MSATA on the W530

Hi, all --
My purchase decision is between the T530 and the W530.
The T530 allows an mSATA device ... new technology, seems to function as a hard disk cache ala Momentus. Nice if it's true.
The web site doesn't list an option for an mSATA. Does anyone know whether there's a slot for this if I buy one on the market??
Thanks.

The mSATA card takes the same slot as the WWAN card, so make sure to order one without the Gobi 3000 and you can install an aftermarket mSATA card of your choice if you feel comfortable doing so. Mind, this isn't that much of a downside with how overpriced (borderline gouging) Lenovo is for storage and memory versus the open market.
But no, Lenovo doesn't have any way to purchase the W530 w/ the mSATA option which is very sad to me. I'm aiming to get a W530 that will eventually have mSATA + dual 1TB hard drives to use for virtualization work but I'll have to do all the drives aftermarket.

Similar Messages

Does the W530 bios have a scheduled bios startup time?

I want to be able to use my laptop as an alarm clock, get me up in the morning and ready to do a few things before work. Yeah I have a phone, but my problem is it's too easy for me to just reset my phone time and go back to bed. I do it ALL the time. I figure it'd be harder and less appealing to shut down my laptop after it's booted up and played an alarm noise.
I know it's a weird question, but can the bios for the W530 support time based automatic bootup of the system via the internal clock?

I don't think it has a setting where if it's full off, IT will power on at a specific time. I had a dell workstation desktop that had this feature, but I have yet to see it in a laptop.
W530(2436-CTO): i7-3720QM, nVidia Quadro K2000M,16GB RAM, 500 GB hard drive, 128GB mSATA SSD, Ubuntu 14.04 Gnome, Centrino Ultimate-N 6300.
Yoga 3 Pro: Intel Core-M 5Y70, Intel HD 5300, 8GB RAM, 128GB eMMC, Windows 8.1, Broadcom Wireless 802.11ac.

RAID and SSD Caching Notes for the W530

Here are some interesting compatibility and limitations issues I've encountered with the W530 on Windows 7 and 8 and Linux. To the point, a trio of SSD units may prove superior to two physical disks plus an mSATA SSD for several reasons outlined here.
Original goals: quick restore of a previous OS state, data resillience on the road, and use of Intel's SSD caching feature in RST (which is fully compatible with the Lenovo W-series).
Since there are several issues involved, you may want to consider adding the RAID option only after understanding these tradeoffs, which presumably still exist on latest products.
APS (active protection) does not work when RAID is in use. Show stopper! I really don't want a head crash even with a RAID 1 mirror. APS is an outstanding feature of IBM/Lenovo products and may give better overall data stability than running with a mirror in which case both heads might crash from a drop or jar, without APS. (Disks these days sometimes have their own APS built-in so that's worth considering as well.)
Intel's Rapid Storage caching solution requires RAID to implement on an mSATA cache. See #1.
Reverting to a previous OS image by splitting and reverting to a mirror is not fast. It's easier to break the pair and swap the disks but far easier solutions are available.
Documentation is sparse for the Intel RST product and Lenovo could help fill in the gaps.
Without Rescue and Recovery, which I've used in the past to revert to earlier OS builds, other backup/restore options are still required. It is VERY HELPFUL to have a product purchased with a Windows 8 license in the EFI firmware, so that rebuilds aren't a problem. If you experience rebuild issues, quickly contact Lenovo support for workarounds and solutions. I recommend testing a rebuild several times before putting your system into production.
On a related note, the APS feature is currently unsupported on Linux because of lack of documentation for the output stream of the positioning sensor in recent Lenovo products.
Workarounds and Problems:
ExpressCache, which Lenovo provides, is simple to use as an alernative to Intel's RST-based caching.
Lenovo warns that ExpressCache is incompatible with TrueCrypt and BitLocker encryption.
FDE (full disk encryption) drives and FDE SSDs are presumably available as a workaround to #2.
I'm glad I have the RAID option under the hood, but I'm currently not using it. I would if I were on pure SSD storage, which does not require or benefit from APS. ExpressCache does seem to help boot up speed and overall performance, and doesn't appear to add any significant overhead.
References:
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/rapid-storage-technology.html
http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/diagnose-and-fix/detail.page?DocID=HT079225
https://www.condusiv.com/partners/oem/technologies/expresscache/
What's on your Thinkpad? T42 2379-R9U, T61 6460-DWU, W530 2436

