T420 Dual HDD + SDD setup

I'm not sure if this question has already been addressed, but I ordered my T420 and it is shipping on August 9th.

I heard a lot of talk about getting an SSD and an HDD on the laptop using the SSD to have the OS and essentials and the HDD as the main storage. Are there any step-by-step guides on how to do this? I am pretty new to computers, but the potential of the combinations is too good, so I want to give it a try.

Also, would this void my warranty? And which SSD would you reccomend?

Thanks for your help!

 

Here you go.... this should get you moving:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/574993-msata-faq-basic-primer.html

Does not void the warranty, and the most popular (but hardest to find in stock) SSD seems to be the Intel 310 series 80GB.

 

There are many combinations in which you can have SSD & HDD on the T420. You can put the SSD in the primary bay and the HDD in the optical bay using an Ultrabay adapter (or do this vice versa). If you don't wish to lose the optical drive another alternative is to use an mSATA drive which fits where the Wireless WAN card is and have the HDD remaining in the primary bay.

Setting up the two in Windows is very easy, you just install the OS on your main drive (normally this is the SSD because it is quicker), then with the hard drive you can format it using "Computer Management" under Windows and you can start storing up files on the drive within minutes.

There are many SSDs on the market, the mSATA drives seem to be quite robust at the time of writing. I would avoid the Intel 320 as it has a destructive bug at the moment. The Intel X25-M, its predecessor is more reliable. The Intel 510 which uses a faster SATA III interface does have a slight restart issue on ThinkPads but overall hasn't had any major reliability problems as yet. Crucial and OCZ also provide SATA III drives but you need to tweak Windows otherwise it may crash without intervention when using Intel SATA drivers.

 

Thanks for the help! So would I just create the recovery disk, then get the mSATA, then get into the bios, set it as the main boot drive then use the recovery disk to get the OS installed on the SSD?

 

It's even easier than that. I did not have to change the bios boot order since it already had USB and optical first on the list (but check anyway... just make sure optical is before any of the drives).

Burn Recovery discs (1 CD + 3 DVD for me)> remove HDD and install SSD > boot with first recovery (boot) disc and follow instructions.

That will install the factory image on the SSD, including the recovery partition that you can then delete.

 

alright. just curious, but which SSD are you using for your t420?

 

I have an Intel 310-series 80GB SSD.... just installed a couple days ago and everything went smoothly