Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 2 11 (Bay Trail) Owners' Thread

Welcome! I didn't see a thread for this specific model so I figured it was time to make one.

I just bought this from Best Buy yesterday as an open-box item for $470 w/ tax and wanted to share some of my thoughts so far.

Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 2 11
Intel® Pentium® N3520 processor
Windows 8
Intel® HD Graphics (integrated)
4GB DDR3L memory
500GB HDD storage
Up to 6 hours' battery life
11.6" HD (1366 x 768) 10-point multitouch display (16:9 widescreen) with IPS technology
Starting at 3.2 lbs / 0.68" thin

Spoiler

Things got off to a bad start:

1. Crashed on first power-on; The first time I powered on the PC, on battery, I began inputting my Microsoft user account and related information and all the sudden the screen went blank and the PC rebooted. I was greet by the 'select user language/region/keyboard' options once again. So I entered my information once again and proceeded to the Start screen/desktop as usual. Everything seemed okay now.

2. Explorer.exe freezing, unresponsive, crashing and restarting after a factory recovery; I decided to do a factory recovery just to be sure there wasn't any funny business going on. I proceeded to enter my Microsoft user account information as usual and proceeded to the Start screen/desktop. That's when it started happening. Just a few minutes into the factory recovery, I began noticing some weird stuff happening. When I tried launching certain desktop apps the system would bog down, freeze, become unresponsive and Explorer.exe was crashing and restarting. All my apps and Control Panel would close. Then Explorer.exe would restart and freeze up again.

3. Typing anything into Internet Explorer is unbearable; Okay so after seeing Explorer.exe freeze and glitch out, I decided to go to my favorite forum to report what I was experiencing and to create this thread. I launched IE, typed forums.notebookreview.com and tried logging in. As soon as I tried typing in my username, the keys I was pressing were not being registered into the username box. I pressed a key, nothing. I pressed a key again, okay maybe then it would register a character. Typing in my username as i normally do on any computer resulted in missing characters and unresponsiveness from my Yoga 2 11 altogether. I kept trying to type my username and password and IE would just not respond, freeze, and simply not register some of the keys I would input. I also tried using the touchscreen keyboard and the same would happen. Entering letters and characters into the username and password boxes became futile. I gave up and hopped on my Acer Aspire V5-122P and began typing what you are now readying here.


I will begin doing a diagnosis of my PC and performing all available updates from Windows Update and Lenovo's Driver and Support site in hopes of correcting these issues. I'm going to use the next 10 days to try and resolve these issues, and if I can't I may have to return my Yoga 2 11. I have to say for such a nice product, this is a terrible first impression. I may even clean install Windows 8.1 just to see if it makes any improvement, but I don't want to mess up the OneKey hidden recovery partition if its going to go back to the store anyways. Have you experienced anything similar to what I have so far?


3-19-2014 Update: I returned my Yoga 2 11 due to buggy hardware/software.

Liked: bright IPS display, efficient 8W TDP Bay Trail quad core, 5-6hr battery life, hinged laptop-tablet design, thin and light, solid build
Disliked: non-backlit shallow keyboard, lack of two-finger tap, hot in some areas, micro-HDMI video out only, 4GB RAM maximum, lack of 5mm SSDs as of today,

 

Bad news! Sorry to hear such a bad start. My only suggestion is to restore the PC to factory conditions. Don't save anything you may have installed, just go back to the condition it was in when it left the factory.Then try to begin as a new user. If you still have problems, I would return it to Best Buy.

Good luck, Jim

 

I had the model from Bestbuy:

LenovoIdeaPad Yoga 2 11
Intel® Pentium® N3520 processor
Windows 8
Intel® HD Graphics (integrated)
4GB DDR3L memory
500GB HDD storage (Seagate or WD)
Up to 6 hours' battery life
11.6" HD (1366 x 768) 10-point multitouch display, IPS
Atheros 965x bgn Wifi+BT 4.0 combo

I ended up returning it because I was not really happy with its response time. I'm not sure whether it was because of the Bay Trail processor or the HDD. In retrospect, the culprit was probably the HDD, but I'm not sure if I could've done anything about that. More on the HDD later.

