SSD Caching Question

Tayrun

I'm planning to buy a Lenovo Y580 laptop. Problem is it comes with Windows 8 and I'm not putting up with that. I have a legit copy of Windows 7 I want to install.

The Y580 has some setup where there's a small SSD in it that isn't available as a normal drive to store stuff on, but is being used to cache things.

I haven't used any setup like this before. Will there be problems making it work if I reformat and install Windows 7? Do I need to do anything special during the install process? Do I need to make sure to do anything in windows post-install?

Foomy

Have you actually tired win8 yet? because it really is very similar to 7, only faster, and with a different start screen. Most people get used to it after a few days, and as your in the desktop 99% of the time anyway, the use cases become basically equal.

And if you really really want the classic start button like interface back, there is this: http://www.classicshell.net/

a5ehren

Yeah, Win8 is fine.

The tech you're talking about is Intel's RST caching, which is OS independent as far as I know. If you end up going back to Win7, it should work without an issue.

Tayrun

Yeah the laptop is for my parents. They'll see Win 8 and run a mile. Plus I'll need to do tech support over the phone so I need to be familiar enough with the OS to visualise it. No Win 8.

Do I need to alter any settings or anything to get the RST stuff working?

Djeet

I got a Win7 ultrabook with the storage setup you described. Put Win8 on it and between Toshiba and Intel there was no way to get SSD caching back. This is likely cause the machine wasn't certified for Win8 and if I gutted it out and waited til the sold the machine for Win8 the proper drivers probably would have been released.

Now you're going from Win8 to Win7, so I would think you'd be fine. IIRC correctly the new/scratch install procedure was to make sure in the BIOS that the machine was in RAID mode, and then install the RST utility and use it to enable drive caching.

As a sidenote, teamviewer is pretty sweet when having to remotely fix an issue for a PC use who doesn't know shit (assuming they can boot into Windows).

Tayrun

That is a genius sidenote. Thank you!

Tayrun

So, before I buy, can anyone say with certainty that it should all work fine?

a5ehren

Tayrun wrote: »

So, before I buy, can anyone say with certainty that it should all work fine?

I'm not going to say 100% that it will work, but I don't know of any reason that it wouldn't.

Djeet

Not sure what black magic Lenovo might be using in their factory image/prep for Y580, but it looks like most people trying to do a fresh install of Windows with an SSD as a cache drive are using a 3rd party app to do it. Google "Y580 and velossd". The way the SSD cache thing is supposed to work is you put the drive in AHCI or RAID mode in the BIOS, after installing Windows you download the Intel RST utility, and open it and click the "Accelerate" button, and it looks like people who did that on the Y580 aren't getting the "accelerate" button (this was same behavior on my Toshiba not certified for Win8, no accelerate button in Intel RST). You'll probably need to do a bit more work than expected to get it working.

Tayrun

Ugh, great.

Thanks for the assist. Appreciated!