X220 - Beginners thread on upgrading.

Hi

I have created this thread so that those like myself can ask questions and learn to do upgrades themselves on their x220.
I'm hoping that those of you who have experience, could share your knowledge.

I have read the 180 posts on the X220 owners thread and other threads but a lot of the information assumes you already know how to do upgrades. For example, I read that when you install an SSD, you have to do a clean install, but how do you do that.

I personally would like to know the steps needed to install the 80gb Intel 310 mSATA and how to setup the laptop afterwards. If any of you have a video on how to do this, it would be great.

 

Hit the training and support site. There's plenty of videos showing how to install and remove parts on the X220. The mSATA is not there, but the WWAN card is. Since they share the same slot, the procedure will be very similar. There's a link in the sticky.

You don't need to do a clean install after installing a SSD. You may use the recovery discs if you wish, but you'll need an optical drive.

 

Do you mean I just leave everything as is on the HHD and intall the operating system, by way of the recovery disks, on the ssd?

 

What is the sticky?

Never mind. Figured it out.
Thank You

 

If you use the recovery discs, you'll need to first make them from the original hard drive. You could leave in tact I suppose. I'd make the recovery discs and a copy of your SWTools folder, then blank the original, but that's me.

 

What is the best way to blank the original HDD?

 

SecureErase or a drive wiper if you are going to get rid of it. But a simple format if you are going to reuse it.

For the install, you can do a clean install from your original OS disk but of course you will need to do all the updates and driver installations yourself although something like Win 7 makes that pretty automatic.

If you do it from the R&R disks you got with your machine it will put the original factory image you started with on the disk. So you will need to add all your data and files from backup and reinstall all programs.

Third you can do it from a good backup but I find that the hardest because you need to know how to get the disk partitioned and set up for boot and system files. But it is ez to do if you are familar with a few things.

Probably the easiest but likely limited to a Win 7 install is to take your HDD that is as you would want it and put it either in an external enclosure or in a optical drive caddy for a HDD and clone it to the initialized (you can look up how to do that) and formatted (ditto) SSD in the main drive slot. Of course you need to have bought or have available drive cloning software. Don't do this is you have XP on the HDD as XP is harder to get aligned correctly on the SSD. Win 7 is much easier on alignment issues.

Why clone out to in? I have no idea but when I was doing my original due diligence on setting up my first SSD, I found that suggestion on one of the Acronis sites and it has worked for me as recently as today moving my OS from my C300 to my M4. And as often as I read about people having problems cloning new drives it is generally because they have tried to clone with the old HDD in the main drive slot and the new SSD in the external enclosure or in the optical drive caddy.

Try it you will like it and cloning software will be useful for backups and Lord knows, with the reliability of SSDs particularly in newer platforms you will need to be very careful about having recent and complete backups on hand.

 

For a clean install you need to have a copy of your OS. Is this correct?
The operating system is coming pre-installed on the X220.

Found the answer:

 

After making the recovery disks, do I then format the HDD first and then use the recovery disks to set up the OS on the SSD?
How do I set up the computer to acknowledge that I want the OS to go on the SSD and not the HDD?

Found the answer:

 

I found this info on another thread on this site at: http://forum.notebookreview.com/len...tweak-windows-7-after-installation-msata.html .

Do you really have to go through all these steps to get your system running with the SSD and HDD? I followed up to step 5 then it got too confusing.

Can someone explain in layman's terms the easiest way to set this up.

 

when you update your drivers do you remove the old version first?