Windows 8.1
Unlike davidricardo86, I immediately did a full wipe of the HDD with a clean install of Windows 8.1. I am happy to report that I did not experience any of the problems that davidricardo86 did. The response time was decent--other than opening programs and on start. Sometimes, the mode switch from pure touchscreen to laptop mode did not go as smoothly as I'd hoped, but it was reasonable enough. Chrome ran quite well.

I was not able to stream from Twitch very smoothly, but I believe this was because the stream was source quality--ludicrously large files. Unfortunately, I was not able to compare the same stream on another laptop as reference. Youtube videos at 720p loaded pretty well.

On casual wifi use with the default profile, it clocked just under 6 hours before reaching 7% battery--pretty good for a 34 Wh battery, doubtlessly thanks to the fanless design and Bay Trail CPU.

One really disappointing thing is the right click gesture. It does not have a 2 finger tap to bring up the right click menu. It's a 2 finger click. This makes me wonder what the point was.

Linux
There is no way to install your own Secure Boot keys. You either disable it or accept what Lenovo has preinstalled. Fortunately, you can switch the fn and media keys in the UEFI.

Manjaro (latest edition) and Parted Magic (an early 2012 version) both failed to detect a display with the live boot. Neither could start x. Manjaro fell back to the text installer, which could be run and be used to partition the disk. Parted Magic just gave a blank screen. Ubuntu live booted just fine.

I ended up installing Debian, my distro of choice. The Jessie installer detected the Atheros 967x wlan card and loaded the ath9k module during install, so I could pull packages from the internet without having to use a USB ethernet port.

I'm not sure what kind of brain malaise caused me to decided this would be a great computer to try KDE on. With the default configuration, KDE took well over 30 seconds to go from the login screen to actually showing the desktop. Fortunately, LXDE was quite responsive.

I did not test the battery life, but I suspect the discrepancy from this laptop and most others in Windows vs Linux won't be as large, as fan control is one thing that kills Linux battery life in many laptops.

What doesn't out of the box:
Debian detected 2 sets of wlan and BT hardware and thinks they are hardware disabled. This is caused by the module ideapad_laptop, which was apparently supposed to work with rfkill and bluetooth. Unloading the module and blacklisting it fixed the problem. The same problem existed in Ubuntu.

The laptop fails to resume the display after being put to sleep. I suspect I need to explicitly use the Intel driver in the xorg.conf file and set the display suspend options there. I did not try this solution, as I had decided to return it by this time.

A related disappointment is that the UEFI freezes the HDD on boot, stopping the user from using the ATA secure erase command. I used the shred command to erase the HDD before returning the laptop, but this would not work for SSD and hybrids.

HDD replacement
Lenovo's hardware maintenance manual lists 3 HDDs available. They are all 5mm thin. Of these, the Seagate uses a standard SATA interface. [1] One of the WDs use a SFF-8784 Edge interface. [2]. I can't find any information on the WD5000M22K drive. Thanks goes to davidricardo86 for pointing out the apparently 2 different standards being used.

Looking at the HDD replacement pictures on page 36-37 of the manual, it appears that the SATA or SFF-8784 connector is connected to the mainboard using a proprietary cable, with the same proprietary connector on the mainboard and a different connector on the other end. It feels like those that came with a Seagate drive can use the cable for other 5mm SATA drives, while those with the WD drive would be stuck with SFF-8784 or have to hunt down the right connector.

