Lenovo W520 Owner's Thread

Honestly, it's actually not that much of a problem, assuming you have the same memory type (ie, DDR3-1333MHz). I have both the factory-installed Samsung 4GB 1333MHz stick and a pair of Mushkin 4GB 1333MHz sticks install in my laptop and never had a compatibility issue (or any other issue) with memory since installing it last June.

If you try mixing-matching different speeds (1333Mhz and 1600MHz, for example), the total memory speed will be reduced to the slowest, and this will affect all the RAM sticks (for 1600MHz sticks will be slowed to 1333MHz).

Dual-channel is a valid point, though a user wouldn't really notice the minute difference unless you run a synthetic RAM benchmark, which by its very nature is not representative of real-world performance.

If you're sticking with stock speeds, just go with whatever's on sale and only buy the additional amount (replacing all the RAM wastes a perfectly-good 4GB stick). Actual issues between different brands is extremely rare.

 

I guess that makes sense. I have always been extremely conservative with matching memory. I added DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) memory and I knew that Lenovo did not use memory that fast. The hardest part for me is removing the keyboard. If I am going to all that trouble, buying two sticks of new memory seem worthwhile to me, but I do appreciate where that would not be the case for many.

 

I did initially buy two packs of 2x4GB Mushkin memory and wanted to rid the Samsung module, though I had issue with either one of the sticks or the empty slot under the keyboard, so I basically said "screw it, 12GB it is!" Don't even miss the extra 4GB; hell I can't even max out 8GB at the moment.

 

I think 8 GB would have been more than enough for me too. I mostly just went by old memory standards, and I couldn't believe I could get 16 GB for so little money. I did like the idea of buying the fastest memory the processor could handle. Generally I go for faster, but smaller when I can. For example, I replaced the initial SSD with a smaller, but SATA 3, SSD. I figured that more speed is what it is all about, but that is mostly a vanity issue with me. I don't really do much which requires tremendous speed.

 

I don't notice the difference between my two SSDs either (one's SATAII, one's SATAIII). Benchmarks will show it, but that's just play the "I have bigger numbers than you!!11!1!" game. Same with memory speeds, for the most part.

 

I certainly agree with you; but, unfortunately, I do not behave accordingly. I'm always seeking faster scores on synthetic benchmarks. I can't afford to do it in any other area of my life but computer parts are relatively inexpensive and easy to switch, so I do it there. My SATAIII drive actually boots *slower* on my machine than the original 160GB SATAII drive which shipped with the machine. I haven't figured out why. I do enjoy learning about the mechanics of the machines, however, so it is fun to read about stuff and then install it. I've always wondered whether you can swap video cards in notebooks. They are dedicated PCIe cards, but I don't quite know what they are?

 

Booting slower? Maybe you could try disabling GUI boot and stopping some programs from starting on boot? My time to desktop is 18 seconds with the 330, and somewhere in the mid-20s with the 320 when it was the boot drive.

And definitely agree with tinkering with computers. Pretty much the hobby of almost all of the long-term NBR members (I exclude those that post a few times in WNBSIB and leave).

 

I actually have a far bigger problem which I have been working on for the past two weeks. I have been trying to replace the Intel 520 120GB with an Intel 520 240GB. I have cloned it multiple times with Casper and Acronis; but, every time I put it in as the boot drive I get this error from the Lenovo W520:

A disk read error occurred
Press Ctrl + Alt + Del to reboot

I have talked to Intel and I have talked to Casper. Nobody seems to know for sure what is going on. Casper--the tech--thinks the 240GB may be too fast for the BIOS in the W520 because it is only one-third full and therefore much faster than the 120GB. (Even the 120GB gives me that error message occasionally, but I can get it to boot.) Intel thinks zeroing out the SSD might fix it, but I don't know. I do not want to reinstall Windows, so I either solve this problem or the 240GB sits on a shelf.

Any ideas?

 

Cloning a boot drive can cause all sorts of problems. Just do a clean install, it'll save a lot of time and headache if the drive itself isn't bad.

 

I've heard that many times. However, I have had *excellent* luck with Casper. I have actually reduced a four-disk RAID array to a single disk with Casper. I have also already cloned the Lenovo W520's drive once with Casper. I have used Casper on several other notebooks and desktops without incident.

Nevertheless, I have read that a clean install is the only way to go.

