What SSD to buy for T530 as replacement for the HDD drive?

For X220, I will need to buy a thinner one and I wonder if this is the case for T530?

What model/brand of SSD do you guys recommend? Which SSD has the best dollar/space value?

 

I'd recommend you get the mSATA SSD, then you can keep the platter drive for storage or dump it to save weight. The T530 uses a standard 9.5mm drive, not the 7mm drive like the X220 or T430.

 

I would get a Samsung 840 or 840Pro-(If you want the fastest SSD), also the intel 530 is very good and what I use of my W530.

Personally I would get an UltraBay caddy and stick your HDD in that for storage and the SSD in the primary drive bay for the OS and Applications.

That is unless you need to have your optical drive attached at all times. These days I don't use optical media that often and when I do I just connect a portable optical drive.

 

This is what I did...great setup. I have a 256GB 840 pro as my OS drive and moved my 500 GB platter drive to the ultrabay. Havent used my optical drive yet but I can swap it in if I ever need to.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk 4

 

Avoid caddies on Thinkpads. I heard from reviews they have this ODD power saver technology that shuts off the drive everytime it is not in use, making the entire experience feel wonky.

I'm going with ZaZ. Get a Msata drive.

 

I wouldn't be so dismissive. UltraBay caddy adapters are convenient -- in fact, Lenovo itself sells it, and offers configuration option for having an additional drive using it.

Once you tell Windows 7 to treat a drive sitting in UltraBay as "internal," everything is cool. Power saving setting on drives is a separate matter.

Back to OP question: I recommend Samsung and Crucial. The T540 main bay (and UltraBay caddy adapter) can take drives of 7mm or 9.5mm height. mSATA SSD is a great consideration. In some of my ThinkPads, I have mSATA SSD + SSD in main bay + HDD in UltraBay.

 

Never had a problem with the caddy in my W520..

Anyway, Samsung and Crucial are great choices to consider. I'd also check out Plextor and Intel as well, though Intel isn't as cost-effective as the former three.

 

This is most likely a dumb question but how can I tell Windows 7 to treat my ultrabay drive as internal?

 

my vote would be for Crucial or Samsung SSD, or a Crucial mSATA SSD

 

I second this question. I don't know how to the system recognize the ultrabay drive as internal.

 

My vote goes to Intel SSD. Bought a S3500 300 GB for my stationary lately. Not the cheapest but very fast.

 

The UltraBay HDD is treated as an "ejectable" device and will always show up in the "Safely Remove Hardware" tray icon (next to the clock at the right-hand side of the Taskbar). This is fine and good, so that you won't swap out the HDD in the middle of a write.

However, the "Safely Remove Hardware" feature can be a minor hindrance when you intend to have a fixed UltraBay HDD that is treated as an internal device, just like the one sitting in the primary bay. Every time you want to remove a USB device, the list includes your very own UltraBay HDD.

A solution to this is adding a couple of KEYs and DWORDs in the Registry that effectively tell Windows to treat the device on that port as internal (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ services \ msahci \ Controller0 \ Channel1 \ TreatAsInternalPort = 1).

Check these posts.

 

No idea why you think that, I like many others have used caddies without any problems. No caddy I have ever used is had any Optical Disk power saving technology incorporated, the power saving feature is be part of the OS or physical drive, not the caddy.

I personally have always used the standard OS settings with my caddy, meaning it's treated as a removable drive and I've had no problems but it's good to know you can set it to as an internal drive. - Thanks for the tip Kaso.