs]

Thank you Johan,
That is encouraging.
When you say all partitions were correctly aligned, what do you mean? I would not want the recovery partition recreated on the mSATA SSD as there will not be space to spare. I only want a C: partitions for Windows. If recovery were recreated I would immediately delete it.
As I have just taken the memory up to 16GB, my pagefile and hiberfil will both be large.

[PanEuropean]

Hello David:

I just finished doing exactly what you propose - I started Friday, and finished up today.

My install took a bit longer than normal because I elected to put only the OS and applications on the little mSATA card (the C: drive), and put all of my data (the Users) on the mechanical drive (the D: drive) inside my W520.

Physical installation of the chip was extraordinarily easy. Lenovo provides a movie that shows you how to remove the keyboard, once you remove the keyboard, you just put the chip in the slot.

There is an excellent post that explains the whole process in great detail at this link: Primitive but Effective.

There is also quite a bit of discussion about doing this at the Lenovo Forum, at this link: Migration steps to an Intel mSATA unit.

Concerning the TRIM function, Intel provides a tool (piece of software) that does this for you automatically. You can download it from here: Intel SSD Toolbox

You are correct to foresee that the pagefile and hibernation file will be quite large - with 16 gigs of RAM installed, these two files will take up nearly 32 gigs of your new mSATA chip. However, the good news (the REALLY GOOD NEWS) is that you can disable the hibernation function entirely, because after you get that mSATA chip installed, you will find that the computer does a cold boot (from being off) in less time that it used to take to wake up from hibernation. I am not kidding you. To disable hibernation (you can do this at any time), see this KB article at Microsoft: click here.

Some people have suggested moving the pagefile to the mechanical disc to conserve space on the mSATA chip. I tried this, but the computer is not as fast with the pagefile on the mechanical drive as it is with the pagefile on the mSATA SSD. I suppose, though, you could do this as a last resort if you start to run out of space on the chip.

Michael

[Foss]

Hi David

Using the recovery disks did recreate the recovery partition but I removed it after install. I also disabled hibernation as Michael suggested in the above post.

When I installed my mSATA there was some debate in diffferent forums as how well the recovery disks would work with a ssd, if the sectors would be properly aligned etc. But as you described in your first post, the disks seem to be "SSD aware" and sets everything correct.

/Johan

[Davidhs]

Thank you Michael and Johan,
I have now received and installed the Intel 80GB SSD. I ran the recovery DVDs I had previously created and am able to boot from the SSD. I also ran various checks in the Intel SSD toolbox. Both Windows update and the Lenovo updates have run fine.

One curiousity: I now see an additional partition on both the SSD and the spinning disk. On both it is called System_DRV. It is 1.4 GB in size and about half used. The contents seem to be boot related utility functions. (One must change Exlorer's view settings to make the contents visible as they are classed as system files.) This partition had not been visible before.
- What is the purpose in life of this partition?
- Is it somehow referenced during boot? ... Or only by recovery functions? ... or by update?
Is it connected to UEFI Unified Extensible Firmware Interface?
- I can hardly need it on both SSD and spinning disk, so which shall I delete?

I shall keep the spinning disk copy of both the Recovery partition and SWTools. I have deleted the SSD copy of the Recovery partition. I will also delete the contents of the SSD copy ofSWTools, but I read somewhere in a Lenovo forum that one should leave the empty folder structure as it is used by ThinkVantage update.

*** Later update ***
I rebooted and next I ran the installation of the Lenovo Enhanced Backup & Restore. It ran for a short while and then abended with the message: "Error 25013: Error obtaining the Rescue and Recovery environment drive letter".

What is going on here? I thought it expected to find the factory recovery partition on Q: Does it dislike it being on a different drive for some reason.

Disk Management tells me I have the following partitions:
Disk 0: Sys_Drv 1.46GB assigned as D:, my data partition 44GB E: , Lenovo Recovery 15.6GB Q:
Disk 1: Sys_Drv 1.46 GB no drive letter and so not visible in Win explorer, Windows 7 73.6GB C:

[PanEuropean]

Hello David:

The "System_Drv" partition is something that Windows 7 creates. I believe that it is a place where the OS stores duplicate copies of essential information that is needed to figure out where everything is on the disc in case something goes wrong down the road.

Because it is very small, I recommend that you leave it alone and not remove it.

Just as an aside, when I did the 80 GB mSATA install on my W520, I first formatted my drives using the GPT protocol, rather than MBR (which is legacy, and more common). I was a bit surprised to find that the machine did not create a "System_Drv" partition. My understanding is that when the drives are formatted using the GPT protocol, the duplicate (recovery) information is stored at the 'opposite end' of the disc itself, instead of on a separate partition.

Michael

[edisonwu]

My intel SSD 160G was dead yesterday.

I am planning to replace the SSD and install a mSATA and a regular 1TB harddisk in my W520. I read somwhere else that if I am to install OS using thinkpad factory recovery disk, I have to remove the regular harddisk and leave only the mSATA in the computer. Otherwise the recovery disk will always install the OS to the regular harddisk.

Is this true?

I am concerning this because usually I reinstall my whole system in every couple months. And I am not going to dis-connect the regular harddisk every time.

Thanks a lot in advance.