Just bought Y500 Dual Graphics - Question on SSD/Windows

Pretty stoked after ordering my Y500 yesterday. The specs are as followed:

i7
1080p
16GB RAM
2x GT750M GPU's (SLI)
1TB HDD

My only concern is the slow 5400RPM HDD that I'd like to swap. My question is what would be the process on installing Windows on the new SSD? Should I clone the original 1TB HDD and use it as stock? Or should I find a Windows 8 ISO, make a USB boot drive (since I don't have DVD) and install it fresh? Does Lenovo have any essential programs I'd need? Also, what version of Windows 8 would be compatible with this, last thing I want is to run into issues with the License key not detecting. Please lemme know as this is really the only thing I want to be ready for when the laptop comes in a few weeks.

Also, I was googling the Y500 and Optimus and came across this new Nvidia driver supposedly released on April 17 which is supposed to add Optimus to the GT750M SLI. Anybody try updating from Device Manager?

http://support.lenovo.com/en_BD/downloads/detail.page?DocID=DS032574

 

I went through this exact process when I received my Lenovo Y500 earlier this week. The Lenovo Y500 is relatively easy to open and access the replaceable components (HDD, RAM, WiFi, mSATA) by just unscrewing the 9 screws located on the bottom. The moment I received the laptop, I removed the Seagate 5400rpm 1TB hard drive and replaced it with a Samsung 840 500GB SSD.

This is the process I had to go through to do a clean install of Windows 8 on a Lenovo Y500 with a new SSD install:
1. Open the bottom of the laptop. Remove the 9 screws, and then pry off the bottom panel (it is held in by small plastic tabs / clips)
2. Remove the Seagate 5400rpm 1TB HDD from the caddy. Replace with a 2.5" SSD.
3. Replace laptop bottom panel and screws.
4. Hit the "Novo" button on the laptop. It is a small button with an "Undo" arrow next to your power input on the left side of the laptop

5. From the Novo / recovery menu options, choose Enter BIOS mode.
6. Go to Advanced. Set Secure Boot = DISABLED.
7. Go to the UEFI boot menu. Set UEFI = LEGACY MODE. Set Boot Priority = LEGACY FIRST.
8. Hit F10. Save changes. Power down the laptop completely.
9. Hit the "Novo" button on the laptop again.

10. Choose boot devices. Boot off of your Windows 8 USB stick (instructions below).
11. Do a clean install of Windows 8. Reinstall appropriate drivers from Lenovo's support website. Reinstall your graphics drivers off of nVidia.com's website.
12. You now have a clean install of Windows 8 on your Lenovo Y500.


Notes:
* You do NOT want to clone the existing Seagate 5400rpm 1TB HDD --> new SSD for bloatware reasons, and useless partitions that only use up valuable SSD space (e.g. recovery partition)
* You do not need to enter a Windows 8 license key. Your license key is embedded in your BIOS. Windows 8 should / will read that key, and activate itself.
* To create a bootable Windows 8 USB key, use these instructions:
How to Install Windows 8 from a USB Key | Maximum PC

You will need to find a Windows 8 x64 ISO (regular edition, not Windows 8 Pro or Enterprise). It should not be difficult to find this ISO through legitimate channels (e.g. Microsoft TechNet subscription), though I will not go into detail on how to do it on this thread.

Just reinstall all programs / drivers listed under the Lenovo Y500 model from Lenovo's support website. That will give you a bloatware-free system. Lenovo seems to be pretty good at posting only essential / useful drivers on their support website, and excluding all of the bloatware junk you normally see with HP and Sony.

You will need to find a Windows 8 x64 ISO (regular edition, not Windows 8 Pro or Enterprise). It should not be difficult to find this ISO through legitimate channels (e.g. Microsoft TechNet subscription), though I will not go into detail on how to do it on this thread. Once you have the ISO, you can create a bootable Windows 8 USB key using these instructions:
How to Install Windows 8 from a USB Key | Maximum PC

Ignore the fact that the utility being used is called "Windows 7 USB / DVD Download Tool." It will work just fine for Windows 8 ISO source files as well.

