New Lenovo Ideapad Y500 April 2013 - Upgrading SSD or HD and Performance

[alwaysgottadothis]

I just purchased the New IdeaPad Y500 offered by Lenovo (can't find any posts on it yet), the one with Dual GT750m. I've been waiting for a while cause I had a picture of what I wanted my next laptop to be and I have to say I'm very impressed with the specs, price and reviews I've seen and think this is it. I can't find any information on how to go about upgrading the 16 GB SSD and 500 GB HD or if the caching works well enough that it isn't really necessary. Seems like the SSD is mSATA and someone mentioned the HD is SATA II, having trouble finding out the details and how upgrading works or not sure the effect of caching either. I wanted to get a Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB, but looks like I should probably go with a good mSATA and just keep the 500 GB in there for files... lost on this one.

always impressed with Tom's Hardware and the community here, any help would be great.

 

[jaguarskx]

The mSATA is SATA II while I believe the interface for the hard drive is SATA III. I am considering getting either a 128GB or 256GB mSATA SSD for my ThinkPad T530 (when it arrives). TRIM needs at least 20% of free space on the SSD to work so I think I will go with 256GB.

By default, laptops do not detect the mSATA SSD as a standard drive so you cannot simply plug it in and start installing Windows. But there is a solution that I've found...

http/www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1652284/msata-drive-question.html

 

[k1114]

The early versions were msata 2, later versions are 3. The ssd that comes with it is 2 though. From any of the y500 posts, I haven't seen anyone mention those extra steps.