Options in running Windows from an mSATA drive

I recently ordered an x220 and expect to receive it this week. I also ordered an mSATA drive that I would like to install. Once I have it installed, I am not sure the best method to install Windows to the new drive and would appreciate some feedback.
I don't really like the idea of cloning the HDD to the mSATA because of solid-state disk alignment issues and degredaded performance. Also, I believe Windows 7 will correctly configure itself to utilize a solid-state when it goes through the installation process, and simply cloning the HDD will not give Windows an opprotunity to perform the configurations.
I could install Windows from scratch. I like that this option will ensure Windows will configure itself for solid-state drives. I am concerned, however, that I will not be able to reinstall all of the Lenovo drivers and applications as correctly as they should. I reviewed the User Guide for my x220 (available here) under the section of installing a new OS, and it points to registry patches to update Windows and mentions downloading various drivers from the Lenovo site. If Lenovo integrates into Windows to the degree that it requires manual registry edits, I'm not sure I want to attempt to manually place the Lenovo software on top of a plain Windows installation.
The third choice I see, although I'm not sure it will work, is burning the backup recovery media and using this to install the Lenovo configured OS onto the mSATA drive. I question if this will work because if the recovery process is only dumping flat files into the partition, it will not configure Windows properly to utilize a solid-state disk. If, however, the recovery process is a true Windows installation, it should determine that I am utilizing a solid-state and should adjust its configuration accordingly. Does anyone know how the recovery process works?
If you were in my shoes, how would you proceed with getting Windows onto the new mSATA drive? Looking forward to any replies, thanks.
Jesse

I could do that, but I would suffer write performance loss due to the SSD partition being out of alignment. I found this helpful article that describes what alignment is, and why it is important.
I think you are probably running your SSD at less than full performance capacity. Since you cloned the original HDD to the SSD, you probably didn't even notice your SSD could be performing faster. You can check you alignment by following this.
Additionally, if you don't let WIndows detect that it is being installed on a solid state disk, it won't optimize itself for that disk. I am referring to things like disk defragmentation, indexing services, or prefetching. These tasks really only apply to traditional spinning disks, and should not be enabled on a solid state. There are other things that are enabled that could be turned off, such as hibernation. With solid states, it is just as fast or faster to completely shut down the computer rather than hibernate, so why waste the disk space?
What are other people doing when they install solid states in their lenovos?

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HI there,
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