And your Windows 8 product key is stored in your BIOS. Windows 8 will automatically detect that license key from your BIOS, and automatically activate using that.

A few WEEKS? Ouch. I ordered mine on Wednesday afternoon from Amazon.com, and had it at my doorstep on Thursday morning by 10:30am.

To my knowledge, nobody has been able to get Optimus working on a Lenovo Y500. I suspect the reason is more than just a driver-based lockout. Otherwise, creative people on this forum would have found a way to modify or hack drivers to get Optimus working.

 

Amazing post kent, Will follow this once it arrives. Added +1 to your rep

And yes, it will take a few weeks since I ordered it from Lenovo directly for their crazy sale of $979 (Canadian) for the specs I mentioned. What price did you pay and for what specs? Did you get the new GT750M or the GT650M?

 

Thanks for the +rep.

I paid $999 for the:
Intel Quad Core version (Core -7 3630m)
8GB of RAM
Dual 650M GPUs

As aftermarket parts, I bought a 16GB RAM kit (2x 8GB) for $90, and a Samsung 840 500GB SSD for $325. All prices in USD.

Included free 2-day shipping (with Amazon Prime). But I paid the extra $4 for next-day shipping on all of those items.

It might be a bit more expensive than ordering direct from Lenovo... but I also didn't have to deal with sales tax, or waiting 2-4 weeks. I placed an order, and within 18 hours, my new toy showed up.

 

Damn, next day would be nice... hope your liking it! I just went out and bought a Samsung 840 like you except the 250GB SSD. Hope it's good since it'll be my main drive (and only drive). So all in $979 + $135 = $1114 CDN for my build.

Trying to look around for a Windows 8 standard ISO but I keep finding Pro...if you have a link or a way of obtaining it please PM me

Thanks again kent!

 

Just had a look at the drivers and noticed the link to Lenovo's video driver for Windows 8 doesn't work and the USB drivers aren't even present. Drivers and software - IdeaPad Y500 Notebook

Also, NVIDIA doesn't even have drivers for the GT750M available.

Is it possible for me to just set up Windows on the normal 1TB HDD, copy all the drivers to a USB and install on the SSD?

Could I install Windows 7 despite having a Windows 8 key embedded in the BIOS with my own key?

 

I wouldn't worry about the Windows 8 USB 3.0 driver. Windows 8 comes with a USB 3.0 driver for Intel HM67 chisels already embedded in the OS.

As for Geforce 750M drivers... you'll definitely want to get them from nVidias website. I am sure that by the time you get your laptop in-hand, you'll be able to easily find the drivers you want. Even if not, you can use any nVidia driver designed for 600-series or 700+series mobile parts, and it should work just fine. Nvidia is pretty good at providing single unified driver packages.

As for Windows 7... I have heard it is possible on the Y500. You will, of course, need to supply your own legitimate Windows 7 product key.

Personally, I haven't had any success getting Windows 7 installed on a Lenovo Y500. I always get stuck at the point where Windows 7 Setup asks you where you want to install Windows. And no matter what I do, I get an error message of Setup could not locate or create a primary partition." I am pretty comouter-saavy, so I have tried running the install process with jst one drive installed (mSATA removed), manually creating partitions using diskpart, or GPT-aware Linux tools, loading HM67 chipset drivers during install.. all with no progress. I eventually caved, and just went with Windows 8 onto a new SSD. That process was entirely painless.

And if you buy Start8 from Stardock ($5), you can bypass the Windows Metro interface entirely and restore a Windows 7 look-and-feel to a Windows 8 IS. This is the route I recommend. Go with Windows 8 clean installation from ISO, pay $5 to Static for Start8, and save yourself the 4 hours of frustration I went through trying to get Windows 7 onto a new blank SSD.