I do not think there is any SSD with SFF-8784 connector available, and 5mm SSDs appear to be much more expensive per GB than 7mm ones. [3] [4] But it seems 7mm SSDs would make a tight fit (thanks for being our guinea pig, chris8c8). Something like the Samsung 840 EVO with its 6.8mm thickness might make the fit a bit better without coming with the giant price tag of the 5mm SSDs.

General hardware
The keyboard travel is, as you'd expect from this kind of machine, completely nonexistent. Surprisingly, the keyboard was quite snappy with good audio feedback. It felt much better than the mushy keyboard of the Yoga 2 Pro or some of the Ideapads like the U430. The sharp dip into the keyboard area did cause some problems with the lowest row of keys, but it was not too bad. Keyboard flex was unfortunately rather noticeable.

 

Strange that Lenovo would design a PC with two different HD interfaces. And I read in article about the 5 mm WD HD that the SFF interface was used because of the 5 mm thickness. I am not sure if a standard size SATA interface will fit on a 5 mm card. On the other hand, Seagate does claim to have a standard SATA interface on their 5 mm HD.

Edit: After another look at the maintenance manual, there is only one procedure for replacement of the HD, but the parts list has a cable connector for the Seagate and a different cable for the WD. So Lenovo is not using a standard SATA connection for either HD. As Raftina said, it doesn't look promising for replacement of the HD with a SSD.

Regards, Jim

 

I am currently using a 7mm toshiba SSD in my yoga 2 11 the sata connection is normal. The fit is tight for the 7mm SSD but there is no distortion in the chassis. The 5mm HDD that it comes with is actually smaller than the space its placed in the use foam cut outs to fill the gaps between the case and the mounting point. All you have to do is remove the foam and it will fit nicely.

 

Interesting! The maintenance manual has the HD connected via a cable, not a standard SATA slot. And removal of the HD is shown as lifting straight up, not sliding out of a slot, then lifting up and out.

Regards, Jim

 

What you said is correct. The cable is just a SATA connector reformed for the way it installs in the chassis. I bought my computer from best buy so Im not sure if other models are different. I would be careful when swapping the drives though the cable that connects to the HD to the motherboard looks very fragile (I have never seen a cable like it before)

On another note the SSD greatly imporved performance across the board. My yoga feels alot like a tablet now since there is almost no waiting to do anything. If you are planning on upgrading i do think you should get a bigger SSD than 128GB the backup partition on the system is 30gb so im running with around 85 gb of space.

 

So the cable fits a standard SATA connector on the SSD and connects to the Yoga 2 (11) via the "strange" plug? You either had or bought a standard Toshiba SATA 7 mm SSD and the cable plugged into the SSD and into the Yoga 2 (11) plug? That is good to know. The HD is the Yoga 2 11 is a major deal breaker for me.

Thanks for the update.

Jim

 

I want to like this device as it has a nice balance between price and performance, but I don't get why is the Haswell variant getting at least an hour more in battery life. I thought Atom based cpus were suppose to be more efficient, no?

 

I am not sure what you are comparing. If you mean the 11S Haswell versus the Yoga 2 (11), the 11S Haswell has a 42 Wh battery, the same as the original 11S. The Yoga 2 (11) has a 33 Wh battery. The 11S Haswell has a i5-4210Y cpu which is very efficient for battery life, probably close to the Atom in the Yoga 2 (11).

It seems that some manufactures are putting smaller batteries in the Atoms, which defeats one of the selling points of the Atom units.

Jim

 

Ah, didn't realize it was a smaller battery, from all the info I saw on the internet battery size is the same, seeing as dimensions are the same. Thank you.

 

Yes my standard sata 7mm ssd from toshiba plugs right into the strange standard sata plug on the yoga 2 11 motherboard. I actually bought the ssd the same day at bestbuy. I'm in Hawaii so I'm not sure they carry it everywhere.

I would not actually consider buying a yoga without having an ssd to install after the performance is almost unbearable and for some reason the 5mm hd the yoga 2 11 comes with produces an annoying amount of heat right under your wrist and isn't great since there is no ventilation.

