I am getting ready to install a 64GB mSATA card into an X220. I am a little nervous about removing the keyboard and palm rest to install the card. Is it pretty easy to do, as long as one keeps track of the seven screws that are removed? I have taken apart other computers, including many Mac minis that required a lot of interesting manipulations, but am a bit nervous about this on a solid functioning keyboard and case.

If you've done a Mac Mini, you can do the mSATA installation. Just take your time and keep track like you said and you will be fine...

Easy as eating cake.

Thanks for the reassurance. I have one more question.

I bought the Kingston SMS100S2/64G mSATA card. Some people have reported installing it and then not having it work. My system printout indicates: Mobile Broadband - Integrated Wireless Wide Area Network upgradable. I assume that means (since there is no WWAN card installed) that the Kingston should work in this notebook. Any knowledge about this item?

There was some issues surround mSATA SSDs and i7 equipped X220s when the X220 was released, but I haven't heard anything specific about the Kingston drive. Since you've already bought the drive, the best you can do is give it a whirl and see how it goes, but I don't foresee any issue for you.

It is successfully installed and everything seems to be working normally so far. The notice came up that the card and drivers were installed, and going F12 at power up gives me a choice of drives from which to boot. I am probably going to install Linux on the mSATA and use that normally and leave the 320/7200 HD for Windows -- and data (if that works).

Good deal. Good to know the Kingston works fine. I was looking at that one for my W520 from work for the same reason (linux)...

Ultimately, I have Windows 7 installed on the mSata and another copy of it and Kubuntu on the hard disk drive. The mSata works well and is very quick to start up. The only advice I might have is to get the 128GB mSata instead, just to provide that much more space.

I took the advice of the board using the Kingston sms 100s3/64g msata card.

I successfully placed the msata card in my X220T. However the drive does not show up in the computer. Am I doing something wrong? I looked up device manager and it is showing as one of the hard drive. I pressed populate in the properties manager and it shows this:

Disk : Disk 1
Type: Unknown
Status: Not initialized
Partition style: not applicable
Capacity: 61057 MB
Unalloc space: 0 MB
Reserved space: 0 MB

Does anyone know what I am doing wrong? I tried updating drivers but all seems current.

Any help much appreciated.

Think you're doing it right, just go partition it and start using it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6_wwuBp0iI

However, you may want to move your OS install to the SSD, which involves either cloning your drive or install from scratch again.

Cheers.

Loyukfai,

That did the trick!!!! Thanks for the advice.

I will indeed move the OS to the SSD. Hope that fares more smoothly.

Thanks again!

Back here again...

I don't want to clone since it looks daunting. So I was going to use the product recovery to restore the files to mSata instead of the C: drive. BUT it doesn't work that way... It seems to put the recovery in the C: drive. I can't make recovery disks since I have no CD. Maybe create a recovery disk on a USB??? and taking out the C: drive and booting it via USB.... Is there an easier way out of this?

You're making things way too complicated.
Follow these instructions
1) Start rescue recover. Backup your entire C: drive to an USB drive. And make sure you tell rescue recover to make the USB disk bootable.
2) Remove your current HDD from the drive bay, so that Bios can only detect 1 drive.
3) Plug your USB drive into your system and restart your X220 and press F9 during boot up, this will launch Rescue Recover off the USB drive. Once you are in Rescue Recover environment, just press Restore Entire Drive. Rescue Recover will then ghost your old C: drive image back onto the msata SSD since its now the only drive left on the laptop.
4) This is where it gets tricky. If you want to put your old HDD back into the drive bay to use as a second drive, then you must first get rid of it's boot attributes, Windows will not boot with 2 cloned drives that have the same attributes, you will get a BSOD the moment you plug your old drive back in. To do this you must delete the entire partition on the old drive and reinitiate it.
Two ways of doing this. Easy way is simply to plug the old HDD into another PC via sata and molex, and just delete the partition using windows disk manager.
Second way is only if you have no other means of plugging in the old HDD to another PC. You will need to plug the HDD into your X220 and use Windows Installation CD to boot into an installation environment. From there you can delete the partition on the old HDD and reformat for NTSC.

