Lenovo W520 Owner's Thread

Do you happen to have a recommendation for free disk cloning software?

Casper, which has always worked for me in the past, failed when I tried to clone my W520 drive a second time. I think it may be the software. I have the cable and I have done this many times before.

Thank you!

 

I use Complete hard disk recovery solution, backup, drive copy, clone and image computer software

It has never failed me. I use the Backup then Recovery method within the product, not the disk cloning. Unfortunately it is not free.

 

Thanks! I actually don't mind paying for software *when* it works. I paid for Casper, and I have paid for Acronis in the past. My problem is that Casper didn't work this time and I did pay for it.

Their tech is supposed to get back with me. If it doesn't work, I will try Acronis as it has always worked for me in the past. Casper has a SmartClone feature, which I like, which is why I have been using it.

Update: Amazon.com has the 256GB Crucial M4 on sale for less than $204.00!

 

W520 having problems with sleep with M4 128GB Crucial.

Anyone having loop problems after sleep, any quick fixes?

 

I'm having problems with hibernation, but not sleep. Sometimes when my W520 hibernates it will not wake up. I have to pull the power cord, pull the battery, and then hold the button while no power source is connected.

I then put the battery back in, reconnect the power, and restart the computer.

I figured I was the only one with this problem.

 

how do you test alignment?

 

Use this tool from TechPowerUp.

 

Alternatively, you can use diskpart.

Open the command prompt with admin rights

Type:
diskpart
list disk (this will bring a list of storage devices)
select disk n (n is the number associated with your SSD, likely gonna be 0 for a SSD in the main HDD bay)
list partition

Check the offset number for the partition(s), if you can divide the number by 4kB then it is aligned.

 

From what I understand my numbers are normal..someone said. I check the alignment by dividing.

Ohh just now sleep worked..the W520 woke up from sleep fine this time around...

 

Mine works sometimes too. In fact, I'd say it works the vast majority of the time. However, sometimes it does not.

 

Thors, i'm sorry man.. I didn't see your post in time to send you the link. It expired 6/28. Might have just been for email subscribers. My wife is going to kill me, but I have my 2nd one on the way. Haven't decided whether its going in my w520 or my desktop. I have a Mushkin Chronos deluxe, only 120gb in my desktop so I might swap them & use that one in my bay. My w520 has a Samsung 830 256gb & it's been flawless.

 

I also ordered the Newhous (sp) bay. I'll report on it after I've used it.

I've used acronis home with the plus pack (for applying to dissimilar hardware) and ghost has worked for me. I've also used the quick recovery or whatever it's called on my u300s & it worked okay.

 

Newmodeous caddy that is. Haven't received it yet.

 

I'm using it for my Intel 320; works well.

 

Glad to hear! I was thinking about buying one. I've heard they actually look better than the Lenovo ones.

 

Yeah. These are the full 12.5mm height, so it's flush with the rest of the notebook, just like the stock DVD burner's door. Even comes with a HDD activity light.

 

*Wow!* That is nice. If I decide to put a drive in there, now I know how to do it.

 

I have a problem opening pictures using “windows live photo gallery” (all images shows up like through a blue filter). I can open same files with photoshop without having any problem. My screen is FHD (1920x1080). Does anybody know how to fix it?

 

Try calibrating your screen. Some programs are not wide gamut aware and will screw up when viewing on a wide gamut monitor.

 

Windows Live Photo Gallery is one of the programs what cannot handle color profiles with XYZLUT. You need to use a simpler profile with curves. Photoshop and many "pro" programs can handle the XYZLUT correctly.

Try this profile and see if the problem is still there (it's the highest quality profile I've found / made for the AUO):
http://ifile.it/e4vpkhz

 

Hi Guys,

Recently, out of nowhere, my w520 has been freezing upon startup, and randomly shutting down, but mostly will bring me to my desktop then just stop responding or when I try to load one of my work programs unable to load because of a connection with server issue. (No BSOD so far, just going back to the black Thinkpad Startup Screen and freezing there). Not sure why this is happening all of a sudden, for 3 months it has been working fine.

I do have a 128gb Crucial SSD installed, but not sure why that would be the issue.

Any suggestions? Similar problems?

Thank you!

