T440s: Best approach to putting OS on M.2 drive?

Hi,

My T440s should be arriving by the end of this week, and I've got a 128GB M.2 drive coming in the mail. I was planning to put the OS and programs on that drive, and to put data on the 500MB HD that comes with the computer. I chose Windows 7.

I was wondering what the consensus is at this point for the easiest way to move the OS to the M.2 drive. Can I just have it recover off the recovery partition on the HD onto the M.2 drive? Does it work better to clone the HD onto the M.2? Install a fresh install of Windows (Does this have driver issues, and can it be done with a thumb drive or do I need a external optical drive)?

I know there has been some discussion of this, but I think it's scattered between several threads so I'm having trouble tracking it down, and besides I thought it might be helpful to have a single dedicate thread since others may have the same question.

Thanks!

 

I had the same question and @sbalarajan offered some advice in post #85 here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ideapad-essential/726470-42mm-m-2-ssd-y510p-9.html

I've since decided to go the route of two 2.5" drives in my T440p, and I'll probably just create a recovery thumbdrive to reinstall the factory Win8 on the SSD rather than bother with a fresh copy of Win8 and all the driver issues that might entail.

 

When I replaced the HDD in my T440s with a SSD, I broke the chain between the small cache SSD and the HDD first, then installed the OS on the full size SSD. The small cache SSD in the system is currently unused. I could use it for swap or hibernation, but for now, it isn't being used at all.

 

How did you do that exactly? (With your hammer?) For the os, did you use the recovery drive or a clean install?

Hadn't considered yet what to do with the 16gb drive. Hibernation isn't a bad idea, though that wastes 4 gb.

 

Removed ExpressCache with eccmd.exe. Then removed the programs by uninstalling. After that, I re-partitioned the drive.

Regarding the use of the drive, if it were possible to move the hibernation file there and use the native Windows 8.1 rapid start ability I would. However, it isn't possible to move that file. So, I'll just use the drive for storage since I don't need any other acceleration. The Samsung SSD and boot is plenty fast as are all of the other I/O operations.

 

Which SSD did you buy? I'm looking to buy one for my T440s.

 

I use SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD256BW 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - Newegg.com

 

But that's not an M.2 drive. I'm looking for an m.2 ssd.

 

Oh, you can't move the rapid start partition to the M.2 drive? I was thinking if I followed some of the instructions here ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo/736918-t440s-upgrade-tips-3.html#post9447929) I would be able to move it to the 16GB M.2 drive. Also, if you have the rapid start, do you even need a hibernation partition, or are they one and the same?

For mephistopheles, I just got the 128GB MyDigitalSSD. I'd like a 500GB SSD, but currently it's just too expensive. This way, once they come down in price, I can have 500GB+128GB which is more than enough. Incidentally, I was kind of shocked at how small they are. So tiny.

 

Sorry, I deviated from the original context of this thread. I don't have the OS on a M.2 storage device. I also don't use the third part products for rapid this, and cache that. Butting out now.

 

Where did you get it from? How much did you pay?

 

Their website links to either mydigitaldiscounts or amazon (which uses that site as a vendor.) oddly, amazon was like $1 cheaper on shipping, so I went through them. It cost about $100, and came pretty fast. Still don't have a computer to put it in though.

 

I have Windows 7 running on my 24GB M.2!

AMA

 

Care to share what you did just to help us out?

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ideapad-essential/739775-successful-install-windows-7-24gb-ssd.html