x230 disk drive options

I'm trying to decide on a laptop for law school. I think I'm going to buy a Thinkpad x230, but I heard somewhere that I can put in a SSD and a HDD. Does this involve internal tinkering, use the express card slot, or work some other way? I don't want to void my warranty, so I need to know if it would be better to get the SSD now.

 

Funny that you ask. I just saw this Newegg TV: The SSD Tutorial - YouTube

You're probably thinking of a mSATA SSD, which is internal and goes where the WWAN adaptor goes. And yes, to install it, you'll have to unscrew it and remove the keyboard and stuff. I'm inexperienced with tech stuff, but it's a fairly simple procedure. Generally mSATA SSD's are (insignificantly) slower than the SSD's that go where the HHD is, yet they are significantly faster than HHD's. You could also get a SSD in lieu of the HHD.

I'm getting a X230T and the Lenovo sales rep told me that installing one will not void the warranty. I opted for the standard 320gb HHD and I'll get a 128gb mSATA. A lot of people get the 64gb mSATA SSD.

A lot of discussions regarding ThinkPads and SSD's are located in the IBM/Lenovo forum section.

I hope that helps!

 

The slot used for the mSATA SSD is a miniPCI slot. It's located under the palm rest. You'll need to remove the keyboard and palm rest to gain access to it. Both are considered user replaceable parts and removing them will not void the warranty. With the mSATA SSD installed you can put the OS on it for speed and keep the platter in the main bay for storage where speed is not as important. I have this setup on my X220i. It's quite slick.

 

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Yup, my Lenovo sales rep told me the same thing---in writing in an email---that installing an mSATA in the X230 will NOT void the warranty.
Have been really looking forward to doing the exact thing you are doing here and am just waiting for the rep to email me back with a confirmation on this. Stay tuned! I copied him on these posts and let's see what he says!!!

 

A few notes to @Mantis2600 that ZaZ didn't mention:

1. The miniPCI slot in the X230 may (?) only have SATA II speed. This is no big deal as SATA II is plenty fast.

2. Buy the mSATA SSD by yourself and set it up as the boot drive, and do a fresh install of whichever version of Windows you get. Win7/64Pro is my strong suggestion. And especially only buy the minimum amount (4GB) of memory from Lenovo!! I was on Lenovo's site just yesterday looking at the X230 options/costs and saw that 16GB of memory costs a staggering extra $340!!! Buy stuff like SSD and bigger HDD and memory by yourself and save a large amount of money!

3. The HDD bay in the X230 only takes drives that are not thicker than 7mm. Just something to keep in mind.

4. Max capacity for a 7mm thick (single platter) HDD is currently 500GB. This_one_here is in my opinion the current best. Newegg puts these on sale with great regularity, but their current price of $60 is pretty good; also check Amazon.

5. Get the machine with IPS screen ($50 extra, which is an all time best deal for a great screen) and the 2x2 antenna. Make sure you do NOT get wwan (GOBI 3000 or GOBI 4000) as this uses the miniPCI slot. Get Intel 6205 wifi. For bluetooth Lenovo appears to use a small add-on card and not a combined wifi (like Intel 6235); so if you want bluetooth be cautious as I'm not sure if that will or won't interfere with another key thing as space is so limited in the small X230.

6. Get the machine with the standard 320GB HDD and use it for a few weeks to be sure there aren't any issues needing warranty service. Then set it aside so that you can put it back into the machine if there's any need for warranty service.

7. For mSATA SSD, get at least 240/256GB size. Crucial M500 480GB mSATA ($400 list) should be out in the next week but is likely to be difficult to get for the next month.

8. Put in the mSATA SSD (as boot), put in a 500GB HDD, do a fresh install of Windows, and you're off to the races with a great light weight machine.

 

I am new to forums but from what I have read, this is about the best forum site I have come across.
Thanks, everyone for your great input..... I am still debating about whether to take my X230 to a factory authorized service center to install the mSATA since my sales rep has not responded to my question about FRU vs. CRU and the warranty...... go figure. I really DO want the mSATA capability, not only for speed, but also to isolate the boot drive from the data so that backup OS images don't have to take so long. Acronis has been great since 2013 for both cloning and imaging--but I have not crossed over to Disk Director yet--had a VERY bad experience with DD back in 2010 that totally trashed my system! And Paragon partition manager is a nightmare of installing the WinPE from a disc that you have to create that I returned that product as well after several attempts to use it to manage partitions on my X230. I think the Paragon product just did not like the Lenovo factory partitions on the HD and saw them as "errors".

So, instead of "managing" partitions, I simply have decided to just buy the extra drives and clone, which, with Acronis True Image, gives you lots of options in terms of resizing the partitions during the clone. Have found TI to be very reliable for cloning and this is how I plan to setup my mSATA before any data gets loaded on the machine. Then just keep the original HD (very nice 7200 500GB) for data and let Windows assign a new drive letter after rebooting and readjusting the boot order in BIOS. OS and all can just sit there in case I need to revert to an original state for warranty service (bought the 4 year ACH onsite Next Business Day).

 

"A few notes to @Mantis2600 that ZaZ didn't mention:
For bluetooth Lenovo appears to use a small add-on card and not a combined wifi (like Intel 6235); so if you want bluetooth be cautious as I'm not sure if that will or won't interfere with another key thing as space is so limited in the small X230."
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I JUST CHECKED THE HARDWARE MANUAL AND THE BLUETOOTH DOES NOT INTERFERE WITH THE mSATA INSTALLATION.