I'll say this again don't buy unless you have an ssd to install the performance and design of the chassis are a bad combo if you we're to leave it how you bought it. I would compare it to a single core netbook. My other laptop is a think pad twist with hybrid drive and I have switched full time to my yoga 2 11 since buying it

 

Hi Chris8c8,

may i ask what kind of Toshiba SSD for Lenovo yoga 2 11 you are using? I'd like also to upgrade my yoga 2 11 with a SSD drive.


Best Regards,

leon200375

 

I actually threw the box away sorry but i can say as long as its a standard 7mm SSD you will be fine. Also when Mirroring the drive to the ssd remember that there is usually an optimized for SSD option make sure enable that option.


On another note new drivers have come out !!!!! I highly suggest downloading it !!! makes the computer 2x faster that it was before.Also alot of the the youtube video stutter has disapeared and the trackpad is now flawless. Install the synaptics track pad driver last. BY NO MEANS DOWNLOAD THE HARD DRIVE DRIVER if you are going to upgrade with an SSD.

 

Thanks Chris8c8 for the info. There seems to be a lack of info on the non-pro 11" model.

Like you, I purchased my Yoga 2 11" at Best Buy. I am planning to installing a 250GB SSD (Samsung 840 Evo). Since the Yoga 2 11" has no optical drive, there is a separate Factory Restore Partition. I've cloned drives before but never partitions. Some of the drive cloning kits have the software on DVD ROMS. Would you mind explaining how you dealt with the dual partition and what software / tools you used. I've read some cloning software doesn't clone multiple partitions properly.

I've always done fresh installs but due to the Yoga 2's unique drivers, I would like to perform a mirror of the original drive & both partitions when I do my HDD to SSD upgrade.

 

information about the WD5000M22K drive can be found here: WD Blue UltraSlim 500GB Review (WD5000MPCK) | StorageReview.com - Storage Reviews
Cheers,
Paul

 

I used the EaseUS todo backup tool found on the internet for free. This program copied the drive as a hole with out loosing partitions. I found that this was one of the few programs that let a drive be mirrored to a smaller drive than what it comes from 500gb HD to 128gb SSD in my case.

 

Wow i can see what every one was worried about with that strange connector! That probably means my yoga came with a seagate drive

 

Thank you.

Future Yoga 2 11 owners will find this helpful as well. I plan on installing a 256MB SSD so this will be very useful. I assume you used a SATA to USB connector to transfer the data before swapping drives.

 

Yes i got a usb 3.0 to sata connector made things go alot fast than 2.0 usb

 

For any Yoga 2 11" owners who are considering upgrading to an SSD, here is my experience.

I purchased the 250GB Samsung Evo 840 SSD kit. You can purchase either the desktop or laptop kit if you need the SATA to USB cable. The kit and drive cost me $139 (June 2014) which was less expensive than buying the items (SSD + transfer cable) individually. I plugged the SSD into my USB 3.0 port and formatted using GPT (versus MBR) partition table. If you right click the Windows icon from the Desktop View & select "Disk Management", Windows will see the attached (via USB / SATA cable) unformatted drive and ask you if you want to use GPT or MBR. Select GPT unless you want to use a previous version of Windows (XP, Vista, 7) on your Yoga 2 11".

The Samsung software apparently does not clone the hidden partitions including the factory restore partition. I downloaded the free "Easyus Todo" cloning software. It is extremely simple & intuitive. Select the option to clone the entire drive. If you are cloning to an SSD smaller than the original factory HDD, check the option "Optimize for SSD" and uncheck "Sector by Sector clone". This allows you to clone the disk with all partitions but transfer the data from your HDD (empty space is ignored). I've only added a few browsers, media players, and utilities since I purchased my Yoga 2. The entire transfer process took about 30 minutes.

