Have a SSD but need more space

Please forgive me if this is too obvious to you.

I am hoping to have a 128GB SSD. But I need about about 300GB space to hold my stuff and I constantly move around.

I am thinking to buy a 500GB 7200RPM disk from Lenovo coming with a new Thinkpad, and then buy SSD online and carry the 500GB disk with me and connect it to thinkpad when needed.

Is this the way of life you or most have?

What stuff do I need to buy to make this 500GB protected, easy to carry, and connect to my pc?

Best.

 

are you going to use it in your T500 or T61? do you use the optical drive much? if not why not consider the ultrabay slim hdd adapter (T500 and T61 uses a different ultrabay connector, first one is SATA and the latter is PATA).

 

You mean putting the 500GB drive in the ultrabay instead of having a DVDRW thing there, correct? If this is true, then I am really thrilled by this idea.

I am going to buy a new T510. What else do I need to buy to make this idea work?


>>do you use the optical drive much?

I dont use it much. I can buy an external DVDRW if I need, correct?

Thanks so much!!! I am really thrilled.

Best.

 

lead's suggestion is your best and most portable option.

Yes, you an buy an external DVDRW, or just use the internal after you take it out with a SATA to USB cable.

All you need is the ultrabay SATA adapter for your T510 (ThinkPad Serial ATA Hard Drive Bay Adapter III, 43N3412). You will place your 500GB there, and use the SSD for OS.

 

Lenovo don't officially produces a ultrabay hdd adapter for the serial ultrabay enhanced slot (12.7 mm thick) yet, but you can use the ultrabay slim (9.5 mm thick) version (however i am not sure how securely it holds a hdd in the ultrabay enhanced slot).

 

>>or just use the internal after you take it out with a SATA to USB cable.

You mean I can continue to use the internal DVDRW using a USB cable?

Regards.

 

Just a little detail: Lenovo's SATA adapter is 9.5 mm thick, and I believe the T510 has a 12.5mm optical drive. So, be prepared there will be a little bit of space. Unless you buy a 12.5mm third party adapter from eBay (much cheaper). Check also this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/527439-t510-ultrabay-hard-drive-hdd-adapter-2.html

 

Fem,

>>or just use the internal after you take it out with a SATA to USB cable.

You mean I can continue to use the internal DVDRW using a USB cable?

I am so grateful for the info. Cannot say enough thankyou.

Best.

 

Just go on eBay. You can find an external USB 9.5mm or 12.7mm ODD enclosure and a 9.5mm or 12.7mm HDD caddy to fit into your notebook. On the lower end for pricing, I've seen both for $10-15/each.

 

sgogeta4, thanks so much for chimining in. Sorry for bothering you.

Could you please confirm that I need to buy these two things

1. 12.7mm HDD caddy

2. 12.7mm ODD enclosure (what does ODD enclosure stand for?)

Regards.

 

ODD stands for Optical Disk Drive = your DVDRW (and alike).
HDD stands for Hard Disk Drive = your original hard disk and SSD.

With your new T510, you need this 12.7mm caddy:
2nd HDD hard drive Caddy For Thinkpad T510

After you replace your original 500GB hard drive with your new SSD, you can put the original hard drive in the caddy, and stick the caddy where the DVDRW was.

Now, to use the DVDRW out of the laptop, you have to put it in an enclosure that will give you power for the optical drive and USB connection to the laptop. Most such solutions include a Y-cable (one USB from the enclosure goes to two USB ports in the laptop) to power the optical drive, so you don’t need an external power cable.
You need something like this:
Black: USB 2.0 Enclosure for Laptop Slim Optical Drive SATA - Black
White: USB 2.0 Slim SATA CD-ROM DVD-RW Optical Drive Enclosure - White
(They say "slim" but in standard laptop terms this is 12.7mm)

 

fem,

>>USB 2.0 Enclosure for Laptop Slim Optical Drive SATA - Black

This item on ebay comes with the needed cable to connect DVDRW with T510, correct? Put it another way, buying the two above items (caddy and enclosure) are all what I need.

Sorry to ask you again. Just dont want to miss anything.

Millions of thanks!

Best.

 

Yes, it seems this comes with 2 cables: one from the enclosure to a single USB port of the T510, and another (type Y) from the enclosure to two USB ports of your T510 (you will try the first one, and if the drive does not power up, you will try the second one; there is no need for a separate power cable to the wall outlet).
And yes, these 2 things are all you need (plus the new SSD!)

 

fem, thanks for replying to my questions at such a late time. I just wanted to say this: thank you and have a wonderful night.

Regards.

 

you too

 

Seagate Momentus XT Review | StorageReview.com
Perhaps you can live with this compromise. Not quite the performance of an ssd, but it is a 500gb drive with 4gb of slc cache.. Carrying around a separate drive would be a chore

 

There something else that hasn't been thought of which is disk compession. There are a couple of drawbacks whish is performance. Disk compression is slightly slower.

Anytime directories are selected with Explorer they may be compessed by choosing properties in the explorer selection dialogue box. Often you are asked if you'd like to propagate these protection attributes to a subdirectorie's children or not. Either a yes or no or no is required.

Renee

 

MDDZ looks for a solution with dual internal hard drives. An SSD for OS and programs and a spinning HD inside the ultrabay for storage (in place of the DVDRW).

 

Yes, and?

Renee

 

and "Carrying around a separate drive would be a chore"

 

i think disk cleanup wizard lets you specify how many days inactive you want to allow before you compress a file using ntfs compression. if the files not used every day during boot, it won't be noticed if compressed really.

 

" and "Carrying around a separate drive would be a chore""

I'm confused as I made no mention of external disks?

Also the remark about the seperate drive isn't mine.

Renee

 

I have used NTFS native disk compression for years. When I had my new laptop, I used it with NTFS disk compression disabled for a while to see if there would be a noticeable difference but I went back because I noticed absolutely no performance difference at all. In some cases, some things loaded quicker with compression enabled too.