I'd like to suggest an alternative caching product (not affiliated with them, but have used for a long while) by the name of eBoostr.
What I like about it:
- Mostly OS agnostic (runs on anything after 2000, including 2000 (!))
- Chipset agnostic (runs on any chipset)
- Device agnostic (accepts caching on RAM, SD, CF, USB, Intel's old Turbo Memory, anything that shows up as a drive)
- GUI interface for excluding files you don't want cached (ignore downloads, music, etc.)
In short, there's virtually no restrictions on how, where, and what to use it with.
I think it works fine with TrueCrypt and BitLocker, but I'm not 100% sure.
What eBoostr doesn't do is sector-level caching, or write-caching. I use CleverCache to bump Windows' file cache size to improve write caching.
W520: i7-2720QM, Q2000M at 1080/688/1376, 21GB RAM, 500GB + 750GB HDD, FHD screen
X61T: L7500, 3GB RAM, 500GB HDD, XGA screen, Ultrabase
Y3P: 5Y70, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, QHD+ screen

Questions on the W530

Hey Everyone,
I am a college student who is looking to buy a new laptop in the coming weeks, and have made the W530 my top choice. For now I plan to use it for everyday tasks and entertainment, but eventually I'll use it for coding with matlab as well as Microsoft visual studios and possibly some programs for 3D printing. I plan on getting the base options that it comes with but I am having trouble deciding on the screen. I planned on getting the 1600x900 screen but I'd like to know how it differs from the 1920x1080 FHD screen. Is the difference noticeable or should I be fine with just the 1600X900 screen? If I were to get the FHD screen is it possible to install a blu-ray player later on, or is that out of the question since Lenovo does not offer that as an option. And last question, how reliable are the recent W530's as I've seen many posts about problems in the W530 that seem to only effect the ones from early 2012?
Any help on these questions would be extremely appreciated
Solved!
Go to Solution.

1. The HD+ 1600x900 screen on W530 is of good quality. The FHD 1920x1080 screen on W530 is of excellent quality. Choosing which one is really a matter of personal preference and needs, although it is obvious that the FHD provides a larger working area.
2. Installing a Blu-ray drive (to replace the stock DVD drive) is separate from the FHD screen option and can be done by yourself. Check this:
http://www.primitivebuteffective.com/2011/05/lenovo-w520-for-sony-vegas-pro-10-and_23.html
3. In general, the W530 is a great (relatively portable) workstation.

Does the W530 support Vx-d in the bios

I wish to buy to W530 however I need to know if it supports Vx-d pci passthrough. I will be buying the version equipped with the i-7 3720QM which supports Vx-d but also needs the support of the bios for it to work.
Moderator comment: Title and text corrected for ThinkPad model.

The W530 does have it as a BIOS feature. See the BIOS emulators at http://service.lenovo.partner-management.com/et.cfm?eid=1437

Questions about the W530 I ordered (upgrades)