 

i agree and i can confirm with the w530. stock came with 4gb pc12800 (1600) memory. system ran at 1600. i bought 3x4gb corsair sticks and added them, and the system only runs at 1333.

edit/ of course the extra sticks i added were 1600 too

 

Thanks for the confirmation!

I felt like a "bad guy" posting it, but it really is the safest thing to do, especially while memory prices are low. guying PC12800 DDR3 1600 memory was *not* an option when I bought my W520 in February, although I never did check the actual speed of the memory they shipped. They said it was slower.

 

Not sure how much room you need, but if I may ask, why are you looking at mSATAs? If you shop around you can get a 240gb SSD for under $200. I bought another Samsung 830 last week for $189 delivered. If that's not enough room, buy a 120gb SSD for your boot drive, get a caddy for the 500gb drive that came with your computer.

Perhaps you don't notice any speed difference because the SATA port on the w520 is only SATAII right? If that's the case then it doesn't matter if the drive is SATA2 or 3, it's only going to run at the port speed.

 

Any advice on the above (SSD) purchase options for me?

If this helps, it only takes a click to "Thanks"

from GT-N7000 via Tapatalk 2

 

Well, considered that option too... get a Samsung 830 for boot, and put the 500gb drive in the ultra bay, so i can use that for all documents and data. But then, I prefer to retain my optical drive, so thought mSata would be the best option. Unless, I can convert the existing optical drive into an external (USB/eSata) drive using some enclosure? Then I can go with the Samsung 830 and I'd be getting SataIII speeds as well.

How can I get about this?

from GT-N7000 via Tapatalk 2

 

There are high capacity (256GB) mSATA drives being sold now, but demand is outstripping supply. You won't find the Samsung Series 830 mSATA drives in retail.

MyDigitalSSD, Crucial and others are supplying the channel now.

 

Well, after reading the previous reply I'm considering it might be a wise choice to settle with the 2.5" SSD. put it in the main bay, get a ultra bay caddy and put the platter hard disk, and figure out a way to use the optical drive externally.

The advantages I see are:
1) cost is cheaper to buy a 2.5" SSD to a mSata.
2) I get more capacity for the same money.
3) increased speeds (Sata3 instead of Sata2)

I see the following options:
Samsung 830
Intel 320? Intel 520? - Which one? Which works best?


from GT-N7000 via Tapatalk 2

 

I vote the Samsung 830. Haven't had any problems. 6 months only though in my w520. Having intermittent problems with a mushkin chronos delux in my desktop and a OCZ vertex 1.8 died after a year of very very light use in a HP2540p that I have (selling the HP to help pay for my u300s

Thors - I was referring to 2.5 inch 830, not mSATA, just to make myself clear.

 

SATA III drives will run on a SATA II interface, so the BP3 should work in the W520. I have the MyDigitalSSD Smart series mSATA drive in my W530 running at SATA II speeds. I can't specifically speak for the BP3 series though.

A lot of people don't "experience" a significant difference when upgrading their boot drive from a SATA II SSD to a SATA III SSD. It's not nearly as dramatic as switching from an mechanical hard drive to a SATA II SSD.

Now lets look at pricing and giving up your optical drive. On Amazon, the 128GB BP3 costs $170, the 128GB 830 SSD notebook upgrade kit is $150, and the ultrabay adapter for your HDD is $20. So the cost is the same in that example. It's actually more expensive going the 2.5" SSD route if you feel that you need to buy an external DVD drive instead of swaping back and forth between the 500GB HDD and the optical drive you have.

Note: The Dell drive on Ebay is the Samsung PM810 (essentially the older Samsung 470 in mSATA form). It's uses very little power and offers 256-bit AES encryption, which not many SSD's can claim now.

 

Hey thanks for everyones help so far. The new SSD with the freshly installed windows 7 works like a charm.

I went ahead and put the Stock HDD into the caddy and it gets recognized. Some programms even continue to run from it (i think i have to reinstall most stuff though...)

How do i need to proceed when i want to erase Windows 7 from the HDD now? Obviously, there are some files in "program files" folder etc i want to keep but i want to erase every system related stuff...

 

I'm thinking of buying a HDD to put in the ultrabay. Currently, I've an SSD and the original HDD 320GB in the ultrabay.

I'm looking for a HDD 750gb to 1TB to replace my 320gb drive. Can someone recommend a very good one?