Installing the drive was simple. Remove the 10 (silver) clearly visible Torx 5 screws from the bottom. The panel comes off easily with no tools. Remove the 4 (black) small Phillips screws holding the HDD in place. Remove the SATA connector from the HDD. A silver heat dissipation film is attached to the HDD by adhesive. Simply peel it off. There are two brackets connected to the sides of the HDD each with 2 Phillips screws. Remove the brackets. Place the brackets in the same orientation on your SSD. I put the silver film on the SSD although I doubt it's necessary. Connect the SATA connectors to the SSD. Place the SSD down & screw the 4 black Phillips screws into the brackets to hold the SSD in place. Put the plastic back cover back onto the laptop. Screw in the 10 Torx 5 screws. Boot your machine.

The actual installation took me about 10 minutes. The only issue I had was the C: "Windows" partition and D: "Lenovo" partition may need to be re-sized. But everything went smoothly and worked the first time. As long as you have the correct screw drivers, a 7mm or thinner SATA SSD, you shouldn't have any problems.

 

Great write up. I ended up getting the Yoga 2 11 recently and was planning on doing the SSD swap, this write up makes it even easier. Thanks!

 

So I got mine in today and am running the updates. I happened to notice that there was no 2 finger scrolling or any trackpad drivers at all for that matter. Hopefully that was just an oversight from the refurb people, but is there a trackpad driver that I should install?

Never mind - I found it. Elan has come a long way, the trackpad is not too bad with the right drivers.

Edit* Got the SSD installed and went very easily. Usually I start from scratch, but figured that I would give the cloning method a shot. Worked very easily. I think I did loose the recovery partition though in the process... Still with an SSD this computer is pretty quick and I LOVE NO FANS AND NO NOISE!

 

So I noticed something yesterday and I am not sure if it is normal (after the SSD upgrade). When I shut the lid to sleep it, the computer will not turn back on by opening the lid, I have to press the button on the side. The speakers make a pop noise when it resumes from sleep/hibernation like that. It is my understanding that with an ssd, hibernation is not necessary, so hopefully its not hibernating but I have no idea.

Also, last night I shut the lid at 43% and wanted to see what the overnight drain was... I got up today and the computer was completely dead. What are your guys thoughts on these 2 issues? For the time being, I am just going to shut the computer off when I am not using it (Startup is quick enough).

 

maxbass - Thank you for sharing your experience. Over the weekend I bought a Samsung 250 gb SDD and I want to do the same upgrade. Love this laptop except the HD performance.

Thank you.

 

Im not an expert but really wanna try to upgrade my Yoga 2 11 with an SSD.

Do I need a mSATA SSD or SATA SSD? There seems to have both online and i'm not sure which one I need to pick.

Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5" 7mm
Amazon.com: Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5" 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter) Internal Solid State Drive CT256MX100SSD1: Computers & Accessories

or
Amazon.com: Crucial M500 240GB mSATA Internal Solid State Drive CT240M500SSD3: Computers & Accessories

Thanks for the help!

 

You need the SATA SSD

Also it looks like you need to use a disk cloning tool like chris8c8 did : http://forum.notebookreview.com/ide...11-bay-trail-owners-thread-2.html#post9676591

 

Helpp!!!! I bought the lenovo yoga 2 11 less than a month ago. I opened up my laptop today to do some work and typed in my password. After it accepted my password the screen turned a dark blue/ black color. It wouldnt do anything but show the little dots when I touch the screen or the mouse. I thought it had all gone blank but I was able to get back to the lock screen. I tried restarting it and shutting it down but nothing changed. I don't know what to do. It's pretty upsetting this already happened after almost a month of owning it. If anyone knows what to do please tell me

 

anyone else having battery drain even when off I lose 35% every 24 hours when OFF which is the same as when sleeping I don't think these ever turn off or even go to hybrid sleep

 

I am considering the ssd upgrade and from what it sounded like there is a noticeable difference in performance but I was wondering about battery life. Is there a significant increase in battery life? Thanks!

