W520 second SSD installation

Hi all,I have a W520 and I would like to:Add a second hard drive where the optical drive is.I would like the second drive to be a SSD drive.I would like it to be at least 500Gb.I would eventually like this drive to become my C drive (if at all possible) I bought my W520 with a 160Gb Intel SSD drive that is almost full. My current BIOS is version 1.32 If some of the gurus on this support site could please help I would be grateful. I am a high school science teacher and use this machine especially to do some 3-d simulations of molecules and I am now constantly running into the – nearly out of memory – warning. I want to be able to work all the kinks out over the summer before school starts back up. It is critical that my current setup not be affected by this – I use the W-520 on a docking station to which I have a 30” monitor (display port) and a 24” Dell (DVI) attached. The W-520 also has a USB 3 external hard drive (4Tb) attached to it. Many thanks,Sam

focus16 wrote:
Thank you harrisb for taking the time to respond to my posting. Oh! I have so many questions for you about your W520s. Anyway, to the task at hand:
Could you point me to where I might find instructions on installing the 500Gb MSata card? Does Lenovo having something by way of instructions on doing this? I will google it but just wondered if you knew!
Once installed, can I simply copy over the entire C drive and then I would be all set?
Is there a specific protocol I need to be able to copy all the files over from my current 160Gb ssd?
There is a partition on my C drive with the software that came with my Lenovo. Do I just keep this as is and not mess with it at all.
Lastly, I bought a Pioneer BluRay/CD player to rip my CDs. It appears to be a lot faster than the optical that came with the machine. I was thinking of getting rid of the optical drive altogether and getting one of the large capacity SSDs. Would I need to upgrade the BIOS? What are the things that must be worked out when installing one of the Samsung drives you have alluded to in your posts online? Any particular place you would recommend I get the drives from (the mSATA and, if I go with it, the larger SSD?
Thank you for your time again.
Sam
I'll try to answer in order:
1. The installation for the MSata card is in the HMM for the W520. The card is located under the keyboard so you need to remove that (two screws) from the normal position and just lay it back on the palmrest. The Crucial card comes with the screws, but there's already a screw in the place (1).
2. You need to create an image of your existing SSD C: drive so that that can be placed onto the new MSata card for using it at a boot drive. I would also make a backup set for the factory software ifyou haven't already done so in the past.
3. You can use either Ghost 15.0 or Acronis TIM to create the image and then use it to restore the image to the new card.
4. You can't use the factory restore partition software once you have made a backup copy to DVD discs so you can just eliminate it from the restore.
5. One of the reasons that I keep my CD-ROM in the ultrabay I sometimes need it for the restore process when some software has corrupted the OS (happens more times of the last 4 years than I can count)
If you want to replace the CD-ROM from the Ultrabay, you need to obtain a HDD caddy from Newmodeus. This will come with all of the needed screws to mount the new SSD card.
http://www.newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_7&products_id=400
I've usually obtained my SSD drives from Newegg.com. I would also suggest that you upgrade your BIOS level to 1.42.

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Why does my second ssd (on mac mini late 2012) is terribly slow ?

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Hello,
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All:
I hope someone here can help me... PLEASE
I have a new (today) W520 (4284-AN4) I installed x64 Win7 and then all Windows updates and then all lenovo updates (except fngerprint reader) and while the system is nice the disk performance is less then spectacular for the SSD drive...
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Solved!
Go to Solution.

Referencing the opening post:
OCZ Vertex 3 Sata3 SSD - 240Gb:
- does not fit the HDD bracket well
Just FYI,
I posted the "fit" problem on the OCZ Sandforce Forum, as well as exchanged e-mails with their tech support.
They actually asked me to RMA my V3-240GB, then claimed they mounted it successfully in several laptops, but never specified which models or brands.
There was some indication that there was another housing/casing for the V3 other than the standard casing, but that never panned out, and the RMA'd drive is on its way back to me, as-is.
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The connection end of the drive is too wide for the caddy.
Alternatives:
The only way to get the drive into the caddy as-is, is to use only 3 of the 4 mounting screws, but that leaves the non-screwed in flange of the caddy bowed out. This results in too tight a fit in the drive bay and possible torquing of the electrical connection to the laptop; heat causing further expansion may also be an issue.
Mount the drive without the caddy and/or rubber bumper rails. This leaves the drive so loose in the bay that I believe it risks actual disconnection from the laptop while remaining in the bay.
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===============
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W520 mSATA SSD Crystal Disk Mark

Here is the benchmark for the ADATA 256GB SSD I just installed in my W520.
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Thanks in advance.

@lead - thank you for your response.
I am quite happy with the system as it stands i.e. keeping the SSD in mSATA.
I am a bit perplexed because of this review:
review
These are the scores they obtained using SATA III. I can understand the difference in the Seq and 512K reads, but why the lower numbers for 4K and 4K QD reads and writes?
Perhaps I'll move the SSD to the main bay (as i mentioned I have an adapter) in due course, to see how my numbers differ, just for fun.
As i said, I love the way the system turned out with this configuration. The system is way better with the SSD as the boot drive, be it SATA II or SATA III. I love having two big disks in the primary and ultra bays too.

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