SSD in Ultrabay on W520, and TRIM settings

[ilikefood]

I just ordered a W520, with a 160GB SSD. I want to put a second disk in the Ultrabay adapter, and I'm considering a 512GB SSD from Crucial for that purpose. I know that Windows 7 supports TRIM, but I'm wondering how this works with the removable Ultrabay disk.

Will Windows 7 automatically detect the SSD drive in the Ultrabay when I put it in?

What will happen when I swap back and forth between the SSD drive and the DVD drive? Will Windows 7 detect the DVD vs. the SSD correctly, and configure its communication with the Ultrabay correctly? Or am I going to run into issues, and have to configure TRIM manually each time I swap drives? Anything else to watch out for with this configuration?

On a related note, is it worth spending the extra money on a second SSD? The cheaper option is to just get a regular HDD for the second disk. I'd then keep the OS and applications on the SSD drive, and all the other files on the HDD. Will I see a big performance gain with two SSD drives, rather than one SSD and one HDD?

(I'll be using the W520 mostly for work, so a lot of big Excel and Access files, as well as some Photoshop work for fun)

[Q-Ball]

So you're getting a Crucial M4 512 GB SSD? I can only dream...

Anyways.

Yes, Windows 7 should handle that correctly- you shouldn't have to configure anything special. People hot-swap SSDs all the time (there are computer cases built with external 2.5" bays) and there shouldn't be any ill effects, provided that you eject the drive first. TRIM is automatic.

There aren't any gotchas as far as I know, since the M4 is 9.5mm high- IIRC the Ultrabay adapter supports 12.5mm hard drives but check first.
Just make sure you're getting the proper version of the UltraBay Serial Adapter III- I think there were two different ones and the smaller one leaves a noticeable gap in the W520 when installed.


As for the 1000 more bucks that 512 GB M4 costs? I'd take a close look at why you need it.

Are you transferring lots of large database/spreadsheets to other computers on a daily basis?
Is time critical enough for those transfers that 125 MB/s transfer speed (Gigabit Ethernet) is not fast enough?

(AFAIK that's about what the 1TB WD Scorpio Blue or 750GB Scorpio Black can do, though don't quote me on that one)

If the answer is 'yes' to one or both I'd consider it. Otherwise, grab a higher-performance hard drive.

Or... you could drop the 160GB SSD in the UltraBay, and use the faster M4 in the main bay, if the total number of files that drive needs to carry <160GB.

[ilikefood]

I'm getting the W520 for work, so I can sort of justify the indulgence of a large SSD, especially since it's a business expense. I've seen the Crucial 512GB for about $750, vs. about $150 or so for an HDD, so the difference in cost would be about $600. I probably don't absolutely NEED it, but a fast disk that doesn't get bogged down with drive fragmentation is appealing for sure

Thanks a lot for the info on TRIM and Win7.

How much faster do you think the Crucial drive is than the 160GB SSD that comes in the W520?

[Q-Ball]

I'll let this (http://www.anandtech.com/show/4244/inte ... 0-review/1) do the talking for me. The m4 is listed on those charts.

Keep in mind that with the newest firmware that the m4's speeds in that chart aren't accurate any more. They're (with some exceptions) faster than that: see (http://www.anandtech.com/show/4712/the- ... h-fw0009/1) for those details.


The takeaway, though, is that the Crucial m4 is faster, and costs less per gigabyte than the Intel one does. It's not orders of magnitude faster- the difference in day-to-day operations is smaller than one might think, but depending on how big those files are that you need stored and worked on, that speed difference can add up.