T430 Hard Drive and Memory Upgrade

[welchgc]

Hi,

My T430 is on its way.

I configured my T430 with a 320GM 7200 rpm HD and only 4GB RAM, as I figured to upgrade on my own to save a few dollars.

While the RAM is easy enough to upgrade, has anyone done this yet on the new T430? What brand/type of RAM is it?

The biggest question is hard drive upgrade. I intend to upgrade to a crucial 256 GB M4 2.5" Drive (good pricing online right now). This will be my first hard drive upgrade, any advice would be great (i.e. will this SSD fit, be compatible, etc.)

Thanks

G

[JDay]

Buy RAM from Crucial as their RAM always works with ThinkPads (and is high quality) and you will not have any issues. I would order a 2 stick set and replace the stock RAM when upgrading to avoid any timing mismatch conflicts as those can cause blue screens.

http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=ThinkPad%20T430&Cat=RAM

The drive you are looking at should work just fine in the T430. It is also one of the fastest SSDs on the market. One thing I would do though is order the UltraBay HDD adapter and stick the stock drive in there for storage since the optical drive usually goes unused. I did that with mine and use it to store my files on, OS/Programs go on th SSD. When you stick the SSD into the main drive bay leave the original drive in it's cage and only put the rubber bumpers on the SSD. The case locks the drive into the UltraBay adapter. Just be sure to make a recovery disc set before you pull the stock drive since you will need it to install the factory image onto the SSD. Don't worry about bloatware since ThinkPads do not come with it.

[welchgc]

Hey,

Thanks for the information.

Could you recommend a good aftermarket UltraBay HDD adapter for the T430....OR is it best to buy from Lenovo at the higher price?

[welchgc]

I found this website newmodeus.com

They have HD caddy's for under $50 for the T430. Anyone used these before? A good thrid party?

[TheDude]

I paid about $50 for my caddy (T410 one) directly from Lenovo with a 10% discount code a couple of years ago.  I had very good luck with GSKILLs RAM in a T400.  I would clone the hard drive onto the SSD, then put the SSD inside the machine as the primary drive and put the hard drive in the caddy as a data drive.  Samsung, Intel are solid choices.  Crucial is farly popular.  I have seen large sandisk Extreme drive cheap, and they test very fast, but haven't been around long enough to say much about reliablity.

[JDay]

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TheDude wrote:

Samsung, Intel are solid choices.  Crucial is farly popular.  I have seen large sandisk Extreme drive cheap, and they test very fast, but haven't been around long enough to say much about reliablity.

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Those Sandisk drives use a Sandforce controller. Sandforce is hit-or-miss. I have a Corsair Force F120 (Sandforce) in my T510 and it works fine but I know others have had issues with the same series drive and with other Sandfoce based drives in their ThinkPads. Crucial, Samsung, and Intel SSDs have a rock solid track record when it comes to compatibility with laptops. Intel did have an issue with some of their SSDs a while back though that caused them to report being only 8MB, they have since fixed this. If speed and reliability are what you are after you can not go wrong with either the Crucial M4 or the Samsung 830.

[welchgc]

Thanks for the infor guys. I just ordered the Crucial 256GB M4 (only $190 with clone kit) and  8GB Crucial RAM ($50). Pretty good upgrade pricing considering upgrading while configuring my T430 at lenovo website would have cost me over $500. Should be fun installing it as well. 

I will post up once all stuff arrives and is installed.

[JDay]

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welchgc wrote:

Thanks for the infor guys. I just ordered the Crucial 256GB M4 (only $190 with clone kit)

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Do not use that kit to clone the drive, you can run into problems. When you clone a drive to an SSD the alignment tends to get messed up which will severely impact performance. Boot the laptop when you get it and burn the recovery disc set. After putting the SSD into the machine boot the recovery set and let it do it's thing. When completed your SSD will be setup the same as if it was installed at the factory, complete with a recovery partition. Also be sure to remove the stock RAM when you install the 8GB kit since the stock RAM runs at a slower speed and will cause the new RAM to downclock.

[welchgc]

Hey,

thanks for the note. just got my thinkpad T430 today. RAM is upgraded (2 new Crucial DIMMS), was easy. 

regarding the SSD, I really dont understand why cloning with the software is not advised? Although I have burned all the recovery disks, so popping in the blank SSD and running from the DVDs would be easy.

[nibs Guru]

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welchgc wrote:

regarding the SSD, I really dont understand why cloning with the software is not advised? 

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Cloning does not always result in the proper alignment. You can realign following the directions here: http://lifehacker.com/5837769/make-sure-your-partitions-are-correctly-aligned-for-optimal-solid-stat... if you prefer to clone.