RapidDrive vs SSD/SATA combo

One of the questions I've had since ordering my Ideapad Y570 last month was whether or not RapidDrive was more efficient than manually managing a separate SSD and SATA drive. I could find nothing on the Lenovo forums, nothing on this forum, and nothing on Google (no Chin Ho Kelly, I did NOT Bing it).

So finally, I took the steps of finding out for myself, with the help of fellow new Y570 owner jnorman5. We had both purchased the exact same specs, and he made the effort to break apart RapidDrive and run the SSD and SATA separately.

We used CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 and ran it on our respective machines. We treated the RapidDrive as a single drive, and jnorman5 ran it separately for both his SSD and his SATA drive (750GB, 5400RPM). In addition, I ran it on my T61 (500GB SATA, 7200rpm) just to see what it looked like on an older machine.

We did not compare startup times, because he did a complete Windows reinstall and I still have the "Lenovo Experience" version of Windows which is optimized for Lenovo laptops.

Below is a copy of our PM exchange. Neither of us are true hardware/drive experts, so we'd appreciate if any experts can chime in on this and see if anything's wrong with our comparisons.

(and please, we don't want to hear that HP laptops perform better than RapidDrive or that you get way more performance from a such-and-such SSD running on Linux. We're just comparing RapidDrive to non-RapidDrive)

Thanks again to jnorman5 for the collaboration.

 

Couldn't have said it better myself. Thanks for the opportunity to work on this with you

 

This is really interesting, thanks for posting. There is NO documentation anywhere easy to find on RapidDrive for Y570.
I just ordered a Y570 and was wondering how easy it is to segregate the drives and manage them manually. (I.e. disable rapiddrive)

I was planning to do a fresh Win 7 install.
Jnorman5, is there anything to watch out for? Did the camera and Video card get recognized?

I'm planning to use the HDMI out to connect it to a 1080p LED external monitor.
I hope to get full HD even though the laptop's resolution seems a little low at 1366x768. any experience with that?

The specs on this machine are pretty crazy, it's pretty much the exact setup I would use if building from scratch.
I can't wait to get my hands on it. Any feedback on performance would be appreciated too.

 

Well, Jnorman5's the one to ask about breaking apart the RapidDrive.

As far as the external monitor, I was able to connect it to my 42" HDTV (1920 X 1080 or something). Skyrim gave me a headache though. Too much spinning around...

 

Ok, thanks. Hopefully Jnorman is still on the boards!

One other considerations for separating the Rapid Drive is the risk of HD failure. In the RapidDrive scenario, I am concerned that if either the 64GB OR the 750 GB HD's failed, then the whole unit would fail.

If it's not terribly difficult, It might be best to partition the 750 GB in 3 250 GB chunks, and then have different backup policies for each partition. In this day and age, the worst thing possible would be to lose all of one's photos, videos and music.

Thanks for the reply. Happy gaming (or whatever you're using it for).

 

I've thought about doing something similar where RapidDrive would only be active on the SSD and one of the SATA partitions, and then use the other partition as a documents drive. But it might not be the easiest thing to do (I don't feel like doing a full Win7 reinstall).

 

So about 3 weeks later, this is what the numbers look like:

- Seq: 164.9 / 142.1
- 512k: 79.56 / 155.1
- 4k: 1.259 / 2.821
- 4kQD32: 3.130 / 3.675

Now that's interesting. I'm also now using about 100GB on the RapidDrive volume (thanks to a Steam sale).

It's as if it's running better as time goes on.

 

Hi MGD,

Sorry, I am only on the boards every couple of days . Just so you know, I wasn't able to simply break apart the two drives using the RapidDrive tool.

What I did was make the recovery media (in case I screwed something up ), copied the drivers included on the computer (C:/Drivers) onto a USB drive, and then proceeded to run the RapidDrive tool to seperate the drives... I am not sure if it actually did anything but I still did it lol. Then I did a clean install using a downloaded Windows 7 disc with my OEM key. When I did this, I manually deleted all the partitions on both hard drives and specifically installed windows on the mSATA SSD. After this was done, I copied those driver files back to the C drive and when I went into the device manager, I made sure I pointed the device manager to the driver folder I copied. This made sure I would use all the stock drivers so my camera, ports, etc worked. I think I had to download one or two drivers off the Lenovo website but nothing too major.

I have used my beast on my 46 inch 1080p LCD and it looks amazing so no need to worry about restrictions on the HDMI.

Try this link for help on doing a clean install: http://forum.notebookreview.com/7463333-post65.html Although it is for a T420, it does show exactly what programs to use for registry activation, driver placement, etc.

