The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Upgrade to SSD while keeping thinkVantage button

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by Yagami0325, Jan 12, 2015.

  1. Yagami0325

    Yagami0325 Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    2
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Hi all,

    I'm new to the community. i've done some search about my questions but couldn't find any good answer.

    I have a T420 with HDD and I'm kicking around the idea to upgrade it to a SSD. My goal is to keep the function of the thinkvantage button with the new hard drive. I don't care what happens to the old drive. Maybe i'll get an ultrabay and replace the optical drive with it. but that's not the point..

    Basically i want to have the entire Q drive (lenovo recovery). I don't mind re-installing all the softwares. Just wanted to have a still-functioning blue button (thinkvantage). from my understanding a lot of people lose the blue button after they upgrade to the SSD. (not a big deal i know... but still...)

    For now what i'm planning to do is
    1) create recovery media using the lenovo tool in my laptop. (win 7 Home premuim sp1)
    2) physically install the new SSD and swap the old HDD.
    3) boot the machine using recovery media and intall everything on the new SSD.

    does this look ok? my concern is that do i still get to keep the blue button after the steps above? in other words, does the recovery media create a new Q drive on my SSD along with the recovered Win 7?

    Thanks in advance, any suggestions would be helpful...

    Chris.
     
    Yagami0325, Jan 12, 2015
    #1
  2. ajkula66

    ajkula66 Courage and Consequence

    Reputations:
    3,018
    Messages:
    3,198
    Likes Received:
    2,318
    Trophy Points:
    231
    Welcome to the forum!

    You're on the right track for what you're looking to accomplish.

    Once you've installed the OS on the SSD I'd nuke the recovery partition though...

    Happy upgrading.
     
    ajkula66, Jan 12, 2015
    #2
  3. Yagami0325

    Yagami0325 Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    2
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5

    any particular reason why you want to nuke the Q partition? I know it takes about 16G but mostly likely, i'm getting a 256G SSD so it's just a small portion of what's on the SSD. plus i'm relatively computer illiterate.... so having something idiot proof is important... although i don't use the blue button nearly as often as i'd expect...

    do you think the recovery disc is enough in order to create a Q partition on the new SSD and also make the blue button still function as before? that's my major concern...

    thanks a lot for reply...
     
    Yagami0325, Jan 13, 2015
    #3
  4. ZaZ

    ZaZ Super Model Super Moderator

    Reputations:
    4,982
    Messages:
    34,001
    Likes Received:
    1,418
    Trophy Points:
    581
    I find a better solution to be doing a clean install, picking only the ThinkVantage software I want and leaving the rest off. Once finished, I make an image using True Image, which I can put back at any time in minutes. A lot of hard drive manufacturers offer free gimped versions of True Image, but they usually do what I need from them.
     
    ZaZ, Jan 13, 2015
    #4