Remember once you use Thinkvantage Rescue Recover to reinstate your C drive onto your msata ssd, you can no longer plug your HDD back into the bay without first deleting the HDD partition. Windows will BSOD everytime as you will have two drives that look identical.

You do not need to delete the partition and lose your data: there is yet another way

You can simply mark the Windows 7 partition on the regular HDD as inactive.

Easiest way to do this is to put the HDD in a USB enclosure then connect it only after boot.

To change it to inactive:

Open up a command prompt in Windows 7 (type 'cmd', no quotes, in the search box)
In the command prompt
Type DISKPART.
Type LIST DISK
Type SELECT DISK n (where n is the number of the old Windows 7 drive - you can identify it by size or label)
Type LIST PARTITION
Type SELECT PARTITION n (where n is the number of the active partition you wish to make inactive)
Type INACTIVE
Type EXIT to exit DISKPART
Type EXIT again to exit the command prompt
Disconnect USB drive as you normally would
Power down
Install HDD back in laptop

Bob's your uncle.

The beauty of this approach is that if you ever want to use the regular drive again as a boot drive, all you have to do is carry out this process and set the drive to "Active"

Thanks for the detailed info smugri. It works like a charm. And thanks Kaze for the advice. Coming from a T60p after 5 years... the keyboard does not feel as good as the T60p NMB, already miss the old square screen and also the mouse pad is terrible... beginning to wonder if I bought the right laptop. One good thing is that it's light portable and fast.

There seems to be great advice here on mSATA installation, and I've tried to follow all the steps listed here and in the X220 user guide but I'm still running into a problem when trying to boot windows with the USB recovery drive attached and the main HDD out of the system.

I have used Rescue & Recovery 4.5 to create boot media and a backup image of the X220 the day it arrived from the factory. This was on a USB harddrive and I never saw an option to make it bootable, I assumed this is what the recovery media image option was.

When I turn on the computer with the main HDD removed, the mSATA HDD in the WWAN slot, and the USB drive attached it gives me a "NTLBR is Missing" error. I've tried holding down F9 as advised here, I've tried the thinkvantage button, but I seem to be stuck. I've recreated the recovery media image on the USB twice just to make sure I was doing everything correct. And I've searched the R&R 4.5 user manual for "bootable" and "boot" and nothing seems to help. Is there an option I'm just overlooking in this process?

I did tell the recovery media creation that I wanted to save the files on my USB HDD. In order for the drive to be bootable will I have to allow it to delete everything from this drive?

Thank you for any help you can provide! Looking forward to getting the machine up and running. The mSATA installation went smoothly as well, it's just copying Win7 to it that is holding me up.

fewfiet, You might want to check to see if the partition on the usb drive is marked active. If not mark it as active.

Thanks steveg, I'll check that out. Should I have backed up the X220 drive and the Recovery Media to a partition on the USB drive? I didn't do that, and the USB drive isn't partitioned at the moment.

Hmmmm. I wiped a USB hdd and partitioned it into 200gb and 100gb sectors. Then I used Rescue and Recovery to both back up my current drive and create Recovery Media on the new drive. I then removed my main hdd, leaving my mSATA as the only drive in the computer. When I restarted with the USB attached it ran me through restoring the full hdd, which I did.

But now when I try to boot the system, with just the mSATA drive, with the USB drive and/or with my old drive, I get a "Windows failed to start" error. It says status "0xc000000f" and that the application is missing or corrupt.

Can anyone advise me on the next step? It should have restored the os and everything from the Rescue and Recovery which ran to the mSATA when I booted without the main hdd in the hdd slot, as far as I understand. And now I'm just a little worried that it won't boot normally,even with the main hdd installed.

