Should I keep Intel X-25 160 GB SSD ?

Hey all... First of all merry Christmas to everyone

I just recieved an Intel X-25 160 GB SSD disk as one of my Christmas presents here tonight. Not really a Christmas wish but I've been talking with my dad about SSD and I think he thought it would be fun for me to have one.

Anyway... I currently have a 200 GB 7200 RPM disk installed in my Lenovo T61 (specs. are in the signature).

The big question is, should I keep it ? Will I gain anything regarding performance, boot time etc. ?

Regards,
Jakob Laursen

 

You will gain nothing. Send it to me!

 

You're going to see a drastic decrease in loading times at least.

 

You just got the #1 SSD currently available (in the 'reasonable' price range).

If you can use it capacity-wise, I think the time/effort to upgrade will be more than worth it.

Buy an enclosure for the 200GB original disk and use as your backup/data drive.

Do a clean install (Win 7 would be nice!) and make sure you have updated the firmware for it. Install the Intel SSD Toolbox and run a manual TRIM once after you're fully set up with O/S, apps and data - then, Win 7 should keep your performance at it's peak (TRIM) automatically.

You should gain a lot in how responsive the computer is (especially considering how old the mechanical HD is, tech-wise) - this may be enough to further put off purchasing a new computer for a couple of more years (depending what you use it for, of course).

At the very least, test it in your system and you'll see firsthand what the improvements will be for you.

Good luck and Happy Holidays!

 

I love mine, replaced my 500GB HDD. Keep it.

 

Thanks for the advice. How is SSD performance in Vista ? I read somewhere that Vista wasn't that good regarding SSD. Will I see/feel a big difference in performance if I switched to Windows 7 or will it only be marginally better, because I have no reason to upgrade to W7 at the moment ?

Noticeably better SSD performance could trigger the switch although...

 

I'm pretty sure Vista doesn't have TRIM, so I would upgrade to Windows 7 for that alone.

 

you can get benefit from writting , not reading, coz T61 SATA is capped to Generation 1 speed. This was the main reason I sold my T61, and never buy Thinkpad anymore.

 

I have the 80GB version of what you have. I agree that you DEFINITELY should keep it. The performance increase is noticeable especially in boot times, and I used to have, also just like you, a 7200RPM notebook HDD. In addition, the added benefit is that your laptop will be quieter and there will be less heat output

 

Use the the 200Gb harddrive as external hard drive just buy case (wouldn't cost more than $20-25).

Use the SSD as your main drive.

 

keep it and love it.

 

Your bootup time will decrease to 1/2 to a third of what you are seeing. Applications will fly, particularly when the system is heavily disk loaded as the X25M G2 has the best 4kb-64thrd (as shown in AS SSD) performance of current consumer SSDs.

Only real questionable point I could see is whether 160GB is too much? You could get a 80GB version instead, buying a ebay sata-to-pata ultrabay caddy + a 500GB HDD with the savings and have a great os+app SSD plus heaps of data storage space from the HDD. Minus the optical drive of course.

If in analysis-paralysis, please sent to me

 

Keep the 160 and worship your Dad. I hope he didn't get gouged on the price for the thing.

I love mine. Vista is "fine" for an SSD with the notable exception of not having automatic Trim and it takes up more room than W7. There's a folder that gets really big over time, but there's ways to deal with it (which I myself should learn...). Do what the others have said. Obviously install and use Intel's SSD Toolbox to run a periodic Trim command.

W7 would be ideal. I'd point you over to the Lenovo forum here and the "official" Thinkpad forums to investigate how well W7 runs on a T61. I have no idea myself, I'm just judging based on there have been a couple hitches with the T400 and T/W 500. For example the graphics card driver still has some bugs to be worked out. Just sort of look before you leap stuff. I bet you have nothing to worry about.

Unfortunately Lenovo made some bad engineering choices and left the T61 as an SATA 1 drive. That means your max read speed will only be about 140-150. Noting you can do but keep your performance up to those levels with TRIM.

 

I will happily take that drive off your hands if you do not want it.
Enjoy the performance, you lucky dog you.

 

My X-25M 80GB G2 was a "Merry Christmas to me" about 2 weeks ago.

 

Is it the X-25 M?

If it's the 3.5" X-25, then it can not be used in a notebook.

 

There is no 3.5" X25M.

 

Thanks... I guess I will use it with my Vista for for but I will probably install w7 at some point. My parents was a little stunned at the price. My dad knew they would be expensive but he's a tech geek like me, so he wasn't that surpriced But I did get other presents also such as a HTC Rhodium (Tilt 2, Touch Pro 2, whatever you wanna call it).

