i mean when you do a fresh install of win7 you get to delete and format the drives the SSD will prob. be listed there..

Yeah I'm hoping so

its running 100% perfectly right now so not touching it lol.

*bump*

this lack of documentation on something that acts outside of standards / normal OS config is, frankly speaking, very disappointing

can you tell me the model number for the ss? i want to see if any store is selling it...

I just got a Y560 with 500GB Rapid drive and it has been a pain in my but - if I knew it was such a pain I would have gone with the 759gb 7200 rpm hd instead. 

My system came with Windows 7 Home Premium  64 bit, and a bunch of junk installed it. 

The first thing I do when I get any laptop is reformat and install my own OS (windows 7 ultimate 64 bit).

I tried to do an upgrade, but windows 7 ultimate setup sees no writable drive.

I decided to go into disk managment, delete the main parition and repartition and install Windows Ultimate on it - Was able to delete the partition, but cannot recreate one.

I called Tech Support, and they had me do the onekey rapid restore -which is supposed to recreate the paritions and restore the system to the state it was in when I bought it.  No DICE - it said everything was successful, but on reboot, the system reads no OS found.

The solution was that I had to send my laptop to Levnovo Support - and they will have to manually restore the drive.  I don't like owning any hard drive I can partition, format, install newer OS's onto, or manipulate any way I want without have to send it into the factory.

STAY AWAY FROM THIS PRODUCT.

I'm gonna see if I can exchange the HD for a normal HD.  If not, I guess I'll just replace it with a larger 7200rpm drive.

AGAIN STAY AWAY FROM RAPID DRIVE.

Note that I started my career in a computer store in 1985, and since that time I have been a laptop test engineer for NEC, a software programmer, and even an IBM employee - I was a Senior Advisory Software Engineer at IBM.  The first HD I ever installed was a 5MB MFM Hard disk in an original IBM PC XT - you had to use debug g=c800:5 and low level format the drive entering the error map by hand before you could format the drive in MS DOS - I am a very experienced user.

This is my PROFESSIONAL OPINION

STAY AWAY FROM RAPID DRIVE.

Hope that helps.

wow, I've got to say for a "professional" you're kinda in the dark about all this...

from my search sofar this is what I've found out so far:

rapiddrive if operating correctly should get you a boot time around 15 seconds from button press to desktop on the y models.

the hardware difference is the addition of a 32 or 64 gb samsung m800 ssd

it will not work with other pcie half mini cards or msata cards because of the white list in bios that restrict bios recognition

even with the proper hardware the ee windows7 is required as it is optimized specifically by and for lenovo/ibm

even with the proper os and hardware, the optimizations for rapiddrive are only available from the factory, meaning they can never be as good as the factory loaded version. 

all this means, don't screw yourself by deleting the original partitions or altering them so your can't do a factory restore.  It can't be done manually and it will never be as good or fast.  make sure you burn recovery media and keep it safe just in case.  if you choose to set it up manualy, you will have download and get the rapiddrive tool to unhitch the ssd from the hdd logically and then install the os on the ssd.  then install the rapiddrive drivers on the ssd NOT THE HDD.  then you will have something close to what you had when you got it.  the unhitching only works once so if you unhitch then boot back to your desktop instead of installing the new os then you'll have to unhitch it again for the install to recognize the ssd.

or of course you can just unhitch it, reinstall the os, wipe the hdd and treat it like a normal system without rapiddrive by not installing the drivers. 

if you plan to install the os on the hdd instead of the ssd and keep them separate, you'll have to change the boot order in the bios to look for the hdd first instead of the samgsung ssd.

I'm currently trying to obtain a set of restore discs for my rapiddrive system but little luck so far...

I'm sorry, but for a "professional" you really don't know much about modern computers. Installing directly to the msata ssd used for rapiddrive is extremely simple. There simply isn't a partition table on the device, and writing one to it makes it immediately availble. Do not shy from this machine, it is great.

"Documentation" on Rapiddrive is here:

http://consumersupport.lenovo.com/us/en/HintsandTips/ShowDoc.aspx?ID=12870415982811

Some of my observations that might be helpful:

     Immediately use OneKey to burn a factory recovery CD/DVD because Lenovo doesn't provide a recovery CD with new laptops.

     Do not rely on OneKey recovery for a *full* backup of your drive.  It only backs up your "system partition" (C Drive). Use software that takes a full backup including the hidden Windows 7 boot partition, C: (system partition), D: (lenovo drivers partition), and hidden recovery partition.  Maybe try Lenovo's Rescue Recovery, Acronis, etc. (at your own risk).

     Don't attempt to initialize, delete, create, resize partitions using Windows Disk Management.  Read the link above which talks about a Lenovo Rapiddrive bug that shows the SSD as an uninitialized "Disk 1" in Disk Management.  Leave Disk 1 alone. Rapiddrive has already combined the SSD and HDD as "Disk 0".  Don't mess with partitions unless you are an expert and willing to do a full recovery in case something goes wrong.

     If you plan on replacing your harddrive, here's a link to my own experience replacing the 2.5" HDD with an SSD:

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/IdeaPad-Y-U-B-V-and-Z-series/How-fast-or-slow-is-your-EE-Rapiddrive/td-p/354739

Thanks, that's interesting. It sounds like using the RapidDrive Tool to separate the HDD from the SDD may be the thing that allows you to safely defrag the hard drive (mine is currently at 35% fragmented), then run the tool to merge the drives back together. That also means there's reasonable hope for me to eventually upgrade from 7 Home to 7 Professional (for the XP virtualization feature, mainly),

It was kind of alarming to discover that the default configuration on my Y570 scheduled a weekly defrag. I turned that off for my investigation, just to be safe.