IdeaPad Y500, replace hard drive possible by any model? Or limited by whitelist?

Is there a whitelist for internal hard drives or not ? I ordered one of 1TB. I hope it's compatible.

Which parts can I change?

I have installed the whitelist mod for wlan cards but that's it so far.

 

Grab whatever hard drive you want. If it fits, it sits. You know? lol

Any standard 2.5 HDD will work. Keep in mind that at 1TB you will only(mostly?) find 5400rpm, no 7500rpm. So slight drop in performance. If you want maximum go time, grab a SSD. But crap for size.

I wouldn't bother with the mSATA drives, They cost more per GB than a standard SSD and can only be used for cache IF RAID IS ENABLED IN THE BIOS. And I guarantee the option isn't available unless the machine already came with an mSATA drive from the factory.

Now, I believe the hybrid drives are a better option. Replaces the standard drive. Performs near SSD speeds. And way more affordable. So far I've only seen the Seagate models available up to 750GB, 1TB should be available soon, like REALLY soon. Also, Western Digital is about to release their line of hybrid drives. Late May, early June??? So some competition might edge the pricing down another 20 bucks.

Also, if you install an SSD, be prepared for a little bit of legwork to get it running. And losing the OneKey Recovery Option. Installing the hybrid is just like a standard swap. Copy an image of your current drive over to the new one. I had a great walk-through available, just can't pull it up at the moment. If you would like it, let me know. I'll have to power-up Betsy the Old Beast to pull the webpage.

 

The Y500 comes with 16GB mSATA (I have it) and was wondering how difficult it is to do all this. I do not know anything about even how to open the laptop and I do not know if I should get a 256GB SSD or a 256GB mSATA ... ugh...

 

No, no whitelist limits on either the 2.5" SATA or the mSATA drive slots. Feel free to swap out components from either slot.

Disagree. Anyone who wants to max out what they can install into their laptop should definitely get a 256GB mSATA SSD. We're not talking about astronomical price differences here.

A 256GB mSATA SSD costs ~$205.
A 256GB 2.5" SATA SSD costs about ~$170.
A 512GB 2.5" SATA SSD costs about ~$330.

People don't buy a 256GB mSATA SSD because they want the most economical cost-per-GB in SSD storage. The extra ~$35 premium you pay for an mSATA-based 256GB SSD is to buy an extra storage interface in your laptop, so they can put a 1TB drive in the 2.5" SATA drive bay.

You are misinformed. The Lenovo Y500 uses SanDisk ExpressCache if you choose to use the mSATA drive as a caching drive. ExpressCache does not rely on having a RAID controller. If you were to buy a Lenovo Y500 that wasn't factory configured with an mSATA drive, you could easily put an mSATA drive in there, and configure ExpressCache to start using it.

And if someone buys a 256GB mSATA SSD, they wouldn't bother with caching anyway. SSD caching is intended for people who cannot afford an SSD large enough to store the data that benefits from SSD performance (OS, apps, games). 256GB mSATA SSD is more than enough capacity for that kind of data.

Disagree.

A hybrid drive is intended to address two problems:

• You cannot afford an SSD large enough to store all of the content that benefits from SSD performance (OS, apps, games); or
• You cannot afford an SSD large enough to store ALL of the content you need on internal system storage

I wouldn't recommend a hybrid drive to a Lenovo Y500 owner. A hybrid drive made a lot of sense 2 years ago, when SSD storage cost $2.00/GB. Today:

• A hybrid drive will cost you anywhere from $80 - $115. If you really are budget-constrained, but still want performance, get a 128GB mSATA SSD for $140. That will be more than enough for OS, apps, games.
• Traditionally, laptops only had one drive bay for internal storage. People were forced to pick between performance, storage capacity, and price. The Lenovo Y500 has two drive bays (mSATA + SSD), allowing you to get high performance *AND* internal storage capacity without unreasonably high costs.
  
  
  
  Again, you're misinformed. As far as your computer is concerned, any SATA drive will be recognized by your computer regardless of the underlying storage technology used (SSD, hybrid, or mechanical HDD). There isn't a whole lot of "extra legwork" involved. Especially considering the astronomical performance boost you get from moving from HDD --> SSD.
  
  Your statement reminds me of my 66-year old father, who paid $23/month for 56K AOL dial-up until 2011, because he was afraid of the "extra legwork" of putting in one phone call to AOL to cancel, and another phone call to the cable company to order broadband.
  
  I'm also pretty surprised that you mentioned OneKey Recovery, especially since you're so conscious about cost & performance. The highest-impact performance improvement you'll ever get out of a laptop is to wipe the system, and do a clean re-format & re-install of Windows to get rid of all of the pre-loaded bloatware that the system manufacturer puts on there. This will apply to any laptop you ever buy. Past, present, and future. And, it coincidentally will not cost you a single additional penny to get this performance improvement.

 

Physically, Installing an mSATA drive is pretty much the same process as installing laptop RAM or miniPCI-E card. They are all "PCB sticks / cards" that get inserted into a slot on the motherboard. You pop off the bottom cover of the laptop, pull out the old component, and put in the new one.

The answer is to get the 256GB mSATA. Especially since they are relatively affordable at ~$205 for a Crucial M4 256GB mSATA SSD.

I'm guessing you're the kind of guy to ask "What is the best possible component I can buy, before I hit a point where I start just needlessly throwing money away?"

A 256GB SSD is more than enough storage & performance for what you'd want out of an SSD in any computer. So it makes sense to put that 256GB SSD on the mSATA slot, where you would essentially "max out" what you'd ever expect that mSATA slot to be used for in the next 4 years. Meanwhile, over those same 4 years, you can reliably predict that 2.5" SATA mechanical HDDs will continue to improve in capacity, performance, and affordability. It will take a LONG time before you can expect to "max out" what you can do with a 2.5" SATA drive bay.