 

Hey all. I just joined the ranks of Yoga 2 11 owners. I already had the Samsung 840 Evo 250 waiting for me when I got home with it. I left the original slow drive in just long enough to clone the drive using the Samsung Drive Copy software. (you can choose to have it copy both partitions, by the way.) It's doing Windows 8.1 updates now. Doesn't seem to be too slow. I have a MacBook Air 11 that I will continue to use as my main laptop, but I have a few clients with servers and routers that require Windows for me to do setups and updates and such. And BootCamp is a pain when you like to play with Beta versions of OSX (I am loving Yosemite.) Anyway, the Yoga definitely seems pretty slick and I was very happy with the ease of upgrading the hard drive. I will post future experiences once I've had time to really play with it. Finally, does anybody have any opinion on the built-in Lenovo Apps? My first inclination on all store bought, Windows-based PCs and laptops is to remove all the bundled software, but I have little experience with Lenovo's offerings. Thanks in advance!

 

>>>>>> PLEASE NOTE: SSD swap & Battery Drain <<<<<<
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I've got the yoga 2 11 for two month now and I have experienced following two problems and no solutions yet.
First, battery will drain even after shutdown, as one of the previous post said, lost about 1/3 every 24 hours. Can anyone please also check to verify that you get this problem or not?
Second, the SSD upgrade is a nightmare, for windows 8.1. Upgrade to 8.0 is flawless. Seems that some of the SSDs have firmware conflict with this machine. I can confirm that Intel 530 and crucial M500 both NOT working. If you successfully upgraded to SSD with windows 8.1 and experience no issues afterwards, could you please post your SSD' brand/model?

Thank you all

 

Me. I have the same problem.

 

I wonder if all of us having this drain problem have also changed to SSD????
I may stick the original back in and see what happens.

By the way My drive upgrade that worked was to a Crucial M4 256 gb

 

I have the drain problem with the original Seagate HD. And finally I used Samsung EVO 250G and it runs fine now on windows 8.1. Haven't check the drain problem yet, will keep an eye on it.

 

I'm one of the unlucky ones that got a Yoga 2 11 with the WD HDD and thus the SFF-8784 cable that prohibits me from upgrading to a SSD.

I called Lonovo's Parts line at 877-453-9536 and stated that I would like to purchase P/N 90204934. I was told that the part was not for sale at the moment.

If my Hard Drive ever fails I'm toast since I bought my computer refurbished!

Any suggestions?

 

YES! Well...if you live in Europe. This guy from the UK was able to buy the replacement cable

Amazon.co.uk: Danny's review of Lenovo Yoga 2 11 11.6-inch Touch Convertib...

I am trying to get my hands on it through a relative in the UK, but I'm having payment issues with my US credit card. Also there are several other sites you can get the cable from but it's much more expensive.

Lenovo 90204934 Cable Vienna Hdd Cable Seaget

https://www.eafsupplychain.com/Product/LV-90204934

But I'm not ready to put that much money down on a cable on top of the price of the SSD

 

I recently bought this laptop from John Lewis in the UK for £400 (yes we get ripped off in the UK). It's the model with N3530 and 512GB/8GB Hybrid drive in it. I'm actually really pleased with the performance of it, but I'm not happy with the amount of junk it came pre-loaded with and if I'm honest I'm not sold on Windows 8.1 either. I've removed as much of the junk as I dare to do without wrecking something, and I've installed classicshell to bring the start menu back and hide the metro tile interface thing...

But...

I'm considering installing a 128GB SSD and re-installing from scratch. Has anyone had any success installing Win7 on this machine and returning full functionality to it using the Win8.1 drivers from the Lenovo site? Alternatively, any comments on reinstalling with Win8.1 (to kill the junk completely) would be much appreciated.

