x200 ssd type

I notice that Lenovo now offers an 80GB Intel SSD on the X200 for U.S. purchases. Couple questions:

1. Anybody know if the drive is the G2 model?

2. Does the 160GB version give any better performance than the 80GB? I can do without the extra capacity as long as the performance is the same; otherwise I'd want to install the 160GB one.

2. Does the X200 use 1.8" or 2.5" drives? That is to say, if I configured one with the cheapest mechanical drive available, could I then buy an Intel SSD on my own and just swap it in?

Side question while I'm here-

If I use the IBM software to burn my own recovery disks, is any downside to nuking the hidden "recovery" partition when setting up the new drive?

 

1. Yes

2. Yes, in benchmark (can't find the link right now) but no in real life usage. But SSD (and traditional hard disks too) runs slower when they are really filled up, and 80GB is kind of small. I use it on my work laptop, which I don't store media files, and I am still able to fill it up with more than 70GB of files. If you are like me, require 70+GB storage, don't get the 80GB. (Mine was a G1, bought it when 80GB cost as much as the 160GB now, so I didn't have a choice)

3. 2.5". The swap is easy. Lenovo even has a manual teaching you how to remove parts. Google "X200 hardware maintenance manual".

4. If you make recovery disks, I don't see why that would happen. Why would burning recovery DVDs erase the hidden partition?

 

Thanks for the response.

I wasn't really asking whether making the restore disks would erase the hidden partition; I was asking whether, having made restore disks, I could safely erase the hidden partition *intentionally* since I have the restore disks to fall back on.

That is to say: do the restore disks depend on the hidden partition being there in any way, or are they completely "stand alone"?

If they're standalone then I might nuke the hidden partition just to reclaim that additional space on the drive.

 

Yes, you can manually delete the hidden partition once you have successfully burned your recovery disks. They're the same thing.

 

One suggestion is that make sure the recovery disk is viable before you deletion the recovery patition.

Bad Thing happened to me once when I was young and stupid.

 

And you can download rescue and recovery from Lenovo to make recovery disks, you don't need the hidden partition.

 

How does that work? Wouldn't the R&R disks have to include a copy of the OS? Doesn't seem like something they'd let just anybody download.