RAID and SSD Caching Notes for the W530

Question

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

Answer 1

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