 

Lenovo ThinkVantage Toolbox > Hardware > Scheduled Hardware Check > Scan Now

 

Hi, I got an issue with my W520 Q2820. In FurMark my GPU (Quadro2000m) is throtteling at 74° is this normal? Thought the GPU can handle more heat.
The heatsink is labeled with 55W.
What i tried so far:
Changed thermal paste on my Heatsink.
Fan is running on maximum @3690rpms...

 

Furmark has absolutely no relation to real world usage, and I think nVidia especially throttles Furmark to avoid burning out the power circuit on the boards. Google for "power virus". Just use it normally with any game or program and it won't throttle.

 

You can set level 64 in TPFC, which is around 4800RPM. You'd likely never hit Furmark loads in reality though.

 

I Maxed out the fan in TPFC. It seems the fan can go to max 3600rpms. Maybe i have an other heatsink.

 

Does it do that with the Crucial SSD sitting on the sidelines?

 

Did you ever get a good answer for this?
If not, what is the 'bad' answer?
I too am shocked at this piece of dysfunctionality!!!

 

Hi Guys,

So my 3 month old w520 with a 128gb Crucial m4 has been freezing and randomly crashing lately. Just performed a hardware scan and it failed the Targeted Read Test and SMART short self-test.

From what I'm reading, it seems to indicate an upcoming harddrive failure. Any way to prevent this or fix it?

I just bought this SSD after reading it was suppose to be highly compatible with the w520. If it does fail, can I ask for a replacement from Crucial or am I just screwed??? Just dropped a bunch of money on this thing...so lame

Thanks for any input.

 

My Quadro 1000M doesn't start throttling until around 92 C, so it's odd that the 2000M would start at 74 C.

 

You're welcome.

The first thing you should do, if you haven't already, is perform a full backup.

The warranty for the Crucial m4 is 3 years, so you should be able to get a replacement.

Are you sure you are running the latest firmware? If not, you should update the firmware and then re-scan the drive. Perhaps the problem is firmware related?

 

It seems that the overheating issue is well known issue. Dont know why my quadro2000m is throtteling at 74 degrees and my Fan can only run ob max 3600rpms Mabe the card has a malfunction? What du u think? Schould i call the support for a new board?

 

Hi guys!

Wanted to give an update on my situation. A few pages back you might have read my story on how I bricked my W520 with a BIOS update and got denied by Lenovo support when I asked for warranty repair.

Well I'm typing from my W520 right now...
I came home and went to the closest Lenovo certified warranty repair, got the machine handed in with a "got random shutdown, does not POST since" error. Got warranty repair, they changed my mobo to a new one.

Guess I'm lucky! And happy too! However I really think this should be covered by warranty... Thanks for all of you for the suggestions and help.

I'm really enjoying using this little beast again. Been a bit sad that I had to lie but... I guess you've gotta do what you've gotta do!
Lesson learned.

 

You weren't lying. The machine didn't work. It is under warranty and should work. You have no idea exactly what component failed and why. Components can fail for any reason at anytime and they can surface when power is taken away and re-applied.

I've seen it happen numerous times on mainframes and peripherals.

 

The Caddy arrived here today. Everything seems ok with it.

I want to install a fresh copy of Windows 7 to the SSD but what would be the best way to do that? Lenovo obviously didnt pack in an installation disc, but i managed to make an bootable usb stick.

Should i put the empty SSD into the primary bay (and remove the stock HDD) and install by booting from the USB Stick?

 

Your Quadro is not throttling because of temperature, it's a protection in the nVidia driver to save the card from FurMark death. If you use it with normal games or programs it will work fine!

Yes, that's the easiest way. Just a single SSD in the laptop and the USB setup will work fine! Don't forget ABR Backup and Restore!

OK, the SMART errors mean that you have a hardware error with your SSD and either the shop you bought it from or Crucial should replace your drive! But, if you want to try something, try Secure Erasing your SSD and then doing a firmware upgrade. Here is a howto about secure erasing with Parted Magic:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...-bootable-CD-USB-Linux-Point-and-Click-Method

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...-7-download-links-just-like-vista-before.html

Download the appropriate ISO, use ABR to backup your activation, install ISO to SSD, restore activation using ABR. Enjoy new SSD.

 

Ok i did a clean windows 7 install on the ssd. I find it a bit weird though, that the system alone (along with updates, drivers etc) takes more than 30 gb. Is this normal?

 

How much RAM do you have?

 

12 Gb.

Also, is there a way to keep the installations on the stock HDD without having to reinstall them?

