Rapid Drive: What does it do?

I'm interested in getting an mSATA SSD for my T420 and installing Lenovo Rapid Drive.  The only thing that is holding me back is that I don't understand what Rapid Drive does, which makes me uncomfortable with proceeding.  The only information related to Rapid Drive that I can find anywhere online is marketing spiel.  Can someone at Lenovo clarify what exactly it is that Rapid Drive does?
1) Does the SSD serve as a cache, keeping copies of certain data that are also stored on the HDD? Or, does Rapid Drive move data between the SDD and HDD without maintaining copies?
2) At what granularity does Rapid Drive operate? Are only entire files moved between the SDD and HDD? Or, may a file be split into chunks, some of which residing on the SDD and some of which residing on the HDD?
3) How does Rapid Drive decide what data to keep on the SDD? Does it take a heuristic approach optimized for the average user? Or, does it use a least-recently-used algorithm that should work fairly well for anyone regardless of usage patterns?
4) How frequently is data shuffled between the SDD and HDD?
I'm sure that answering these questions will result in many more people trying out Rapid Drive as I've seen a similar sentiment to mine echoed on other forums.
Thanks,
- Bryan

Hi Bryan and welcome to the forum,
Lenovo’s RapidDrive is basically
the combination of a solid-state drive and a normal 2.5-inch hard
drive, but in separate components. To users the two will look like a
single disk, but the drives will be able to take advantage of the
performance of the SSD while maintaining the capacity of the mechanical
disk.
Your machine will have your standard hard disk drive plus for example a 32GB or 64GB SSD installed in the internal PCI-E slot. The breakthrough is not combining the two in one system. Anyone can do that. The breakthrough is using a Lenovo patent-pending technology that connects both the SSD and HDD simultaneously as one big, contiguous drive. This storage is dynamically pooled and managed. The system manages the SSD depending on usage. Programs, documents, and other files are dynamically moved on and off of the SSD so that you can always get the fastest speed possible. This also means that the system will not return an error if the SSD is already at full capacity.  The program/file will automatically be installed on the HDD and moved to the SSD later in the background if the algorithm determines that is optimal.
-gan

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