T510/Replacing Primary Drive

I want to get a T510 with an Intel 160GB SDD as my primary drive and the 500GB 7200RPM drive in the Ultrabay. From postings I've read here, I shouldn't hold my breath on when the Intel 160GB drive may be available configured by Lenovo. So my question is: if I order a T510 with the 500GB 7200RPM drive as my primary (and the ultrabay hard drive adapter), then buy my own 160 GB Intel SDD, how difficult would it be for me to get the system up and running once I've flipped the drives?

I don't think the system comes with recovery disks, but presumably there's an application that will create recovery disks, and I could run that, then flip the drives, and recover all of the software the SSD.

Will this cause me to lose my "enhanced" Windows 7 experience? Is that meaningful? Is there some better way I should be thinking of doing this?

 

I'm assuming that the hd bay is similar to the one in my T400 (I mean, why would they change it?), then it takes maybe 2 minutes to swap drives. Theres one screw in the way to the hd-caddy, and thats it. Then there are just 4 little screws holding the caddy to the drive.

Easy-peasy.

 

The T510 does not have the one-screw access bay on the side like the T500 (and most previous Thinkpads), probably in the interest of saving space for ports. However, I would expect that there is a simple cover to remove on the underside of the laptop for hard drive access, but I haven't seen any T510 underside pictures, so I can't say for certain.

 

I'm not so worried about the mechanical aspect of the switch, and more the software transfer. Am I right to assume that Lenovo includes software that will allow creating a backup disk, and that this will allow me to replicate the Thinkvantage software that they installed on the 500GB hdd onto the 160GB SDD? And if I do this, will I lose the Windows Enhanced experience in Windows 7?

 

Question 1: Right on. Basically, the recovery disks that you burn (a set of 1 CD + 2DVDs) is just a gigantic disk image that restores your machine exactly to factory settings.

Question 2: I would assume that you still have the Windows EE, since the recovery disks are an image of a Lenovo factory install, not a clean install of Windows 7. However, a lot of these EE tweaks are pointless or negligible on an SSD, so I'm not sure how much difference you would see with or without EE.

 

Thanks MidnightSun.

If the recovery disks are an image, is it possible to install them on a smaller drive (since I'd be moving from a 500GB to 160GB primary drive)? Or does an image work properly as long as the space taken up by the drive imaged is not more than the capacity of the new drive?

 

You can also use something like Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery or Ghost to take an image of the disk over a network or a external flash/hdd. After you replace the physical drive, just slap it back on and you're done...Under 45 minutes..This is assuming that by this time you have other programs and things that you don't want to re-install...

 

They will work fine on any size disk, as long as there is space for the windows install. So just don't be trying to use a 8GB drive and you will be fine.

 

Ummm, I wanted to say that backup will allow you to create an identical copy of you system disk including the application software. What you do next will depend on the type of system that you want ultimately. If you want a larger systen disk probably you will have to expand the disk with Acronos.
Or use Diskpar or disk managemeny to create partitions.
Renee

 

OK, I'm pretty much sold on this. Planning to buy the T510 with the 500GB 7200 RPM hard drive, buy my own Intel 160GB SSD, then run Rescue and Recovery to burn recovery disks, swap the Intel SSD into the primary drive bay and put the 500GB drive into the Ultrabay (with the adapter), then reinstall from Rescue and Recovery onto the 160GB SSD.

Any words of warning before I order this and embark on this project?

 

You can just use the built-in Windows 7 imaging create and restore -works great - even does partitions.

 

So I've found some forums on the OCZ Forums site that make a great deal out of the importance of "aligning" the drives and state that there can be issues when you restore to an SSD an image that was created from a larger hard drive (even if the data on the larger hard drive is within the SSD's size). The illustrations there of the steps that they recommend seem far beyond me. Does Rescue and Recovery take care of all of this, or is the plan I described earlier overly simple, and am I not going to get a result I'm happy with?

To be clear, my plan is to order the T510 with a 500GB HDD, as shipped that will (system and all) be well under 160GB, do a Rescue and Recovery complete image, replace the 500GB HDD with the Intel 160GB SSD, restore using Recue and Recovery, and then put the 500GB HDD into the Ultrabay.

 

I wouldn't do that. Instead, I would just burn the restore cd's and use those to install windows onto the sdd. That way you get the best results.

 

This. There's no reason to buy imaging software for a home computer. Windows comes with it now, has since Vista, and it works just great.

Restore CDs are the worst option. If you're going the reinstall route, you're better off doing a clean install from a pristine W7 install disc. Restore discs include all the crapware.

See my "ABR" tool (sig) that allows you to backup and restore windows activation when doing a reinstall (W7 support is in Beta).