 

If you haven't turned off hibernation and adjusted the swap file size, those two alone are likely consuming close to 20GB.

As for the installation question, the answer is yes. Disk cloning is easily accomplished with many tools on the market. I would suggest building the Rescue and Recovery DVD set first, then cloning second. After that, there are tools to capture the current OEM PID and serial numbers. See the Clean Installation thread in this forum for information on how to do that.

 

I have 12GB RAM as well, and my Windows folder sits at just over 21GB, though I have hibernation completely turned off. So ~30GB isn't unusual.

 

Updates, restore points, etc. You can prune things down quite a bit but usually it is no big deal unless you are using a low capacity SSD.

 

You mean open CMD and type "powercfg -h off" ? I think i did that so hibernation should be turned off.

@Thors.Hammer:

How can i adjust the file swap size? I dont remember doing anything like that. I basically just followed this guide: http://forum.notebookreview.com/len...uide-clean-installing-windows-7-thinkpad.html

 

Google for "windows 7 swap size":
first result
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/Change-the-size-of-virtual-memory

With enough RAM, you can even turn it off (I never ever had a problem from that), or just make it small, like 500 MB.

 

When I installed more ram into my laptop, Windows automatically increased the swap file to 16GB, which had a dramatic effect on used space on my boot drive. You can manually adjust your swap file by hitting the start icon, right click on "Computer" -> "Properties"->"Advanced System Settings" on the right -> "Settings" under performance -> move to the Advanced Tab and click "Change" under Virtual memory.

You can create a custom setting or remove the Swap partition all together. From what I've read in other forums, removing the swap file is potentially risky, as some applications will not run without one. There are a large number of people that have run without a swap file without any problems though. I set mine to 1GB just to be safe. There was a 15GB increase in free space on my boot partition afterwards. I hope this helps.

 

Removing the swap files is basically like removing the pagefile: people are either really for it, really against it, or neutral about it (first two options, for the most part).

 

hi folks - indeed this is a really really long thread, and I've been reading it on and off since I made a decision to purchase the W520. Finally the black beauty arrived last week and I'm loving it

I have a few questions, but before asking any questions, I made a point to read back and see whats discussed already. So I took all the pain and time to read from post 6500 onwards, and finally I have a good idea of the recent updates.

Now, question time. My W520 came with 500GB 7200rpm HDD and 4GB RAM. These are 2 components that I want to upgrade to.

1) Planning on purchasing single 8 GB Memory module so that the total Memory would be 12GB.
2) Planning on getting a mSATA SSD for the Boot & O/S drive for speed & performance purposes.

After reading quite bit, I had made up my mind to go with MyDigitalSSD 128GB, but I am unable to find stock anywhere. What is available instead is the mSATA III version ( MyDigitalSSD 128GB 50mm BP3 Bullet Proof 3 mSATA 6G SSD | My Digital Discount)

I understand the drive is actually faster than the WWLAN PCIE interface of the W520 (which is SATA II from what I understad). So, would it be a problem if I buy the BP3 6g version? Are there success stories about this disk?

What are my other options?

Mushkin 120GB is availabe on NewEgg and Amazon for $139.99
Dell 128GB mSATA SSD is availabe on Ebay for $178
Intel 310 80GB is availbe on Ebay for about $180 (but I'd like to have something more than 80GB)

I'm also trying to avoide OCZ as I've read too many bad reviews lately.

So whats the advice for me? I have to consider shipping cost as well coz I'll be shipping this to Sri Lanka. Warranty etc are not very important to me, as if things go wrong, I wont be able to claim warranty anyway (shipping back would cost more). So What I'm looking for is a good product which would be reliable and serve me well.

Advice and experiences are most welcome!

 

For this price, you can buy a 256 GB SATA III SSD and put the HDD in the caddy. Do you really need an optical drive all the time?

 

I read a lot of posts where people want to add to their existing memory. Although that can be done, I generally think that is a bad idea. Usually it is better to replace all the memory. Mismatched memory modules can cause all sorts of problem, and memory needs to be in the correct slots to be dual channel. I simply replaced all my memory with 16 GB of Corsair Vengeance memory for around $100.00. I bought better, faster, and more reliable memory, and I know that it is operating dual channel as it should. In a $2,000.00 machine, $100.00 is not an expensive upgrade.