Questions about W520

I am interested in buying a W520, but never used one before. I have these questions

1. If a W520 and a T520 have similar configuration, does W520 consume a lot more power?

2. For W520, I can choose "Internal RAID - Configured by Lenovo
A ThinkPad W520 configured with "Internal RAID" storage precludes the option of a DVD optical drive."

I am not sure what this means. Basically, I would like to a SSD plus a 500GB hard drive on this W520. Will I have any problem if I choose Internal RAID-Configured by Lenovo?

3. By reading specs of W520, I notice that W520 have 2 USB 3.0 ports and T520 does not have any. Am I right?

4. I am going to have a SSD 3. This SSD3, plus W520 USB 3.0 port, plus an external SATA 3 drive, will make my backup a lot faster. Correct?

Thanks for any input!

Cheers!

 

With a better graphics card a W520 should I think use more power, but I don't know the numbers off the top of my head. It comes with a bigger adapter.

RAID reads and writes to two hard drives at the same time. You'd need to forgo the optical drive to have a second hard drive for RAID. Compared to a standard drive, it's faster, but I would say unless you're putting a heavy load on the controller, which most uses don't do, it probably won't matter much. SSDs have better latency too, which is more likely to make your system seem faster or slower than the throughput.

Right, W520 has USB 3.0 while the T520 does not.

There's little practical difference between SATA II and III. It's the latency that's important and that doesn't change going from SATA II to III. You might want to look at a mSATA drive. That way you could put the platter drive in the main bay and still keep you optical drive.

I noticed that using True Image, which does put a heavy load on the controller, is much faster on a SSD. My backup and restore time went from five minutes to under a minute after switching to a SSD.

 

Thanks so much for your information. Just wanted to make sure my understanding is right.

I will buy and install a SSD myself on this W520 as primary drive (I will not buy W520 with SSD from Lenovo). And I will move the coming 500GB drive to the place where the DVDRW sits, which is what I did for my T510. I will be able to do so no matter whether I choose "Internal RAID - Not Enabled", correct?

However, if I choose "Internal RAID - Configured by Lenovo" when buying W520 at lenovo.com, I will not have optical drive coming from Lenovo on my W520. True?

Regards.

 

The Quadro 1000M is a 45 W card, the 2000M is a 55 W card off the top of my head. The NVS 4200M is 25 W if I'm not wrong. So, yes, at full load, the W520 will use more power. However, when idling, the power consumption should be similar.

No, you will not get an optical drive if you choose RAID. You should put the SSD in the Ultrabay, though, as it has 10% higher IO speeds apparently.

 

>>However, when idling, the power consumption should be similar.

Thanks so much for this piece of information. I will not be heavy user.

>>No, you will not get an optical drive if you choose RAID.

I never do gaming. I dont have huge data or database. I am a software programmer. I may put lot of family media content on the machine. Do you feel that I need RAID?

>>You should put the SSD in the Ultrabay, though, as it has 10% higher IO speeds apparently.

On my T510, I took out the hard drive and put SSD there and moved the hard drive to the ultrabay where DVDRW usually sits. Do you mean that it is a better option to leave the HD where it is and to put the SSD in the ultrabay?

I am not sure whether you have used T510. Is W520 much heavier or thicker than T510?

Many thanks!

 

They share the same chassis, so it'll be almost exactly the same weight, and the same dimensions.

 

RAID doesn't give you any more usable storage. If you need a lot of storage (like, several TB) look into a low end desktop and max it out with HDDs for file server uses.

I'm not sure about the T510, nor have I personally tried with the W520, but according to many owners, the Ultrabay is faster than the main bay. Either way, the difference isn't earth-shattering.

The W510 uses a similar chassis to the W520, and the T520 uses the same chassis as the W520, so I'm going to guess that the T510 uses the same chassis as the W510. Therefore, they should be more or less the same in both size and mass. A W520 is like 5.95 lb with a 9 cell battery, though.

 

The Ultrabay and the primary bay on the current gen T, W, X ThinkPads are the same speed.

 

Thank you guys so much for your input!

Best and cheers!