Cheers

 

Sorry I'm not answering you, but I'm reinforcing your question because I'm almost on the point of making the same purchase.

I'd like to know the answers to your questions about OSes, but I'd also love to know about replacing hardware and can't find a teardown video or anything on replacing components in the Yoga 2 11 - for the 13", yes, but not this one. Any pointers, please?

 

What is the wireless connection speed for everyone? I can only connect at 65M. Although my router is a Dual-Band A/C/N router. My other devices all connect at 300. And what is the wireless card you have inside? Mine is Broadcom. Anyone have atheros card and what is your speed?

 

From what it sounds like you want to use windows 7 on this laptop and I.....would not reccommend trying this Windows 8 is designed for touchscreens windows 7 is absolutely not...It will work for a lot of things but there ins't really driver support for touchscreen gestures built into Windows 7 so it will sort of be a half hacked experience. Just my input. As far as going from scratch the ONLY way I have gotten a windows disc to boot on this laptop is creating a Windows 8 USB boot stick. I have tried using a USB dvd drive with windows 7 in it and you get to "press any key to continue" but when you press the key of choice, it freezes. That's my experience tying to boot a win 7 boot disc. Hope this helps!

 

For the teardown you can hardly call it that. There are 12 (maybe 10, can't remember) screws on the bottom of the laptop. Unscrew them and that's about it. Pull off the bottom and the hard drive is pretty easy to see (for pics see earlier in this thread). There are 4 screws on the side of the HD to remove and the HD will come right out. Replace with SSD and replace all the screws. Provided you have the right connector (Sata) and not the proprietary one from Western Digital. If you have that then you will have to order a replacement cable from one of these sites.

Lenovo 90204934 Cable Vienna Hdd Cable Seaget

https://www.eafsupplychain.com/Product/LV-90204934

Or if you can find it somewhere else... more power to you.

 

I'm in Ohio. I was able to purchase this cable from EAF. Shipped from Denmark. Arrived today. It was out of stock when ordered. Took about two weeks. I had previously place and order with Encompass 6 weeks ago and there is no inndication that it will ever ship. Cancelled that one today.
https://www.eafsupplychain.com/Product/LV-90204934

 

I had this problem and just succeeded in and installing an SSD and cloning the stock drive to the SSD.

Lenovo Yoga 2 11 Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU N3530

Installed Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250GB and Lenovo 90204934 Cable Vienna Hdd Cable Seaget purchased cable from EAF. $59.67 including shipping. Took several weeks from out of stock status.

https://www.eafsupplychain.com/Product/LV-90204934

Replaced stock WD HDD with non-standard SATA cable

Using MiniTool Partition Wizard (Free) Shrunk stock C: partition and my D: data partition so that allocated space for all partitions including recovery and Lenovo was less that 230 GB. Deliberately left a large un-partitioned space.

Using Easeus todo (free) ran clone from installed version within Windows 8.1. Checked the optimize for SSD box. Cloned to Samsung SSD installed in Inatek USB 3 external drive enclosure.

Installed the drive. Left the foil cover on the old drive. Seemed to fit OK without removing the foam spacer on the bottom shell. May depend on your SSD. Saved the old drive with foil attached for recovery if necessary. Booted with one issue. The Lenovo OneTouch Recovery is "damaged" I booted to it with the Lenovo key to test. Error message indicated and warned not to run "One Touch Recovery" from window. No problem. I have the stock drive to re-install if necessary. Reading elsewhere I believe the "recovery might clone correctly if the drive were not being downsized to 256 from 500.

