X220 and Storage options for a field tech.

Hey guys, just bought a used/new x220 and it came with a 120gb Intel SSD and the original 250gb HDD in an enclosure. Problem is the 120gb is getting too small. I'm a field tech running 3 lines of copiers so I have about 40gb of manuals and run 3 differnent OS in a virtual machine, each OS having drivers and utilities for testing. I have a seperate 50gb partation just for my manuals and with only 1 virtal machine loaded I'm left with 10gb on my 120gb SSD.

So do I just throw the 250gb HDD back in it, upgrade to a larger SSD at more money? I really don't want to add more money into this, but I was thinking of adding either a 64gb SD card with all my manuals or a 64gb mSATA on the inside. SD would be nice because I can pop it out and move it to another laptop if needed but not sure on reliability vs a mSATA on the inside.

Thoughts?


Greg

 

Put the 250GB HDD back in.

How much RAM does the laptop have right now? This upgrade would be inexpensive, yet very effective, for virtual machines.

 

Added another 4gb stick for a total of 8gb.

 

How much space total do you need? If you have 10gb left and don't need any more there's no problem. If you need more, pick up a 160gb Intel off ebay for $120-140, and sell the 120gb.

 

That's a good idea. I do like the quickness of the SSD especially when it comes to booting. Bumping it to a 160gb would give me a little more room. Not sure how much space anyone really needs, but it's good to have more left over.

 

Sure, if money is no object.

 

The next bump up is the Samsung 830, which is around $350 unless you can wait for a sale. Keep in mind, SSD performance starts to degrade as they fill. You'd be on the edge with a 160GB drive, perhaps over if you've got the recovery partition and other Lenovo software.

 

I moved over all my manuals to a 32gb SD card so I can eliminate the 4gb partition. Since I also have the original 250gb HDD with the recovery still on it I can get rid of that partition of 9gb. So that would free up almost 50gb of space which would work.

Any negatives on losing the recovery partition? I did DVD backups also.

 

If you have the DVDs, nope. You just need to use them to perform recovery functions.

I basically do the SD card solution for my T500; I keep my music on an SD card that stays in my computer.

 

As MidnightSun said, if you've already made your Recovery discs, you can reclaim the Recovery partition. (Open Disk Management, delete Q, extend C.)

 

I'm going to run with the 32gb SD card for all my manuals, delete the 40gb and 9gb partitions and cll it done. That will give me a bit of space to grow on the SSD. If the 32gb SD card starts getting close I'll upgrade it to a 64gb card and move stuff over.

Thank again guys.

 

A recovery partition on an SSD just doesn't fit in the budget. You can copy the files off of the recovery partition and use the commands in one of the scripts on that partition to recreate the drive layout exactly as it was from the factory later. You just need to pull the hard disk out and use another computer with windows and WAIK installed to do the imaging (the drive images are WIM files).

 

Well started to move stuff over to my 32gb Patroit Class 10 card and it's slow.

 

^^^ Patriot "Class 10" is not Class 10, not even Class 4. So, yea, it's slow.

 

Well everything moved over to the SD card OK, took a while but it's all there. Manuals all open fine, not sure if a better, faster card would open them quicker but it feels the same.