Questions about RapidDrive and SSD's

I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of the RapidDrive option for the T420s... and Newegg seems to be out of the 80GB mSATA drives too. But I had a quick question about the whole RapidDrive setup.

The main benefit of the setup is that you can have an SSD for your OS and a few important programs, and a hard drive for greater storage. But if you plan on getting an SSD for your main drive anyway, is there any benefit to getting the RapidDrive? Does it function as a RAID?

Also, is it something I can configure myself, or to get the full RapidBoot thing do I have to order it stock from Lenovo?

Thanks for any answers! (long time lurker)

 

To answer your question (and start a war, I fear) Im not terribly sure what rapid drive is because the word is not technical-it's warm and fuzzy. But, I do believe in a large SSD and not a mixture.

Renee

 

RapidDrive, from my understanding, is just the factory-configured 80GB mSATA option. I wasn't sure if Lenovo was just talking about the advantages of an SSD, or if they're up to something a little more tricky.

 

I thought I read somewhere that they were up to something a bit more tricky: Namely, that the system will learn/guess which files you use most often, and move them to the SSD in the background, so that it'd be transparent to you.

 

That was my understanding as well... but would that be something configurable via driver downloads, or would it necessitate purchasing direct from Lenovo?

I had called the customer service / sales, and hadn't gotten a concrete answer.

Thanks for the replies, by the way.

 

Here's the available first generation (EE) RapidDrive documentation for the IdeaPad Y Series:

Lenovo - Lenovo Enhanced Experience consumer PCs for Windows® 7

Lenovo Support - Drivers & Downloads

Introduction to reinstalling Windows o - Lenovo

And second generation (EE 2.0):

Lenovo Support - Drivers & Downloads

It doesn't tell you what the implementation options are for a ThinkPad, but it's a start.

Don

 

Thanks for the links! It looks like it is something that can be done with just driver installs - at least for the first generation EE. It doesn't look like anything fancy is going on - Windows is installed onto the SSD, then the drives are joined together. (IIRC, that's a RAID 0 array setup, but maybe with some fancy driver work to optimize the SSD / HDD combo.)

Second question then - any point to go with the mSATA drive SSD, if you're going to use an SSD in the may bay?

 

I would think that would slow things down as the mSata is slower than the drive 0 slot.

I probably would have the main SSD be the boot and OS drive and put an extra 80 GB of stuff on the slower mSata drive.

That is very likely what I will do. I have an Intel 160 GB coming with the OS and could pick up another 80 GB of storage with an mSata.

Perry

 

That's what I was thinking, Perry. I'm not sure whether I'd rather go for a much faster SSD - as it would be my first experience with SSD's - or keep the larger memory of the HDD.

Nonetheless, I'm constantly impressed with the 420s. With an ExpressCard, the bay SATA adapter, the mSATA and the normal drive, you could have four working SSD's together on one 14 inch machine! I mean, sure, it's a bit overkill, but it's still cool to think about.