In regards to your other posts, I am running the following set-up. I have all my main programs on my SSD and have my 750GB split into two partitions. One is 64GB where I keep a clone copy of my SSD in case it fails. On the rest, I have all my program files. Now this is where I get a little odd... I am running a 500MB RAMDisk where I keep all of my Chrome files so that my temp internet files are not always accessing either my SSD or HDD. It may be excessive but it works for me.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you need anything else.

PS: Fletchman... Steam Sale = 196GB for me.... oops lol

 

Thank you so much! So I got my Ideapad Y570 today, and before checking back on the boards or anything intelligent, I just rushed in to trying a clean Windows install and really screwed things up.

I ended up installing Win 7 Ultimate on the wrong partition. (The HDD) and I didn't run the RapidDriveTool first either.

Once I realized I screwed it up and formatted the disks incorrectly, I tried ot use the "One Key Restore." As soon as that completed, I got the blue screen of death.

I think I'm going to need to send it in to be re-imaged. It's so depressing.

I was able to get Win 7 loaded, and then I created a copy of the Applications and Drivers to a thumb drive, but the system is otherwise pretty useless because it won't recognize any of the other partitions or hard drives.

I'm pretty bummed, I seriously underestimated how difficult it would be to break these drives apart and get Win 7 on them while they are under my control.

I

 

Hey MGD,

Before sending it off to get re-imaged, I would try and do a clean install again with the HDD taken out. Then the only drive is the SSD and you should be able to select that to install to. Once it is installed, reinstall the HDD. Only do this if you are comfortable with working on your computer components. I have heard of people using this method and it works well.

Let us know how it goes!

 

I Just got an mSATA MyDigitalSSD 64GB for my Y570. I've tried both arrangements. I found that in terms of read speeds, using the SSD on its own had very little to no difference compared to when using it under Rapid Drive with the 750GB 5400RPM HDD. However write speeds were a different story...my write speeds were about halved (i.e. poorer) when using Rapid Drive compared to an SSD alone:

SSD ONLY:


RAPID DRIVE (64GB SSD+HDD as a hybrid):


As far as boot times go I can't see much difference. It is very hard to tell but I'm getting mid 20's to high 20's and it is very inconsistent. So it's hard to say which is better due to the inconsistency in boot times.

 

Hey Pauloz,

I agree with you, boot times aren't that much faster simply due to the fact that RapidDrive will optimize for the boot over time. The main thing that I am concerned about (and the reason I keep them separate as well) is that if one of the disks fails, you lose all of your data. Fletchman is going through that right now. He had RapidDrive installed, the SSD failed, so in turn, he lost all the data on the HDD. At least with it separate, I can do a clone copy of the SSD if it fails and I have a copy on an external drive of my data held on the HDD.

Glad to see that our info is useful to you all!

 

Actually, the Lenovo tech later told me they were replacing the mainboard. So hopefully my data is intact.

If my drives are wiped clean, I think I'm going to break apart RapidDrive. Or at least set it up where RapidDrive only takes up a part of the SATA drive.

 

Fair point you make jnorman. I guess I like the idea of RapidDrive as it means I won't have to worry about managing space on the SSD. At the same time however I'm looking to keep my Y570 long term so I'm thinking SSD failure is definitely on the cards.

Yep I think I'll split up into separate drives. Also to both of you, what are your boot times roughly?

Thanks for your help guys =)

 

I recorded 26 seconds when starting up on battery. Don't know if being plugged in would've made a difference or not.

When I get my laptop back I'll try timing it again.

 

Ah ok that seems about the same as me. I've just reformated and reinstalled win7...I'm going to be keeping the SSD and HDD separate. With nothing installed I'm getting 12-15 second boot times....wish it could stay like that =(

 

I have separate drives with 60GB ADATA XM13 (review in the signature). I was getting 9-10 second boot times with only some devices installed. After a month of use with every driver activated and some additional programs running at startup I get 14-16 second boot times. It has much better read times in comparison to MyDigital.

 

Brag much? Lol but Lowest I've got is 11 seconds but it will get much higher once I install everything

 

Well, I got my Y570 back. I seemed to be able to remove RapidDrive by using the Recovery disks I had burned shortly before I sent my laptop in for repairs. Just had to kill the Lenovo D: partition, join it with the empty space, and then format it into a new D: drive. So I now have a 60GB C: drive and a 683 GB D: drive.

