I have a W520; works great! I want to replace the HDD with a SSD. The HDD is factory. The SSD is the same size (500gb). While the hardware bit is straight forward, swapping the contents is less so. I'm running Windows 7. I've looked about and find others have done all sorts of machines, including some Lenovo, I've not found any direct guides or experience.

While I am knowledgable in these things, there are always things you wish you had known beforehand.  ANY guidance or experience will be greatly appreicated.

Mike

This article is what I have used several times with success, including on a W520:

http://lifehacker.com/5837543/how-to-migrate-to-a-solid-state-drive-without-reinstalling-windows

After you defragment your drive, back up your data, shrink your current partition, and clone your drive to the SSD, then you can re-expand the new cloned partition (i.e. on the SSD) so you have the same space available to you that you started with.

If you move your personal data to a separate drive, then the defragmenting, shrinking, and cloning operations will go faster.

Looks like a job for the weekend. I'll report back the results.

A related question; The original HDD has a "maintenance" partition. DOes this procedure clone it as well?

Mike

Yes it does. And thanks.

I now am running the W520 on a SSD.

Boot times & launch times much faster.