I have ordered a lenovo w530 last week and it should be here pretty soon.
Here are the specs i ordered it with
Processor
Intel Core i7-3720QM Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.60 GHz)
Operating system
Genuine Windows 7 Professional (64 bit)
Operating system language
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 - English
Display type
15.6" FHD (1920 x 1080) LED Backlit AntiGlare Display, Mobile Broadband Ready
System graphics
NVIDIA Quadro K2000M Graphics with 2GB DDR3 Memory
Total memory
4 GB PC3-12800 DDR3 (1 DIMM)
Keyboard
Keyboard Backlit - US English
Pointing device
UltraNav with Fingerprint Reader
Camera
720p HD Camera with Microphone
Hard drive
500GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm
Optical device
DVD Recordable
System expansion slots
Express Card Slot & 4-in-1 Card Reader
Battery
6 Cell Li-Ion TWL 70+
Power cord
170W Slim AC Adapter - US (2pin)
Bluetooth
Bluetooth 4.0 with Antenna
Integrated WiFi wireless LAN adapters
Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 AGN
Integrated mobile broadband
Mobile Broadband upgradable
I want to put the hard disk drive in the ultrabay for storage and a crucial m4 7mm solid state drive
(http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148530&nm_mc=OTC-sho6b0tCA&cm_mmc=OTC-sho6b0...)
in the main bay as a boot drive and for programs
(i would get the samsung 830 7mm 256gb ssd, but there is only one online store that sells it in canada and it is a bit more expensive)
When installing the hard drive in the ultrabay, it needs the hard drive caddy.
Lenovo sells an official one, but there is also one from NewModeUS, according to various forum posts apparently works better and is slightly cheaper
http://www.newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_reviews&cPath=2_7&products_id=400
I talked to a tech on the phone and he said that the 500gb will come with some rubber rails, but i will need more for the SSD
Is it also possible to install a 9.5mm SSD into the main bay without rails?
If not, can someone link me to the rails on the lenovo site? i rather not have to deal with Ebay even if it is a few bucks more...
i also want to upgrade from the default 4gb of ram already in the laptop by removing the original and replacing with new modules to use dual channel mode at 1600mhz
Crucial says on their website both of these are compatible
1.35v
1600mhz
16gb (8gb x 2) 173$
http://www.crucial.com/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=03E9F8D4A5CA7304
8gb (4gb x 2) 53$
http://www.crucial.com/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=F985A7F2A5CA7304
i haven't decided if i will need 16gb of ram for the coding I will do once i start my CS degree in the fall, but i assume if I am using lots of Virtual machines or what not to run Linux side by side with Windows, (that's possible right?) it might gobble up the GB's, i also might experiment with ram disks to see how those work...
also:
any tips on reinstalling operating system on SSD so i retain the lenovo utilities that came on the factory image on the HDD,
I know you can download most of them from lenovo to install, but are there any that are only from the factory image?
should i make a clean install or make disc image?
Is there anything that I missed that might not make these upgrades go as smoothly as possible?
any info is appreciated

I have a machine with essentially the same specs, except I have 16GB of ram. I'd say get the RAM. 16GB makes my machine run like a dream. i'm in engineering, so I run AutoCAD and other similar applications. If you do use VM's, then you will want the extra memory as well. The machine can run linux, but with the loss of the Optimus, as it is not supported well. Do a clean install, but make the Recovery dvds first. also go to the root of the hard drive and back up the SWTOOLS and swshare folders. those contain all of the preloaded software. I always do a clean install when I get a new machine. Everything else looks good.
W530(2436-CTO): i7-3720QM, nVidia Quadro K2000M,16GB RAM, 500 GB hard drive, 128GB mSATA SSD, Ubuntu 14.04 Gnome, Centrino Ultimate-N 6300.
Yoga 3 Pro: Intel Core-M 5Y70, Intel HD 5300, 8GB RAM, 128GB eMMC, Windows 8.1, Broadcom Wireless 802.11ac.

