New X301 questions

Just received my X301 and was hoping for some advice.

To preface my first question, please don't suggest a clean install of the OS, while admittedly effective I do not want to loose any Lenovo tweaks to the OS making it not an option. So the question is, I would like to clean up the hard drive to gain some space and the manual states:

"If your system has an SSD, use Rescue and Recovery to back up your system with external storage media such as a USB device, CD or DVD. Doing this after taking your system out of the box will save disk space, give your system a recovery starting point, and ensure protection against any threat of data loss."

I am not clear on the "Doing this after taking your system out of the box will save disk space..." statement. Does Rescue and Recovery automagically remove the "unnecessary" stuff? If not...

Second question: Lenovo created a 10GB Q: partition named "Lenovo" that contains the subdirectories "showroom" and "SWTOOLS". Can I delete and merge this partition into the primary C: partition or is there anything needed in there?

Lastly: Any other recommendations for "unnecessary" things folks wiped off the system?

Thanks

 

That partition is your data/drivers and probably your OEM Windows disk...

 

The Rescue and Recovery tool will delete the Q: partition and reassign that space to C: after it backs it up to 1 CD (boot) and 2 DVD.

SWTools contains most of the installers for the Thinkvantage utilities. It can be deleted after you back it up to another medium (Optical or external HD).

The S: partition is important for the Thinkvantage button to work at the BIOS level. Removing it will not harm Windows, but it will eliminate some of your recovery functionality.

You should also search your hard drive for any large files. On my x200 there were several ISO files of about 700MB each on the C: drive. I offloaded these to free up space (especially important with an SSD).

You may also want to set a small static swap file and/or disable hibernate. By default, you will have a swap file slightly larger than your RAM, and a Hibernate file equal to the size of your RAM. This could easily be 4-8GB of expensive SSD space depending on your configuration.

 

I didn't say this in the first email but Lenovo also has a third partition named "SERVICEV003" that is about 1.5GB in size and 50% used. I assumed that contained the data / drivers and OEM Windows disk and going to leave that as-is.

 

jonlumpkin,

Thank you very much for the quick response... that is about what I suspected and will back things up as you recommend. I did run the Rescue and Recovery Utility but backed up to a network drive and the Q: partition is still there. I will try backing up to CD/DVD now to see if that does the trick.

Thanks again!

 

Actually, all Lenovo "tweaks" to the OS can be reapplied after a clean install as they are provided in the DRIVERS folder or can be downloaded from the support web site.

 

Just a quick follow-up for folks wondering about fitting everything on a 64GB drive. After backing up the system as per jonlumpkin's instructions above (thanks again!), I found I had to manually delete and merge the 2GB Q: partition Lenovo had created but that was super-simple using the Vista disk management console. After merging partitions, I deleted a few large installer cabs (150-600GB each) but I did not spend much time or effort doing this. I then installed (on top of Vista Business) Microsoft Office Enterprise, Visual Studio 2008, the full suite of Expression software, Windows Live Messenger and Acrobat Reader. I also left all the ThinkVantage utilities, PC-Doctor, WinDVD and the Roxio Creator software on the system.

The result is a 1.5GB S: partition and a 58GB C: partition that now has 29.5GB free. That is plenty of space for whatever else I may need to install considering I won't have much in the way of photos / videos / music on the system. Hope this helps others wondering if a 64GB drive is big enough for their purposes.