Thanks

 

I don't have one, but I'd get a Segate Hybrid drive. They come as large as 750GB, although Seagate says they don't have any that large.

 

If you have a SSD, then using the Seagate hybrid drive is useless. Even more so if you only use it for storage. The WD Blue and Samsung M8 have good, reliable 1TB drives.

 

I don't understand why it would be useless? When you are reading from that drive, wouldn't the information be read from the memory cache? I simply do not understand what you mean?

 

This is *not* a reply to my earlier post, but an update on another topic.

I talked to Intel for about an hour today about my Intel 520 SSD 240GB and why it won't boot in my Lenovo W520. On Friday I talked to the company who makes the clone software. Intel confirms that the drive is fine.

The company who makes the clone software is convinced that there is a BIOS problem on the Lenovo W520 which may render the Intel 520 240GB "too fast" for the BIOS. This makes sense to me because I also occasionally receive the same error message from my Intel 520 120GB.

Has anyone else had problems with an Intel 520 240GB on a Lenovo W520. (That is the largest size you can get in 7mm height.)

 

jmegas, cloning Windows 7 will never be as good as a clean install. Sometimes it works, sometimes it produces error. Your case is the latter. Are you sure that spending hours talking to Intel and the cloning software are worth instead of a clean install? A clean install can take max. 30 minutes + say one hour for the drivers and one for the programs, say max. nice Sunday afternoon!

 

I have also SSD as a primary drive and WD Black 750GB in the ultrabay. I was contemplating between WD and Seagate and selected WD because of slightly better performance and 5 yr warranty. You will hardly get any benefits from Seagate hybrid drives for backups, though these are very good as boot drives. I have Seagate XT 500GB on my second Dell laptop.

 

Agreed. If you have done a clean install on the 240GB drive, it seems it is time to try. If that fails, then chalk it up to yet another W520 oddity.

 

Thank you for all the wonderful replies and help.

I've decided to purchase the 128GB MyDigitalSSD BP3 mSata disk from MemoryC

I thought it might be a good idea to buy RAM as Well at the same time, may be I'll save on shipping then (shipping to Asia)

what would be a good memory brand out of what's listed here:

http://www.memoryc.com/computermemory/ddr3sodimm.html

I'm considering 8GB (2x4GB)

or should I forget about these brands and perhaps settle for Crosair or Kingston, perhaps via EBay? I need the laptop to perform Well, that's the bottom line.

Thanks!

from GT-N7000 via Tapatalk 2

 

This is for info only - not a recommendation. It is for those brave souls who want to take a chance:

Newegg has the OCZ Agility 3 AGT3-25SAT3-240G 240GB Internal SATA III MLC Solid State Drive for $139.99 Free Shipping after rebate. Tax in CA, NJ, TN.

Newegg.com - OCZ Agility 3 AGT3-25SAT3-240G 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

$20 Rebate (today July 10 only):
http://images10.newegg.com/uploadfilesfornewegg/rebate/SH/OCZ20-227-727Jul10Jul1012yh62.pdf

Note: There are reported reliability issues regarding the Sandforce controller!

 

Looks like it has the same controller as my Intel 330. So far I haven't had any issue with it so far, so maybe SandForce is actually a good controller now?

Yet again, OCZ is a terrible company to deal with, even if they had Intel or Samsung controllers.

 

Had this issue before and it passed by time but now it came back and it's so annoying : The wireless connection cuts itself quite very often (like every 15minutes) and i've yet to find the reason. Of course i checked on other device and it doesn't cut, so it's only on the Thinkpad. I use the wifi in N mode (40mhz in router settings). Any idea?

 

personal experience:
bought 2 x 4 gig kingston valuram to add to my factory 4 gigs.
i'd get a blue screen unless the notebook was warmed up (errors only when it's cold). tried reinstalling them but didnt help.
decided to take the factory stick out and live with 8gigs.
i can't figure out what's wrong, but another forumer mentioned that valurams are not listed as compatible with thinkpads.

 

have you tried disabling software firewall to try? (assuming you have one)
my thinkpad cuts itself off like that only in the office wifi network, but works fine on all others it's been on.
other devices work fine on that same router.

i disable my software firewall and it stops disconnecting.

i havent solved the problem, so for the time being i do that when i'm in the office

 

Are you talking about an app installed on the Thinkpad? I only have AntiVir.

