Lenovo W520 Owner's Thread

[kirayamato26]

I also wonder if you can provide me with a link to a guide for anything that I have to store from the original HDD that comes with the machine that I will need once I replace the HDD if I decided to do that?

Just make the recovery disks, they'll contain all you need.

[Kaso]

... replacing it with SSD (I wanna get the 512GB but it is very expensive on Amazon like $650) and the 256GB many not be enough in the future.

If money is no object, you can get a "big enough" SSD as your primary drive.



But most of us who must watch our dollars and cents every month tend to go with a "small enough" SSD (typically 64GB, $100) for OS/apps, together with a mechanical HDD (typically 500GB) for document, media and data files.

Personally, I do not experience noticeable differences between a 5400rmp and a 7200rmp HDD. Enjoy your new W520 for a while and have a feel for it.

[pchome]

If money is no object, you can get a "big enough" SSD as your primary drive.



But most of us who must watch our dollars and cents every month tend to go with a "small enough" SSD (typically 64GB, $100) for OS/apps, together with a mechanical HDD (typically 500GB) for document, media and data files.

Personally, I do not experience noticeable differences between a 5400rmp and a 7200rmp HDD. Enjoy your new W520 for a while and have a feel for it.

Thanks for the advice. I also have an issue with the dollars

I also wanted to ask if you would recommend the RAID option instead (especially that it is available to ship at the same time with 500 GB 7200 RPM) and if so which one to go for RAID 0 or RAID 1 since I am not technically knowledgeable with RAID at all.

[Kaso]

I also wanted to ask if you would recommend the RAID option instead (especially that it is available to ship at the same time with 500 GB 7200 RPM) and if so which one to go for RAID 0 or RAID 1 since I am not technically knowledgeable with RAID at all.

You can read the RAID wiki for details. Briefly, for 2 drives:

• RAID 0: max speed, double size, no backup; if one drive fails, all your data is lost.
• RAID 1: single drive size, double read speed; if one drive fails, you can replace it and still have your data.

I don't want to sound rude, but if you have to ask, most likely you don't really need it. In any event, with the W520, if you do want RAID option, you have to make sure it is part of your original CTO so that Lenovo manufacturing will enable RAID in the BIOS. Once you have the laptop, you can always disable RAID and select AHCI. With the W520, it is impossible to enable RAID without ordering it initially.

Certain customers order the RAID option so that their W520 configurations come with an UltraBay 2.5" HDD/SSD caddy instead of the usual optical drive. Some of them would do either:

• Put in an mSATA SSD and use the two HDDs (one in primary bay, one in the UltraBay caddy) in RAID.
• Disable RAID. Put in a new SSD in the primary bay and move the supplied HDD to the UltraBay caddy.

Personally, I ordered a 64GB SSD and a third-party UltraBay caddy, put the SSD in, moved the HDD to the caddy, reinstalled Windows 7 onto the SSD, and reformatted the HDD. (If I eventually decide to sell the laptop, I will remove the SSD, back up my data on the HDD, put the HDD back in the primary bay, replace the caddy with the original optical drive, insert my recovery discs and restore Windows 7 factory-image onto the HDD. Some people don't bother: they sell their laptops without drives.)

[pchome]

You can read the RAID wiki for details. Briefly, for 2 drives:

• RAID 0: max speed, double size, no backup; if one drive fails, all your data is lost.
• RAID 1: single drive size, double read speed; if one drive fails, you can replace it and still have your data.

I don't want to sound rude, but if you have to ask, most likely you don't really need it. In any event, with the W520, if you do want RAID option, you have to make sure it is part of your original CTO so that Lenovo manufacturing will enable RAID in the BIOS. Once you have the laptop, you can always disable RAID and select AHCI. With the W520, it is impossible to enable RAID without ordering it initially.

Certain customers order the RAID option so that their W520 configurations come with an UltraBay 2.5" HDD/SSD caddy instead of the usual optical drive. Some of them would do either:

• Put in an mSATA SSD and use the two HDDs (one in primary bay, one in the UltraBay caddy) in RAID.
• Disable RAID. Put in a new SSD in the primary bay and move the supplied HDD to the UltraBay caddy.

Personally, I ordered a 64GB SSD and a third-party UltraBay caddy, put the SSD in, moved the HDD to the caddy, reinstalled Windows 7 onto the SSD, and reformatted the HDD. (If I eventually decide to sell the laptop, I will remove the SSD, back up my data on the HDD, put the HDD back in the primary bay, replace the caddy with the original optical drive, insert my recovery discs and restore Windows 7 factory-image onto the HDD. Some people don't bother: they sell their laptops without drives.)

I think I will stick to the non-RAID option then. What I am thinking about is leaving the 5400 RPM drive as my backup internal drive and buy a Crucial 256GB as my primary and then back up to the 5400 RPM instead of having an external backup HDD. The thing is I do not want to loose my DVD drive--will have to see what to sacrifice?

If I would like my SSD to be the primary drive for everything, can I still place it in the DVD bay?

[kirayamato26]

I think I will stick to the non-RAID option then. What I am thinking about is leaving the 5400 RPM drive as my backup internal drive and buy a Crucial 256GB as my primary and then back up to the 5400 RPM instead of having an external backup HDD. The thing is I do not want to loose my DVD drive--will have to see what to sacrifice?

If I would like my SSD to be the primary drive for everything, can I still place it in the DVD bay?

I think that the point of backing up stuff from a laptop is so that in the event that the laptop is stolen and/or dropped and shattered, you'll still have a copy of the data. So, in my opinion, backing up to a drive that is still in the laptop is pretty pointless.

Yes, you can put the SSD in the Ultrabay.

[pchome]

I think that the point of backing up stuff from a laptop is so that in the event that the laptop is stolen and/or dropped and shattered, you'll still have a copy of the data. So, in my opinion, backing up to a drive that is still in the laptop is pretty pointless.

Yes, you can put the SSD in the Ultrabay.

I totally agree with you. I will never do that--crazy idea! It seems like my mind has been thinking the wrong way recently

[Kaso]

... buy a Crucial 256GB as my primary and then back up to the 5400 RPM instead of having an external backup HDD. The thing is I do not want to loose my DVD drive...

You can put the 5400rpm HDD in the Ultrabay caddy for backup. In addition, at any time, you can remove the caddy and put the optical drive back in: you still keep the optical drive -- no losing, no sacrificing.

If I would like my SSD to be the primary drive for everything, can I still place it in the DVD bay?

Yes, but read my idea above.

[pchome]

You can put the 5400rpm HDD in the Ultrabay caddy for backup. In addition, at any time, you can remove the caddy and put the optical drive back in: you still keep the optical drive -- no losing, no sacrificing.



Yes, but read my idea above.

It is a great idea but I am now rethinking about not having my backup drive at all in my laptop in case of theft/damage.

[pchome]

Someone mentioned to me that if I am going to replace the HDD with an SSD, all what I have to do to keep everything working as originally came from lenovo is to make the recover disks from the original drive. Is that true?