New SSD: Use recovery disks okay?

I have ordered a W520 with expected shipping at the end of this month. So excited!

Also just ordered a 128GB SSD drive ( this one) and extra RAM from Crucial.com.

My plan was to make recovery disks when I receive the W520, remove the 320GB HD, swap in the 128GB SSD, and use the recovery disks to restore my system. Will that work? Any problems I should anticipate or changes I need to make?

I've searched extensively and come across conflicting info.

 

You can use the recovery media, but sometimes it will not align Windows correctly, causing the SSD to do excessive writes and it will cause major performance issues.

 

Rats. Am I better off doing a fresh install of Windows 7? I have a Windows 7 Pro disk to use.

Another question: I keep seeing references to an "LPM tweak". Is that something I need to do?

 

Unless you are going to use the backup and recovery features (I never ever have, in all the three years I've owned Thinkpads), the recovery disks just take up space without any added benefits.
Yes, a fresh installation will take time, but not that much time.
I'd use ABR to recover the win7 key from your Lenovo installation, if you need it.

 

Isn't that on the sticker in the battery compartment?

I read that a fresh Win 7 install won't have the proper power management software. Is that easy to remedy (or not true)?

 

Another option would be to clone your factory drive. Acronis is one program that comes to mind and there are many other programs that can do the job.

Should take less than 20 minutes.

Brad

 

Which is more likely to cause an alignment problem, cloning or using recovery disks?

 

I used the recovery media on a OCZ Vertex II SSD as an experiment and from testing it showed that it did align the disk correctly so that shouldn't be a problem if you want to go down that route.

 

Sorry to say I don't know. What I do know is that I have deployed more than 100 SSD's in ThinkPad's and never once had any alignment issues.

Try the clone as it will take less than an hour and if there are issues try another method.

Brad

 

the recovery media is designed to align properly with SSDs.   the chance of a misaligned installation is almost nil since it uses microsoft's own OS installer with a custom winPE script to handle supplemental drivers and apps.

in short, use your recovery discs.

 

it is very easy to download drivers and install them. you need to start with the chipset drivers and work from there. there are 'clean install guide's in this forum.
I've found that installation from the recovery disks takes even longer than a fresh install (minus the time it takes to download the drivers to, say, a sd card).

 

Adding that, the bulk of the drivers are already on the factory hard drive. Just copy the "DRIVERS" folder under the "SWTOOLS" folder located on the root drive (C:) on your computer to a USB stick and you can deploy the missing drivers with ease using the Device Manager.

 

what he said..

but do it in the order spec'd in the clean install guide

 

Thank you! Very reassuring. I'll try this approach first.

Great, I will copy those just in case.

I do like the idea of clean install so I won't have to waste part of my 128GB SSD as a recovery partition. Hmm....

Thanks, everyone!

 

"Unless you are going to use the backup and recovery features (I never ever have, in all the three years I've owned Thinkpads), the recovery disks just take up space without any added benefits."

They may...but they are a precautionary measue that is very important.

Erik is also correct.

Backingup is part of computing and Windows had a rather nice backupfacility.

Renee

 

erik does this apply to all Lenovo recovery media or only recent Windows 7 ones? I was thinking about using the Recovery media for my Z61t on an SSD I plan on installing in it. (I ordered the original Lenovo XP recovery media through IBM).

 

not the media, dammit. the recovery partitions are what I meant! LOL.

 

any win-7-based recovery media will account for alignment.   to the best of my knowledge, XP requires alignment even with recovery media.

 

I've been thinking more about this, and I don't want to use the recovery disks (although I will generate them) since they will waste part of my small SSD drive to create a recovery partition. So, I'm going to try a clean install.

I searched and was unable to find a clean install guide for the W520 in these forums. Is there any reason I can't use this guide: Windows 7 Clean Installation - ThinkPad T420, T420s, T520, W520, X220 and X220 Tablet

From that page, it sounds like I can just install Windows 7 and then use ThinkVantage 4.0 to put all the Lenovo stuff back on there. That sounds nice and simple. Not a good way to go?

 

that's actually a great way to go.   go that way.

 

Doing a Clean install using Win 7 Disk will only install windows. You will need to reinstall power management and any other applications youu want back. I myself did a install from Lenovo recovery disk which put back all app's including power management. I had NO problems with my install.
Good luck.

 

Thanks, erik and addie!