pektus

oh, good luck on installing Win7 in UEFI.. i had trouble installing it. both installation methods (USB and DVD) hangs on the windows 7 logo bootup. in any case, if you're successful in installing windows 7 in UEFI, please post on how you go about it as i'm also eager in downgrading to windows 7. the only way i was able to install windows 7 with my y500 is by using legacy mode, but i'm not comfortable doing that. i've tried also installing windows 7 in legacy, then, after installation and first bootup, rebooted the laptop and set bios to UEFI, and it didn't work (didn't boot). also, in legacy mode, you can switch which physical drive the laptop should boot from. maybe you should try that first. --- update i've found this post in the lenovo forums that might help you. will also try this method this weekend. http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/IdeaPad-Y-U-V-Z-and-P-series/Y500-fails-on-installing-Windows-7-GPT-partition-styled/td-p/969363

clean install. you just have to worry about windows 8 installation media and drivers. your windows 8 key is embedded in the firmware.

currently using crucial m4 256Gb as the windows 8 OS drive (with some apps and games installed), and using the 1Tb 2.5" 5200rpm HDD which came with the laptop as the data drive. more or less 10 seconds boot up after pressing the power button. installed also eclipse and intellij java IDE on the primary drive, so that they would launch faster.

hi clarenc3. yes, mSata drive can be used as the boot drive. i'm using a crucial m4 as the boot drive, albeit in windows 8. The trick here is to install Windows 8 or Ubuntu 64bit with the 2.5" HDD detached, and the bios set to UEFI. after installation, and after your first boot, you can then re-attach your 2.5" HDD, and let your OS detect that drive.

@_EF_ i had trouble installing windows 7 with UEFI enabled, that was why i got stuck with using windows 8. with UEFI enabled, the windows 7 installer just hangs, and you have to turn the laptop off just so you can reboot.

this was also my first option in extending the storage of my y500, but i figured it would be more of a hassle swapping ODD and HDD when needed. so i just bought my self a crucial m4 256G mSata to replace the sandisk 16G mSata installed, and made it my primary hard drive btw, noticed any differences in access and transfer rates between the primary HDD and the one in the caddy?

Aside from some software incompatibilities i encountered, i'm happy sticking with windows 8 in my ideapad y500. same with you guys, installed startisback, and productivity is the same as using a windows 7 os. i didn't stop there though, cause i replaced the 16G mSata SSD with 256G crucial m4 and made it the primary boot drive.