What kind of SSD to use in my laptop (Lenovo Ideapad 700)

Hi I bought a Lenovo Ideapad 700 laptop and it supports "PCIe SSD" according to Lenovo website.

I'm having trouble understanding different kinds of SSDs.

1- What is "V-NAND-based NVMe SSD supports PCI Express Gen 3 x4 lanes" How could i know my laptop's type of PCI Express
http://www.samsung.com/global/busin...isite/SSD/global/html/ssd950pro/overview.html

2- What about this one? It says Gen 2 X 4
http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-HyperX-Predator-SHPM2280P2-240G/dp/B00V01C376

And here is the m.2 (PCIe?) slot of my Ideapad 700
http://i67.tinypic.com/2s8g108.png

 

Myes, very helpfully Lenovo doesn't mention this on the specifications. The maintenance manual, however, lists the Samsung PM951 as compatible with this system and that is a PCIe gen. 3 drive. So both the 950 Pro and HyperX will work; v2.0 drives can run on v3.0 platforms.

V-NAND should make manufacturing a lot cheaper for Samsung, so that's only a good thing if they pass on part of those savings to the customer (they don't). NVMe is a relatively new protocol with potentially vast benefits over AHCI, but these don't seem to pan out quite so well with the Samsung drives, so ... neither nomenclative is something you want to pay too much attention to.

Which drive then ... well ... not the PM951, probably. From the (meager) specifications it looks like this is intended as a dirt-cheap option for OEMs (system builders). The gen. 2 HyperX wouldn't be very logical, either; too expensive for a gen. 2 drive. That leaves the 950 Pro, SM951 NVMe or SM951 AHCI. You might skimp over this article; it features all of these and has several different benchmarks. Give a guess as to the intended workload and see which drive would be the better match.

 

@Magdelanadz just get the cheapest compatible drive of biggest capacity you can afford. There are some brands to avoid, OCZ for example, but otherwise you won't likely notice the difference in most workloads.

 

@t465 thank you for the information. I defo, going to buy 950 Pro. I hope it'll fit my laptop. And i have an another question. How could i migrate windows 10 to new 950 Pro

 

I would get the SM951 SSD.. It's much cheaper and performs pretty well.. You can use a backup software like Marcium Reflect and make a backup and restore that later onto your SSD....

 

It is technically compatible, so it shouldn't give any problems with a clean install.

Using an image may or may not work straight away, it depends on the current drive and install type. Check these prerequisites first and you may also want Samsung's NVMe driver, rather than 10's native driver. If your current setup is AHCI then the migrated image may not work, but at least with RAID vs. AHCI/SATA it is possible to make a registry change that changes the applicable service. Doing so would cause a bsod upon the next reboot, but the trick is making an image after changing the service setting (off-line or live), write that to the new raid or non-raid drive and then it'll boot fine (after changing the necessary bios setting, of course). Haven't searched for a similar option for NVMe, but Microsoft is slow to change these kind of nitty-gritty options, so chances are it'll be in the same location again:

Spoiler: storage services startup in registry

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStorV]
"Start"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\msahci]
"Start"=dword:00000000

Only need to find the appropriate service (looks like it's ' stornvme'), set it to 'Start=3' and the msahci and iaStorV to 'Start=0' and there's a chance it'll boot without hiccups. Not sure if anyone has even attempted this, though ... might be a first.

Second pitfall is if the current install is on an MBR-formatted drive; the official message is that the NVMe boot-time driver is UEFI and when setting the bios as such then Windows demands a GPT-formatted drive. Officially, anyway; there's a way around that ... Practically speaking, it may be easier to write the MBR image to a GPT-formatted drive.

Hm ... you may want to weigh the benefits of a 1:1 migrate action versus the effort required. Then again; there's also the satisfaction of making something work that isn't supposed to .

Btw, as Starlight5 and TomJGX have mentioned; this is a fairly high end drive, so $/GB-wise there's a few cheaper alternatives, these would be slower but also have more GBs for the same amount of cash. Really, it depends on the intended usage scenario.

 

Hey @t456 sorry for the late reply. Thank you very much for the information. Yesterday I've bought Lenovo SSD Pro 950 but while i was waiting for the product when im at the electornic shop i saw this topic https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo...vo-Y70017ISK-amp-Samsung-950-Pro/td-p/2230461 I know my laptop isnt as the same laptop with y700 but it can be used same m.2 and motherboard. So i didn't open the ssd's box yet.

Since my english is very limited, i barely understand your last reply. But ok, I'll sort it out.

 

It should work fine, but with NVMe drives there's a little more caveats; see this post of the older Y700, eg. The SM951 AHCI would be the easier choice. Do make sure you flash the latest bios prior to installing the drive, just in case there's been an NVMe bug fix that's been taken care of.

And yes, there's a lot of parameters involved when doing a migration. Far easier is a clean install, but even then NVMe needs its bios+partition settings 'just-right' for it to work.