Info on Rapiddrive functionality? Y560 [ Edited ]

[wintermute000]

I have one of the new 06242-QU models (i5-450M) and it came with rapiddrive (thank god). 

I can see the samsung SSD controller in device manager and overall system is definitely much snappier than a conventional 5400rpm laptop drive. 

However there is no info as to how this works, nor how it affects your system administration in terms of how to partition on a rebuild, is it safe to defrag, etc.

It appears to be completely driver managed, as in Disk Management, your partitions appear against the Samsung controller and it says the 500Gb WD disk is uninitialised! lol. You cannot see the SSD itself in my computer, there are no separate SSD partitions visible. So it appears the software hides all the functionality from the end user, who to all intents and purposes sees only the regular 500gb drive and the partitions on it. 

Does lenovo have any documentation this? Would it be possible to say build the system so you manually partition the SSD and regular drive into separate drives and partitions, then manually install windows onto the SSD only? Or do you have to leave it to the software to 'intelligently' determine what files to cache and move? What if the mechanical hard drive dies and I replace it, how would I set up rapiddrive again?

It seems to be working well, but there is a total black hole of technical documentation. 

[Selvam]

quite close to my question as well.... hopefully someone gives us an answer

[wintermute000]

Yeah ditto

HELLO LENOVO MODS / EMPLOYEES, can you guys assist? 

We've searched google, lenovo.com, I've even read the manuals lol (what tech does that?!?!) nothing. Zip. 

[birdhouse8669]

i agree i would like to learn more about rapiddrive

[JaneL Community SuperMod]

I kind of doubt you can do anything manual with it since Matt Kohut refers to it as "Lenovo patent-pending technology that connects both the SSD and HDD simultaneously as one big, contiguous drive".

See http://lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=384 and http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/lenovo-rapiddrive-technology-demoed-explained-20100119/

[Selvam]

hey winter is ur operating system installed on ur ssd drive? cause mine was factory installed on the hdd ><

[wintermute000]

No everything's installed on the mechanical. I can't see the 32Gb SSD partition at all, not even in disk management. 

I do see two separate drives in device manager.

Funnily enough in disk management, windows thinks all partitions are against the Samsung SSD controller, and that there are no partitions on the WD mechanical drive (uninitialised??? LOL). But the data is definitely on the WD. 

I wish I could just stick the OS and swap file on the SSD (manually partitioned) and leave it at that. I don't need the overhead and guesswork of 'dynamic management', my OS, programs and swap fits nicely in 32Gb!!!

Still, overall it seems to be working OK, boot in ~45 seconds (compared to say 1.5 min with my desktop and its raptor) and 15 seconds on my media centre w/ Intel X25 SSD. Definitely way snappier than a standard laptop drive.

[Selvam]

yea its pretty sweet so far. how much ram did u get? they had a 8 gig ram as standard for the rapid drive model of the y460 in my country. its hella wicked. hows ur graphics switching btw? i havent used it on any heavy games yet but im hopeful it'll be able to take it.

[kaiyo]

Maybe if you reformat and delete the SSD partition and format it, and reinstall windows onto it, it may work. don't install the rapiddrive driver...

*try at your own risk

[wintermute000]

kaiyo thats the thing there IS NO SSD partition visible anywhere in windows.

I do suspect that the magic may be at a lower layer than the OS (e.g. firmware/BIOS level), won't know until I try a fresh build and see if windows install picks it up as a separate disk. 

selvam, 4gb, i'm not photoshopping on my y560 or anything like that so 4gb is more than adequate. 

I've run a few demanding games on it, will run say call of duty games maxed out, GTA4 smoothly on medium (or a bit jerkily, still playable, like PS3, if you want high), pretty much most things run fine medium-high. 720p is pretty low res but yeah it makes a fantastic 'budget gaming' laptop. The switchable graphics means that its also fine as a 'normal' laptop.

I'll take the small performance hit over the size, weight, ridiculously bad battery life and cost of the 'proper' gaming laptops. V happy with this performance/price segment (i5/i7 w/ ATI5650/5730 for ~1000USD).