Thank you!

Maybe the boot sequence needs to be that the USB HDD should start up first.
Then the recovery drive should automatically take you the steps to start the process of reimaging the drive into the msata...


My experience was:

1. First of all get the recovery CDs from Lenovo.
2. Get an external CD drive (don't get the old thinkpad ones on ebay because somehow it won't read the recovery discs - I got a HP one from Best Buy and worked perfectly)
3. Since I just used the first 2 cds from recovery (these are the windows cd and not the applications cd) I first of all downloaded the network driver from lenovo onto a USB drive - it seems that my 64gb drive was not big enough to fully load the applications CD too - why I don't know... maybe becuase the recovery partition along with the windows system and other applications would not fit... anyways
4. Install the msata and take out the hard drive.
5. Go into Bios F1 and change boot sequence to USB CD first.
6. With the disc and the external cd drive connected, reboot the computer and automatically the Rescue and recovery discs will get read. Follow the directions...
7. Afterwards a clean computer with windows only.
8. Load up the Network driver from the USB and you'll be able to connect with the internet.
9. Go into Lenovo support and download the necessary drivers... you can do auto detect and it will lead you the list of drivers for you computer.
10. Since my msata was only 64 gigs I erased the recovery partition.
11. About the hard drive, I frankly didn't have to get rid of the boot attributes. What I did was first install the drive and made sure I go into Bios afterwards and make sure the mSata boots first.
12. That booted me into windows using the mSata and not the HDD. next I formatted the HDD and got rid of the system parition in the HDD using Disk management system (By right clicking on computer and go into manage)

Hope this helps...

Hello:

I plan to purchase an X220 during the current sale.

My plan is to add an Intel 40gb or 80gb mSATA 310 and replace the stock HHD with a 500gb, 7200 RPM HHD.
I will do a clean install of W7 Pro or Visa Ultimate.

I was thinking that all I need to do is
1) change boot order
2) remove the HHD
3) install the SSD
4) install Windows from external drive
5) install the Lenovo stuff I want
6) install the new HDD
and i'm good to go.

After reading this thread, I got little unsure of my plan.
Am I missing something?

Thanks
Danny O'Herrick

The X220 uses a 7mm single platter hard drive. You can get a Hitachi 500GB Z5K500, which will fit, but is not a 7200RPM drive. Standard 9.5mm drives won't fit unless you're willing to modify the case. I have the Hitachi in my X220i. It's no speed demon, but is fine for storage, especially if you're using the mSATA SSD as a boot drive.

Thanks for the reply, but now I am a bit more confused.

When I configured the X220 this AM, I thought the base HDD was 160 GB, 5400 RPM.
When I checked again I saw it is a 320 GB, 7200 RPM drive, which I would keep--just erase and reformat.

The Lenovo spec sheets also say 7200 RPM drives are available.

Is the X220i different fron the X220?

There are 7200RPM drive available, but the largest 7mm 7200RPM drives are 320GB. The bay on the X220 only accepts 7mm single platter drives. They're not as tall as a standard drive. If you want a 500GB drive, it'll be a 5400RPM drive. Personally, I'd get the 5400RPM as they tend to be a bit more quiet, though it's somewhat luck of the Irish. If you've got the mSATA SSD as the boot drive, speed on the storage drive isn't as important.

I ordered my X220i on the first day it was available. Back then the i denoted getting the i3 CPU, but Lenovo has since dropped that nomenclature. They're now all X220, regardless of the CPU.

Thanks for clearing that up.

It is a moot point now because I decided to just get the Lenovo 160 GB SSD option. $210 for an Intel SSD is not a bad price, especially when it will be covered by the Lenovo extended warranty.

This will be my travel kit; I realy don't need more HHD space.
Came out to $1347 with 3-year NBD, TPP, Priority Support.
Significantly cheaper than an 11" MBA with AppleCare with larger and way better screen. Insignificantly heavier (IMHO).