MSATA drive for W530 - Crucial M500 480GB

Hi there,
I would like to fit an SSD to my Thinkpad W530 (2438-2KU) to get a boost in speed and increase in storage capacity. At the moment I am thinking of a Crucial M500 480GB mSATA Internal SSD (http://images.crucial.com/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=F28BD783A5CA7304). I'd leave my 500GB hard drive installed and mainly use it for data storage
Will the M500 fit my laptop? Any gotchas or anything else to be aware of? I'll probably be re-installing the O/S onto the SSD once the new drive is installed.
Richard.
Solved!
Go to Solution.

i've installed win8.1 on a 480GB m500 mSATA since 4 months and it works faultlessly, in tandem with a Seagate Video 500GB (spindle, 90% of the time stopped) for data and 'special' programs.
Few people know that this lower priced 20nm NAND MLC has reliability and features more akin to the industrial SSDs (OPAL h/w encryption, charge holding caps against power failure tec.) vs. the consumer-level TLCs from Samsung et al.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6884/crucial-micron-m500-review-960gb-480gb-240gb-120gb
The 6 vs. 3Gbps bottleneck of my w520 mSATA may affect only the very large files, which i store exclusively on the ST-Video spindle for obvious reasons. For normal daily operation, 3 and 6Gbps are virtually equal, most files being too small to hit the 3Gbps b-neck. What really matters is the IOPS.

WARRANTY. mSATA disappears. W530 replaced. mSATA replaced. STILL PROBLEMS.

Rcvd this Lenovo W530, 2436CTO. Unit had DVD issues (Drive would go to sleep and never wake up). Lenovo sent me a brand new laptop from China. Unit worked great for about a month when my mSATA drive crapped out. The Lenovo Solution Center indicated my 16GB Sandisk drive was bad. I notified Lenovo with the Error code generated and they sent me a new mSATA. I installed it and reinstalled the ExpressCache SW (software). Everything once again was well with the world UNTIL....during normal operation my screen and mouse locked up for about 30 seconds, disk light was on and after the 30 seconds, my control came back but my ExpressCache drive, the sandisk mSATA was gone...not even in computer management...simply gone. Upon opening an elevated command window and running ECCMD -INFO I see the HFS drive is NOT MOUNTED. Several seconds later it shows **ERROR** ECCmd Requested device is not available : 2 --- NOW IF I reboot (restart), during POST I am advised that the mSATA drive is not available and to press ESC to continue. BUT IF I do a HARD REBOOT (shut completely down and then turn back on) POST continues normally and the mSATA drive is found and ExpressCache starts working again. I confirm this by using the ECCMD command. HOWEVER at some time during the use of the machine the same thing happens. It is extremely repeatable with the SW I have installed.
For some reason the BIOS is reporting that the mSATA is no longer available until a hard reboot.
Any suggestions out there besides buying a SSD HDD and throwing the mSATA drive away?
Is it possible that the original mSATA drive went bad causing some interfacing component on the MoBo to become defective? (thermal runaway) OR something screwed up in the ESCD (?) somewhere in the low level area of the BIOS? I am lost, frustrated, and very discouraged at my 1700 dollar apparent blunder and dont relish trying to explain the issue to a tech. Could a clean install have anything to do with it? Is it possible the O/S is telling the BIOS to disable the mSATA drive because of a perceived conflict? (IRQ conflict, etc.)

Most 16GB mSATA SSDs included in ThinkPads for use as "file cache" are not of good quality. So, yes, they can go bad pretty quickly.
On top of that, I share Thors.Hammer's view that the "mSATA SSD-based file cache" approach is questionable.
If you spend that much money on a serious workstation notebook such as W530, try not to be cheap on any component. I would use either a mSATA SSD or a 2.5" SSD (128GB typically) as my boot/OS/programs/VMs drive. My second drive would be a 2.5" HDD if you need up to 1TB for storage, or a 2.5" SSD if you can live with 256GB or 512GB.
In your case, you can yank out that puny, low-quality mSATA SSD and, if you like, replace it with a "large enough" mSATA SSD by Crucial or Mushkin, and not use it as a "file cache". I wish Samsung would make mSATA SSDs of the same calibre as their 830 and 840 Pro SSDs, but Crucial will do fine.