 

It's not about bragging, more about giving people some alternatives and options. I'm aware that there is MyDigital rep on these forums, and he has been helpful. However, there are also many people unhappy with that mSata as you can see here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...lssd-msata-ssd-64gb-very-bad-performance.html

Perhaps I lucked out with my ADATA, or maybe it's consistently better, who knows. If more people would be willing to try it, the more accurate representation we can get. Same thing with Kingstom mS100.

 

Yep understood mate but I've posted my benchmarks at the tope of page 2 and they are better than those ppl complaining about poor performance. I'd say I'm satisfied with the product. After doing a lot of tinkering with startup and optimisations my boot times have improved to around 19-20sec. But it did take a lot of messing around.

 

My new SSD numbers:

 

Nice!! When you say "new SSD" did you buy a better and newer SSD?

 

No, it's the same SSD that came with the laptop. I'm just not using RapidDrive anymore.

 

Ah ok. These speeds are much better than those page 1 so I thought you might have had a change in SSD...just RapidDrive though.

 

Wow... those are awesome speeds... I wonder what I am doing wrong lol

 

Either that or I did something wrong... hehehe...

If I don't reply for a while, it's because I'm busy playing Skyrim...

 

Hahaha I doubt that you did anything wrong... I'm just trying to figure out why my speeds are so slow in comparison. I even re-ran the benchmark to confirm.

What is the model of your SSD?? Mine is TOSHIBA THNSNB064GMCJ. Found it under the drive's properties.

Thanks!

 

Haha waaait let's make sure that Fletchman was using random test data...ye? Or was it 0 Fills?

 

My SSD is a Samsung MZMPA064HMDR-000.

And I used the default test data, which is random. I ran it twice to make sure it wasn't a fluke, and I upped the test runs from 1 to 5 (just once) to see if that made a difference in the numbers (which it didn't seem to).

The only other variable is that I'm using the Lenovo Windows 7 (as opposed to a clean install). Not sure if that would really affect disk speed like that though (it's supposed to be optimized for faster boot times though).

 

Hmmm... sounds like I got the hose with the Toshiba rather than the Samsung... I guess I can look forward to upgrading in a year or so lol

 

I've already looked for those samsungs...couldn't find them anywhere

 

Woo Hoo!

I managed to restore my backup! However, I'm once again using RapidDrive (I couldn't restore to the SSD only because it was too small) although now my C: is partitioned to 250GB and I have a roughly 500GB D: drive.

One Key Recovery is weird. I basically did a factory restore using DVD's, deleted the D: partition, expanded the C: partition, recreated the D: partition, then copied all my backup files from my external hard drive. I would've never guessed to do that without a hint from the Lenovo support forums. I would've thought that OKR would allow you to restore directly from an external source, but I guess not.

Anyway, once things settle down (and I get all my libraries over to the D: drive) I'll run the CrystalMark numbers again to see what happens. My boot times were around 15 seconds without RapidDrive and it now seems a bit longer after restoring, but then it could be that Veriface adds a few seconds to the boot up.

 

Ok, so that was ugly,

With the new partitions, CrystalMark gave numbers similar to my 5400RPM SATA drive. I was using about 80GB on the C: partition (which is 254GB).

Since most of the program files were Steam games, I used an application to move most of my Steam Games to the D: drive (leaving Skyrim on the SSD of course). So now my CrystalMark numbers look like this:



Which isn't bad.

I'm tempted to do another OKR backup, then back up the D: drive, then do another factory reinstall with the DVD's, and then restoring to the 60GB partition to regain those monster numbers I had earlier. But maybe it's not worth it.

I'll play Skyrim and see if I can tell the difference. That'll be the deciding factor.

 

There is a couple of Chinese sellers on Ebay, very expensive. I bought mine used on Ebay. Other than my frustration of (not) being able to move my original image to this drive this thing is great. I am running a clean install and here is what I get:

 

Ok, two weeks later...

I shrunk down my C: drive to 60GB. I now get these numbers:



So this is RapidDrive with a smaller partition. My D: scores are considerably lower. Really not sure what to make of this.

 

And now, about 3 months later:



I think I'm going to try expanding out the C: drive back to about 100GB. I think Windows is slowing things down as the capacity shrinks.

 

Thanks for posting this info, everyone. I'm considering formatting and turning rapid drive on, because the ssd is getting tight with all of my applications installed, even though I store all of my files on the 750 gb mechanical drive. Hmmmm....what to do. If I'm reading everything correctly, it isn't possible to backup my current system (rapid drive off), and restore it to a fresh machine with rapid drive on.....or maybe I'm reading something wrong.