 

K sweet, as long as drivers from the GT600 series works then that's cool. I'll install Win 8 when I get it Thanks, once again!

 

I just burned Win7 to a disk, booted with the disk, completely formatted the hard drive, then let it install windows 7 pro. No problems (on the y400). I think you have to make sure that legacy support is enabled in the BIOS though. I believe that might've given me problems the first couple of times I tried to boot from the disk.

 

I think that is the the difference between our attempts at install.

You installed off of a DVD optical disc, whereas I tried to install entirely from a USB drive.

And I suspect that Windows 7 didn't natively recognize the USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 controller, which caused problems at some point during the Windows 7 install when it needed to read a source file from the installation media.

 

Kent, I'm also looking at picking up a ssd for the y500. I cant decide between the 830 or 840pro. The 830 is equal to the basic 840 and the difference is noticeable betweeen the 830 and 840 pro. What would you recommend to buy? Im looking at the 500gb or the 512gb. Any advice would be appreciated.

 

Get the Samsung 840 (non-Pro) 500GB model. Listed here on Amazon.com for $335, eligible for Amazon Prime shipping
Amazon.com: Samsung Electronics Samsung 840 Series Solid State Drive (SSD) 500 GB SATAIII 2.5-Inch MZ-7TD500BW: Electronics

Some additional notes for you, if you're interested:

• You'll sometimes see SSDs with similar capacities (e.g. 240GB / 250GB / 256GB; or 480GB / 500GB / 512GB). The actual physical drive itself has the same amount of NAND flash storage memory on it (e.g. 256GB, or 512GB). However, the individual manufacturers of these SSDs will reserve some amount of that space for over-provisioning. That extra space is essentially "scratch" space used by the drive firmware itself to do things like garbage collection maintenance, allocating spare blocks in case some memory goes bad, and wear-leveling to make sure that the data writes are spread out as much as possible across the NAND flash memory cells.
  
  So when you pick an SSD, you will never need to think about 500GB vs 512GB. The way you pick an SSD is you pick the brand & model you want, and then you pick the capacity. In this case, I recommend the Samsung 840, which comes in a 500GB capacity.
  
• You do not want the Samsung 830. These drives used NAND flash chips manufactured on the 27nm process, and are therefore more expensive to manufacture. Samsung 840 drives are manufactured on the newer 21nm process, which is more cost-efficient, and faster. For all intents and purposes, the Samsung 830 models have been completely superceded by the Samsung 840 models for both price and performance reasons.
  
• You also do not want the Samsung 840 Pro. The difference is:
  Samsung 840: Uses TLC (Three Layer Cell) memory, which stores 3 data values per cell. This is cheaper to build an SSD using TLC memory, since you have higher memory density.
  Samsung 840 Pro: Uses MLC (Multi Layer Cell) memory, which stores 2 data values per cell. This is slightly more expensive to build an SSD using MLC, since you have lower memory density
  
  The Samsung 840 Pro offers faster data write speeds, but I would consider this to be inconsequential. The Samsung 840 (non-Pro) isn't exactly a slouch here. It's like saying that a MacLaren F1 is faster than a Ferrari F355... yes, it's faster, but the Ferrari F355 still hauls it!
  
  Unless you are doing some professional applications that specifically require you to perform frequent and large sequential write patterns (e.g. photo editing or video editing), you will never notice the performance difference between a Samsung 840 vs 840 Pro. However, you WILL notice the +$150 price difference between the 500GB / 512GB models of these drives.

Let me put it another way: I could have bought any SSD in the market, with basically no set limit on budget. I chose the Samsung 840 500GB version, because of the performance and the excellent price it offered for a drive of that performance and storage capacity. If you can spend the $335, I'd recommend you do the same.

 

Thanks for the explanation. I will definitely get the 840. I'll check to see if my companies discount is cheaper than amazon.