All:

I just bought an Intel X25-V SSD (40GB) to install on my R500, which runs Vista x64 Basic SP2.

1) Are there any preliminary steps I should perform prior to the installation?
2) I have an image backup (via ThinkVantage Backup & Recover) on an external HD. Can I recover this image into the new SSD?

Your help is appreciated.
Thanks!
Dario

Usually you don't have to prepare the SSDf or a Vista/Win7 install, as they will recognize the drive and take the appropriate measures.

Copying over an image is a different story and might require a manual alignment with Diskpart. Also, there are some tweaks to the system that you can do afterward (which are normally done during install as well).

I would recommend installing from scratch, but if you just want a running system, copying the image should work as well.

HTH

Thanks for your reply.

The Lenovo Recovery process worked great, and I was able to restore the image of the former HDD into my new SDD in just about 4 hours.

I do save the images of my thinkpad to a network location over my WiFi Home Network and the recovery process was understandably long but very successful.

The only cons I noticed is a lengthy boot time, even longer than using my old 5400 RPM HDD.
Once I am logged in everything runs really, really fast. I am using Vista Basic 64-bit SP2.

The image I restored was saved just after I defragged the old HDD. Should I defrag the SDD now?

What type of tuning do I need to do to expedite the boot time?

Your help is appreciated.
Thanks again,
Dario

You should not defrag and should disable it from running automatically. You might want to watch Rescue and Recovery, and disable system restore. As your SSD starts to get full, performance degrades and you've only got 40GB to start.

I disabled scheduled defrag as I only have 2.7 GB available out of the 37.2 GB total and I didn't know it takes 15% of free space to run a defrag.

Thank you for the recommendation.

Dario Cabianca

Try turning off indexing for all partitions on the SSD. Open up properties for -each- partition and deselect indexing at the bottom of the panel. Might take a minute or two to finish un-indexing a partition(s).

Could the indexing process (of an NTFS partition) impact the long time my R500 take to boot?

Thanks,
Dario

Not sure. I didn't experiment with all situations to find out. I read posts from others who recommended turning off indexing, and tried it myself. Seemed to work well.

On a Z61p(decent, but not super fast laptop compared to what's out these days), my boot time went from several minutes to around 45 secs, if I remember correctly. These numbers are approximate. Quite a noticeable difference.

Try it, evaluate it, keep it, if better...