Reverse question Can the W530 chiclet keyboard be installed in a W520

Hello,
I had the opportunity to try out the T530 / W530 chiclet keyboard and really liked it
I have bit of a reverse question
Can a new chiclet type keyboard be installed in a W520 and would the bios have to be changed
for key mapping etc..
Thanks in advance for your help

It won't fit due to a slightly different surrounding bezel. And even if it did fit (or you replaced the bezel which would allow it to fit), then BIOS wouldn't support it anyway - key mapping problems.

Bricked laptop b/c of a major bug in the W530 BIOS password!?

I have purchased a W530 (model 2441CTO). I had to add a short/low security but convenient password to protect the BIOS. It that was exactly ** (star-star, easy to remember and fast to type on a French keyboard as it sits next to the Enter key). The BIOS accepted it without any warning.
Now when I reboot, the BIOS asks for the password. But it WILL NO MORE take into account any special character, including the stars, it just totally ignores them. I read (too late) that a dirty way around was to skip the special characters in the password. But in my case it leaves the password empty, and an empty password means read-only mode in the BIOS. By the way, it also does not check if the stored admin password is empty *before* it checks if the entered password is empty (a second programming mistake imho).
I spent a lot of time trying to understand until I read about such an issue that dates back to 2009 !!!
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/SL-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/Undocumented-problem-with-BIOS-password/td-p/...
So my question is: what shall I do now?
Send it back for an exchange?
Would a BIOS upgrade (or downgrade+upgrade) bypass this one-way security?
I am really upset by my 1775 euro brick featuring a 4 year warranty that gets half-bricked in a week or so. I just cannot understand how such an ugly and MAJOR bug could go through unfixed till 2013. This is really a serious hit to lenovo reputation.
please do help!

Empty password means no password. The discussion you reference is for an older machine where there was an option to make the bios settings visible but not changeable when there was a pw. I am not going to get into a discussion of how passwords are stored, but I will say that the data stored is encrypted and the date depends on the scan code of the key, so that a password can be entered on one type of keyboard and cleared on a different one. The data stored for an empty password or no password is all zeros.

Can't get the W530 to NOT sleep in ~60 seconds

I'd be happy with a reasonable default of maybe 5 minutes or something, but as it is the laptop is dimming the display in around a minute and then very shortly thereafter requiring a password to unlock the screen. Sharing my screen during a meeting is simply a pain.
I've tried what I think is everything--Control Panel Windows Power Options (maximum performance, advanced options to disable things, or Presentation), the Lenovo Power Manager, the nVidia tray icon, some Intel tray icon thingy, anything I could find that might cause the thing to dim the display. Clearly haven't found the right place to disable it yet.
Obviously as things stand the "Presentation" profile simply doesn't do its job.
Tried uninstalling the Lenovo Power Manager. No change.
I've got a W530 2438-2KU with the pre-installed Windows 7 64-bit OS. I've got the 1920x1080 screen option, an nVidia Quadro 1100M and the Intel HD Graphics 4000.
Anybody got an idea?

mega mega weird ...
Try booting into BIOS and see if it dims after a minute ...
If it doesn't try doing a OS restore using Rescue & Recovery.
*Non Lenovo employee*
I have a Y2P (i5) ... Feel free to ping me if you want me to test some applications with your Y2P if you have the same model. I don't mind keep doing recovery on it if needed .... =)

Cannot Start the W530 after disk partition

I bought a Thinkpad W530 several weeks ago and yesterday I received it.
I found it has only one disk so I just did a hard disk partition today to get extra three logic disk. When it finished, it restarted..
Then I found that I cannot login into the system...The PC is restarting again and again...
I found that the one-key recovery function was not functional for W530.
And it seems that the USB drive and disk cannot be accesed by the laptop.
What can I do to deal with it?