 

There is a RapidDrive tool available on the Lenovo support site. Supposedly, you can run the tool and it'll start up RapidDrive for you automatically. I've never tried it though, since my Y570 came with RapidDrive already active.

I'd also back everything up first just in case, however. And be sure to make recovery disks too. You never know.

Good luck!

 

Thanks for that info. I'll back up, give it a try, and report back in case someone else is interested.

Edit: I'm only seeing a tool for uninstalling RapidDrive, and the RapidDrive installer, which I think will not do what I'm looking to do. I might give it a try any way after backing up.

 

Hey, so what happened? Did it blow everything up?

 

I haven't gotten to it yet. My free time got taken up fixing a Dell for a friend. I'll probably give it a go tomorrow.

 

I am personally running a 256 Gig Msata I just got from SSD, mSATA, Compact Flash, SDHC, SD, Flash Drives, and more | My Digital Discount I just got it this week and so far this thing is FAST. I am running it as a dual boot with Windows and Linux with no problems. But the read and write speed on this thing is pretty fast. It boots in 12 seconds. My personal suggestion is buy for the future and get the largest Msata you can at sata3 speed.

 

Well, going that route makes RapidDrive unnecessary, as does replacing the SATA hard drive with an SSD. If you're got the money and are willing to spend it, go for it. That eliminates any debate about RapidDrive performance, unless 256GB isn't big enough for your system drive.

 

So, I've expanded my C: drive in RapidDrive to 118 GB (I was shooting for 120, but, oh well...)

I moved Skyrim back to the C: and moved the saved games there too. So here are the Crystalmark numbers:



now I'm only using 54 GB, so according to some RapidDrive sources everything should still be on the SSD portion. The write speeds increased across the board and the 4K read speeds drastically improved as well.

 

I just got my Y570 refurb from Lenovo outlet and it looks like i don't have installed RapiDrive, i have SSD and SATA listed separately as C:\ and D:\drives in disk management console. My WIndows was installed on C:\ drive and D:\ drive was completely empty. Is it good idea to install RapidDrive or just use my system as is?
And can SSD which is TOSHIBA THNSNB064GMCJ be swapped for bigger SSD SATA III?

 

If you can manage your OS on the SSD, keep it the way it is. RapidDrive is good if you don't want to worry about running out of space on the SSD.

I don't know about whether that Toshiba drive is compatible or not.

 

Hi Fletchman,

I see that you've done quite a bit of experimenting with various rapiddrive & non rapiddrive setups.

I've got myself Enhance your IdeaPad Y570 Laptop - 08626TU - Dusk Black (with USB 3.0): Weekly Deal | Lenovo | (US)
with a 32 GB SSD same as yours.

Crystal mark on the fresh machine gives me:

I see that some of those figures are half what you've got with various setups. In the mid-long run, how does the OS on SSD vs rapiddrive fare?

Any suggestions, tweaks to improve perf as I just got a 5.9 for Primary HDD on the Windows exp index and a boot time of 33secs which i feel is a bit sub par for an SSD based setup.

PS Ignore my signature, that's the old machine.

 

Well, I'm on a "modified" RapidDrive where the C: drive is 118GB and I have a D: partition with the remainder, as opposed the default where the C: drive is huge and the D: drive is about 30GB. And my SSD is a 64GB, so there may be some differences. If jnorman5 is around we can ask him to check what his numbers are now, since it's been about around 7-8 months since we did our initial testing. I am kinda thinking that RapidDrive somewhat improves performance over time, because my numbers seem to get better; even before the "modified" version the numbers seemed to have been improving.

I have a feeling, however, that RapidDrive is a time bomb waiting to go off. Lenovo seems to have pulled support, and there has been no news or no updates released for it. The last thing I heard was that "RapidDrive Advanced" was defective and they told all the ThinkPad users to remove it (something about RapidDrive utilizing a usb thumb drive and things blowing up when it was removed). The only thing I can do is back up frequently and hope that it blows up before my warranty expires. Hopefully I'm wrong about that.

As for tweaking, the last time I did it I scored a 7.9 for drive performance, and that was around the time my C: drive was 60GB. My current boot times are around 21 seconds (basically, a cold boot using a stopwatch, with 21 seconds being the time I can enter my password. I turned off Veriface because that slows it down).

 

Well I went ahead and did a clean install and the performance seems to be about 1.5 to 2x of the out of the box rapiddrive.
Around 16-17 secs to password screen instead of 23-25.
As you said, the thing with rapid drive is lack of user control, and lack of lenovo support. At least I can manage the separate OS and user files rather than relying on some behind the scenes voodoo.