Anything else I can do with the mSATA slot? Not interested in moblie broadband.

Danny O'Herrick

I suppose you could add the mSATA SSD for added capacity, but the mSATA SSD + HDD make more sense.

Congrats on the purchase. It's a fantastic little portable powerhouse.

Hi there,

I've just installed a mSata drive in my X220tablet. But I get stuck.
When I'm trying to make a backup in R&R 4.5 I'm not able to select where the backup is going to be made. The program just does it on the recovery partition on the HDD. I cannot select my external USB HDD.

What I could to, is make a "emergency recovery media" on my USB HDD. But when I remove my HDD, boot the laptop, press F9, and try to recover it, there is not backup and no emergency recovery media to be found..

any toughts?

EDIT: actually, i've just found out I could make a backup on my USB. Must've bin sleeping. Keep you updated about the progress.

I've now made a backup on my USB drive. Nou when in rescue en recovery mode, I try to recover my system, but the programm tells me that the disk where the backup is going to be made on, is smaller than the disk that was recovered.

I continued anyway, because the disk might be smaller, but that should not be a problem. But during the process, it again tells me that the disk is to small and the recovery was aborted. No I seem to have a problem, because when i now try to start the laptop, I get the windows Boot manager, telling me that windows has failed to start and that I should use a windows installation disk to restart the computer.

Can you help me out? It's kinda growing above my head now

(i don't have a cd/dvd player)

EDIT:
I got a little bit further. I've put a image of windows 8 on a usb stick and selected in the bios to boot from usb. This works well. Windows 8 setup starts. But, when i try to install windows 8 i get the following message:

The selected partition cannot be used, because there is not enough space availible on this drive.

Somehow there must be a problem with the mSata drive. It is reckocnized by the system. But somehow it is not granted (thats what is also says: Not granted space of disk 0 ---- 117.8GB)

I returned the SSD to the shop.

I have a Thinkpad X220 that I purchased with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. I recently upgraded it to Windows 8 Pro 64-bit using the Windows upgrade path rather than a clean install. Sorting everything out was a royal pain, since much of the Lenovo software was incompatible with W8, or had to be uninstalled, then reinstalled later.

I then decided to add a 256 GB mSATA drive and set that up as a boot drive. Installation of the mSATA drive was relatively simple thanks to an excellent video of how to do this on YouTube.

Getting the X220 to boot from the mSATA drive was far less easy. I purchased Paragon Hard Drive Manager 12 Suite which promised an OS migration wizard. That did not work. I filed a very detailed support request to Paragon and two days later got a substantive response that got me en route to solving the problem.

In Windows7 installations, Lenovo creates three partitions on the hard disk boot drive: SYSTEM_DRV, Windows7_OS, and Lenovo_Recovery. The "OS Migration" Wizard only copies the Windows7_OS partition, but the SSD cannot boot from that.

Apparently, Lenovo uses the Boot folder and bootmgr contained in the SYSTEM_DRV partition, rather than the one in the Windows7_OS partition. Thus, running bcdboot C:\Windows /s D: did not solve the problem.

When I tried to run the Paragon's Copy Partition wizard the program did not see the c partition.

What did solve the problem was running Paragon's Copy Hard Disk Wizard. That copied all three of the partitions to the SSD drive. I then removed the hard disk drive, and the laptop booted up correctly from the SSD. Removing the hard drive from its bay was necessary to get it to boot from the SSD. For unknown reasons I could not at that time get into the BIOS setup to change the boot order. I then put the HDD into an external enclosure, deleted the three partitions on it, and created a new blank partition, then reinstalled the hard drive in the laptop. It now appears as drive F: and works fine.

I am leaving the SYSTEM_DRV partition on my SSD, even though it is my understanding that a clean Windows8 installation would not have created that partition. After the struggle to get this far, I am happy to trade a few GB off the 256 GB SSD rather than risk not being able to boot at all.

Good luck!