Uhm, how did you create partitions?
You need to use a partition manager that can first shrink the existing partition and its data to a smaller size, and then you can create new partitions in the free space.
If you didn't do this, but rather just removed the current partition and setup new partitions, then you have overwritten the original partition table, and that's why the computer can't boot Windows.
If you are lucky, you can repartition the HDD back to one huge partition again, and if the values are exactly as they were before your edit, the machine might boot successfully again.
...but I think you should be able to boot on the rescue partition... Or have you removed it as well?
I have removed mine after I burnt rescue DVDs, so I don't remember how that worked.

Update Retriever - Missing Intel wireless driver for the W530

I can't find the driver g1w218ww_s64.exe available for download. I can see the 32 bit version, but not the 64 bit one. I even searched database.xml file to see if I'd accidentally hidden it, but can't see it there either.

I have verified the package is now in the catalog. Can you run a search again with Update Retriever and see if it is listed?

Win 8.1 - solid HDD light on a W530 when the optical drive is closed

Hello,
I have a new W530 with Windows 8.1 on and a short time after boot or resume from standby, the HDD light will illuminate solidly (not flickering at all) with no disk activity to speak of showing in task manager.
I have tried the usual steps of disabling superfetch, search indexing, av, etc. and nothing helps. The only thing that does influence the light is whether the optical drive is closed or not. With the drive open, the light behaves normally and reflects the peaks of activity shown in task manager. The light going solid coincides with Windows turning off the Optical drive after start up when Zero Power ODD is enabled (the light still goes solid after a few seconds with Zero Power ODD disabled so may be related to some energy saving mode?).
This behaivour is not exhibited in Windows 8, Ubuntu 14.04, FreeDOS or the Bios so does seem to be an oddity of 8.1 on the W530. There appears to be no impact on performance of the system so it is more of an annoyance.
I am wondering if anyone else has come across this and/or has any suggestions as I don't fancy siutting with my optical drive open all the time...
Relevant specs are below:
Intel i7-3740QM
8GB RAM
250GB Samsung 840 EVO mSATA SSD (OS drive & boot drive, hardware/eDrive encrypted with Bitlocker)
500GB Hitachi Travelstar 7200RPM HDD
Nvidia Quadro K1000M 2GB (running in Optimus with Intel HD Graphics)
The laptop is configured with a static 1GB page file on the SSD and a static 36GB page file on the HDD.
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Ok, a bit of progress... For some reason, The SATA controller had been set to Compatability in the Bios rather than AHCI. Doing a fresh build with AHCI enabled did not exhibit the solid light when the Lenovo Settings Dependency Package was installed
Restoring my system image and then going through the process of enabling AHCI after a windows 8.1 install has solved the issue.
So, lesson learned - AHCI is needed in this config unless a solid HDD light is wanted. Obviously this is a bug, what is the best way to report it to Lenovo officially?

Protective Cover on msata slot - w530

Hi,
Ordered my w530 with no msata ssd. When I opened it, there was a removable plastic covering over that slot.
Through googling around I found a couple of tutorials that say to replace that cover. So that is what I did. Everthing is working fine.
But at the same time looking at google images, have seen a few w530's with the keyboard removed and there was no cover over the msata ssd.
There is also no mention of that plastic cover in the w530 maintenance manual.
So decided to try and get some feedback from other w530 owners. What is the purpose of that cover? Not sure how hot these msata ssd's get. But have a feeling it may shield the keyboard against heat, but at the same time wouldn't it simply melt the plastic covering? Should it be on there?
Any input would be much appreciated. This is the tutorial I followed.
http://www.the.me/review-lenovo-w530-thinkpad-workstation-the-best-laptop-photography-can-buy-period...
Thanks!

these plastic covers melting temperature is higher than what your laptop would generate under usage condition. So if the cover is melting, then all your other part of the laptop motherboard is also melting.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lead_org/8350025284/
My machine doesn't have any covers on the mSATA, it is probably there on later one to prevent contact between the mSATA with the keyboard.
Regards,
Jin Li
May this year, be the year of 'DO'!
I am a volunteer, and not a paid staff of Lenovo or Microsoft

MSATA on the W530

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