Thinkpad x230 Questions & Purchase

[CheddarTrek]

Hey all,

So there's a great Black Friday deal going on at Lenovo. Lasts through tomorrow.

I've been considering buying a Thinkpad x230 for ages, and am going to finally bite the bullet. Got a few questions though, because I'm gonna do some manual upgrades to it (Lenovo charges too much for RAM & SSD).

Question 1: What kind/size SSD do I need to go in the extra express card (or whatever) slot? I know that Samsung 830s and Crucial M4s are awesome, but there's more than one size or whatever, right? I don't mean storage size either, I know I'll be picking up a 128GB.

Is there any reason to just upgrade the existing hard drive instead of adding this one? Heh. I hear that the one in the extra slot will only go at SATA II instead of III? Will that matter?

Speaking of adding the SSD... Do I need to purchase the "54mm ExpressCard Smart Card Reader" on my laptop when I order it? I had always assumed no, but the way that Lenovo words it when you click "more information" implies that the slot to add something (eGPU, SSD, etc.) won't be there unless you buy this... but that's stupid, right?

Question 2: I don't want my ThinkVantage button to quit working, because that thing saved my [censored] on my old laptop quite a few times. So... does that mean that when I install the SSD, I need to make an image of the installed Hard Drive and copy that over somehow instead of doing a Clean Install? Or what? How would I do that, and is there a way of just installing the Win7 Ultimate copy I have without screwing up my ThinkVantage button functionality?

Question 3: Do I need to purchase the "54mm ExpressCard Smart Card Reader" on my laptop when I order it? I had always assumed no, but the way that Lenovo words it when you click "more information" implies that the slot to add something (eGPU, SSD, etc.) won't be there unless you buy this... but that's stupid, right?

Sorry for all the dumb questions. I do know that I love this laptop, having used both the x220 and the x230 a fair bit, but I'm still a bit iffy on getting the upgrades from somewhere else and installing them. I've got a legit copy of Win7 Ultimate I was going to install too, on the SSD, but I didn't want to lose functionality of the ThinkVantage button so I need to figure out how to make a ... copy/image of the original Hard Drive to port over, and I can't remember which software to use to make an image, and I guess ... I don't know what to do after that, hah, to get anything to be like I want it. I much prefer being able to order what I want at a decent cost, but Lenovo just charges too much for SSD.

Thanks in advance!

[ZaZ]

I might suggest if you're not using WWAN getting the 500GB platter hard drive, then picking up whatever size mSATA SSD in whatever size you need. They go up to 256GB I believe. A mSATA SSD plugs into the miniPCI slot located under the palm rest. The benefit of doing it this way is you get a faster SSD to use as the boot drive and a larger platter drive for storage where speed is not as critical. I have this setup on my X220i. It's quite slick.

I don't use most of ThinkVantage Suite and haven't used the blue button in years. It used be the recovery discs put back the recovery partition, but I've no idea if that still true. Cloning can also effect partition alignment, which can alter performance. You may wish to look into it.

Smart cards are used for security purposes. I think if you have to ask, you can probably forgo it.

[CheddarTrek]

Ordering now, can't wait ^^

[ducky2802]

You need the 7mm ssd for the main bay drive. It operates at sata 3 speeds which is up to 600MB/s. The newer SSD's can reach this speed in sequential r/w. The msata SSD operates up to 300MB/s, so you do lose some on sequential performance, but since the main everyday "feel" to an SSD is the 4k and access times, both of which are currently not affected by sata II/III specs, you will probably not be able to tell the difference in those cases.

You can clone your hard drive and keep all functionality. If you use Windows system image (I believe clonezilla as well), it requires that the target hard drive is larger than the original hard drive. The workaround in windows is to shrink your partition on your original hard drive to something smaller than the target, then clone. I dont know if the lenovo R&R lets you restore onto an msata ssd.