 

I was able to do this as well but I ordered from a German website that only ships to Europe for about 15 USD https://www.medion.com/lenovoserviceshop/welcome?lang=en I have family in the UK who I shipped it to and they forwarded it on to me. You can actually reinstall windows if you use Rufus to create a bootable flash drive it will boot from the flash drive. Then you can start fresh. If that's what you want to do for anyone else who had the Seagate HD problem

 

Has anyone had any success in using a Intel ac7260 wifi card in this laptop? I am thinking about trying it, because on the drivers page it lists Intel under the 8.1 wifi driver Laptops and netbooks :: Yoga Series :: Yoga 2 11 Notebook Lenovo - Lenovo Support (US). Not sure what Intel driver that they mean by intel because on the hardware list it only shows 1x1 (IE BGN only, not A/C or 5ghz) but I know that the yoga 2 13 HAS the intel card in it. It is the same size I just wonder if this driver would support it. I have a dual band AC router at my house because the 2.4ghz bands are so clogged I get like 3mbps. On my 5ghz I get 50Mbps but then I found out my lappy doesn't have a dual band card! So just wondering if anyone has tried this card (this is the card they put in the yoga 2 13). Thanks!

 

For anyone still researching (Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 2 11.1-inch Intel Pentium N3520) if they can replace the HD with an SSD - I replaced the 500gig hard disk with an 128gig crucial mx100 and it works perfectly with ubuntu 14.10 on it. I followed this guide: Replacing the HDD with an SSD on Lenovo Yoga 2 | iseborn.info (obviously, there are still as of jan 15 some functionality issues with the yoga and ubuntu, such as touchpad not disabling on fold, and it doesnt rotate the screen automatically yet)

 

I recently upgraded my (Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 2 11.1-inch Intel Pentium N3520) . you can replace HDD with a 7mm ssd (crucial MX 100 512gb), it will fit perfectly and won't bend the machine cover.
The replacing process was not easy i had to use Paragon Hardisk manager because acronis version supplied with crucial could not cone the drive directly.
For those who do not want to deal with hassle of cloning hdd via software i recommend gettting
StarTech.com USB 3.0 to 2.5/3.5in SATA Hard Drive Duplicator Docking Station.
After SSD install the machine works 200% better . all applications load really fast, and device boots up almost instantly.

 

I helped my friend get the following Lenovo Yoga 2 11 for $441 from Best Buy (when it was on sale) and I need some advice on upgrading the hard drive.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-...lack/8618415.p?id=1219354098974&skuId=8618415

It has an Intel Core i5-4202Y (which I figured would perform better than the Pentium N3530 on some other models) so that's why I recommended this model over the Pentium models. It also included a 128gb SSD hard drive which only has about 64gb free after we installed some software. He will be using it to upload HD videos to YouTube so I'm concerned he will need additional space. He doesn't want to spend a lot of money so I'm trying to figure out what will be the cheapest and easiest upgrade. I'm debating between replacing the 128gb SSD with a Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250gb, Crucial SSD or Western Digital WD5000M22K mentioned in the following Lenovo Yoga 2 11 Hardware Maintenance Manual which is a hybrid 500gb HDD with a 16gb SSD.

http://download.lenovo.com/consumer/mobiles_pub/lenovo_yoga_2_11_hmm.pdf

I also looked at the Lenovo parts lookup website for various Yoga 2 11 model numbers and found parts references to the "Seagate Angsana 5.0mm 500G+8G" which sounds like a hybrid drive but I couldn't find anybody selling it.

Here are my questions.

1) Since the Yoga already has a 128gb SSD, is it safe to assume that it has a standard SATA interface? I'm just hoping I don't need to deal with the non-standard SATA cable like some others and also spend the money to get that special cable.
2) I'm assuming that people will recommend the SSD but how much of a performance hit will my friend see with the hybrid? I'm considering the hybrid because of the lower cost/gb.
3) I couldn't find anything on Western Digital's website about the model WD5000M22K but it is available from a few online stores. Doe this mean this hard drive was specifically developed for Lenovo?

Thanks in advance.

 

I'm undecided whether to purchase the Core I5 version with the SSD or the cheaper version with the 500GB version.

I am worried though about potential WIFI issues that plague some Lenovo models...How does this one fare in that regard?