Are you talking about the router internal firewall? There's nothing, just some ports blocked.

 

Are you still having those weird power issues? If so, it sounds like it is time for a motherboard replacement.

 

Should i simply request that to the assistance? Do they really change the motherboard or exchange for a brand new thinkpad?

I've had electricity issues in the house so that could be the reason for power issues. The wlan card could also be defective..?

 

Does WLAN work properly in an Ubuntu LiveCD?

 

I don't know, i'd have to use it for hours to see if that happens...

 

Shafraz - if you go with a SSD & your Hdd in the bay with a caddy, just save yourself some time and headache and buy a external dvdrw. You can buy a decent one for $25-40. Memory? Mushkin, corsai, crucial, Samsung - they are all good.

 

Thanks mate. Instead of the external dvdrw, I also found that I can use a USB / eSata cable to connect the internal dvdrw drive externally. They even have rubber casings for the drive. Interesting eh?

Anyway, I took the mSata way. Bought MyDigitalSSD 128GB mSata BP3 Series and 2x4GB of G.Skill 12800 ddr3 memory from MemoryC. Items should be here next week, so let's see

from GT-N7000 via Tapatalk 2

 

it seems unlikely for you,
but in my case, turning off my ESET firewall helps (only in the office)

I replaced the factory-installed norton with eset's package (i think it's called smart security) so my software firewall would be that.

 

Ok then i guess i don't have much choice... I saw video of Thinkpad motherboard replacement, it's an extremely long task to do and i'm not so comfortable with someone ripping appart my unit...

 

If you want to sleep well, never ever put a Sandforce SATA 3 drive (except Intel) in your W520. It will definitely make you a very unstable system.

Intel has a very special situation with Sandforce as they were allowed to look at the patented algorithm and write their own firmware. They have spend 18 months making a firmware what is tested enough. The result is that unlike every other brand (OCZ, etc.) who gets the firmware developed by Sandforce, Intel 330, 520 drives have their own firmware, what is tested well enough. On a personal note, I'd still choose Samsung 830 over Intel SF drives any day.

Have you checked your Intel drivers up-to-date here:
Intel® Driver Update Utility

I've read many reports about Kingston ValueRAM not working in Thinkpads for some people. Kingston has a specific, Lenovo approved RAM for the Thinkpad line, the one what you find by their memory wizard. It only comes in 4 GB modules, so 32 GB is not an option.

I think it's not a motherboard replacement, but some incompatibility between your wireless card and the access point / router's chipset. I'd recommend you trying out with a cheap TP-Link router before replacing the motherboard. Disconnecting wireless connections is a typical driver/firmware issue. Do you have access to an other wireless hotspot? Office, university, etc.?

 

Even some non-SF SATAIII drives will sometimes give issue. Someone on the this thread had issues with the Intel 510 and cold booting, iirc.

Hopefully Intel's uber-special access has improved SF reliability. So far I've had zero issues, though I did make a gamble with this drive since it was stupid cheap for me (if I had waiting a few days later, I could have picked out one of the many M4 sales T_T). There's a thread in the Hardware --> SSD section that I'm updating to let people know how my 330 plays out (since people are understandably nervous about the controller).

 

Well the only other access i can have would be tethering from my phone, and it's not a good one... And if i go to another place, i will have the same router, so it's useless...

I also think this could be some incompatibility but why suddenly? It didn't cut like that before! I can choose between a lot of WEP/WPA/WPA2 settings, what do you suggest?

 

But how do you know it's not just your router what's dying? These cheap boxes die so frequently! Their power supply overheats regularly and can damage circuits in the router. If I were you I'd just buy a midrange TP-Link router from a retailer with a decent return policy, like Amazon. Try it with an other router for a week and see if the problem disappears!

I think WEP etc. settings are not the issue. What you have here is some low-level compatibility problem between the router and the wireless card.

 

In fact in France our router are not just cheap things, type Freebox Revolution in google if you wanna see what i have. I never said that's not it though, i was just thinking of things to try because before asking for a replacement...

 

FWIW, I have 3 sticks of 4GB Kingston DDR3 ValueRAM paired with the Samsung RAM in my W520, and I haven't gotten any BSODs thus far.

 

About my wlan issue : The issue stopped for more than 24h, it just started again now... If i turn off/on the W520 wlan, connection comes back immediatly...