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    W510 owners ! Replacing Mini PCI-e slot with SSD(boot drive)

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by bunta, Jul 5, 2010.

  1. bunta

    bunta Notebook Consultant

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    I had just read that the new Dell M4500 has the option for 2 hard drives along with an optical drive!! It now has the option of integrating an SSD mini PCIe card along with a 2nd hard drive for expanded storage.

    That triggered back a thought i had about a year ago... I am now curious if anyone had attempted this, and had success...

    Now..some of our thinkpads have a mini PCI-e slot for WWAN card ex. Gobi WAN card. Im wondering if we can put an Mini PCIe SSD in the WWAN slot and make the primary drive.

    Possible?
     
    bunta, Jul 5, 2010
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  2. erik

    erik modifier

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    ThinkPad BIOSes cannot see mPCI-e devices as boot devices.   modding the BIOS to whitelist such a card won't help, either, as the BIOS would have to be rewritten for such functionality.

    are mPCI-e SSDs actually reaching 4K random transfer speeds and IOPS compared to 1.8" and 2.5" SSDs?   if not then you'll be going backward in performance.
     
    erik, Jul 5, 2010
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  3. bunta

    bunta Notebook Consultant

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    Yes, I am in fact going back in performance but i gain an optical drive which is what i really need right now.. it would be perfect if i could use that pcie slot of OS, 2nd HD for storage and a optical drive intact ready to use.

    I am using an Ultrabay right now, and its a pain having to remove it to use the optical drive.
     
    bunta, Jul 5, 2010
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  4. moral hazard

    moral hazard Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    There should be some kind of adapter that will let you connect your optical drive to a USB or eSATA port.
     
    moral hazard, Jul 5, 2010
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  5. erik

    erik modifier

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    rip your media to ISO format and use MagicDisc.   i use it on all my systems including my ThinkStation (which already has two physical DVD/RW drives).

    Freeware MagicISO Virtual CD/DVD-ROM(MagicDisc) Overview

    if that doesn't suit you then what moral hazard said about an external USB or eSATA caddy would work great.   i did that with my X61s to save from carrying the ultrabase.
     
    erik, Jul 6, 2010
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