But back to topic...Basically the only thing that's missing in Vista is the automatic TRIM ? And that could be taken care of with Intel's SSD Toolbox ?

 

hey man, i hate you, i got some trousers and a tea shirt from my wife. merry xmas anyway

 

My tip is to just forgo mucking around with Vista and just put 7 Ultimate 64-bit on it.

 

this.

please mail it to me. I'll even be so kind as to give you $60 for it!

 

You lucky b*stard A 160GB X25-M as a present, wow.

I think there are few tech devices I'd reluctantly use if it was a gift/contest win, this SSD drive isn't one of them.

Yes, you can just use the Toolbox instead. Even with Win 7, the Toolbox gives useful info.

 

I've now installed my SSD on Lenovo T61 with W7. I've also installed Intel SSD Toolbox.

Is there anything else I should do in order to get best possible performance, such as disabling Indexing, Prefetch, Page File etc. ?

Also, it seems that when it comes out out of sleep/standby after a few minutes the screen flickers a few times and then the screen goes black and the only thing I can do is to hold down the power-button and kill it... Does anyone know this is ?

 

Keep it
Its a great little SSD - I have one too in my Vaio, however I went from a 5400rpm HDD to it - apart from being much faster it also consumes less energy when idle and when under load.

So you get more speed + more battery life.

 

Keep Indexing, keep the Page File, keep Prefetch - which - cough, cough, cough - always spreads this nonsense that you should disable it?

Toolbox - you shouldn't need it, if you are on the Windows7 Sata drivers then you have Trim - use CrystalDiskInfo to check if your Firmware is Trim enabled.

 

Isn't Intel releasing the G3 drives soon which will drive prices of these G2 drives down?

 

Aren't they coming Q4 2010?

And I don't think it will drop the price a lot - G1 drives are slightly more expensive than G2 drives in Europe for some strange reason....

 

looks micron C300 will be in mass production in Q1 2010, performance wise, it kills intel in any second.

 

Nope, Q4 2010. Coming in Q1 2010 are Gen 2.5.

 

Just leave all 'tweaks' alone. Drive should work perfect.

As for the flickering/black screen issues - that sounds like a driver problem, not an SSD specific problem. Could be a ThinkPad power management driver you need to install (if no specific Win 7 one, use the Vista version - should be fine) or a Video or even a Sound driver too. Are all items showing 'normal' in Device Manager? If any have a yellow exclamation in front, make sure that all drivers are newest and properly loaded.

In the SSD Toolbox, check to run a manual TRIM (I think it is once a week maximum) on a schedule. This will ensure that the performance of the drive stays at peak performance, no matter what SATA driver you happen to be using.

Except for the issue with sleep, how is the performance with an SSD?

 

That's the interesting part - Toolbox 1.1 recommended it once per day, version 1.2 recommends running Trim once a week...

 

Yeah, that struck a chord with me too.

I guess even Intel learns as it goes...

 

I know that. I was asking the question, because in the topic title, he lists it as an X-25, not an X-25M.

 

The performance is very good. I've now tried it with W7 and Vista and W7 seems to be a bit faster at booting. Don't know if this is due to the SSD or better OS. When I'm inside the OS and cannot feel much difference between W7 and Vista. Both systems are very responsive. So far so good...

 

Sorry, I meant X25-M of course

 

The G2 refresh that's coming in Q1 IMO should be the "Tock" like equivalent in SSDs. The performance will be greatly improved, but like a Tock, the price might not be.

I don't think the release will be January, but sometime early in 2010.

The so called G3 at Q4 will be the "Tick", so a process shrink to 2xnm and lower prices.

 

Oh ok, that's all good then.

 

Yes Windows7 boots a bit faster than Vista - but its the same OS.

There is no simple "Windows7 is a better OS than Vista".

Its the same OS slightly tidied up and optimized a bit here and there, the very same at its Core.

 

I've been using the G2 now for a couple of days. The big difference in using the Intel SSD vs. a quick HDD is not so much the booting times. It's everything else. Like opening Firefox, Control panel or My computer or saving a file. Everything happens without delays.

These delays with HDDs are very short, but when they disappear the user experience becomes completely different.

 

well u'd really see a great difference when u use 24 SSD's in RAID O compared to 24Hard drive in RAID O... the SSD's are awesome!

 

Will it be competitively priced against the X25-m? Also, will the Sata 6 speeds work with the Alienware i7 M15x, or other notebook out yet? Thx

 

price is unknown but likely drives all other brands down due to big performance gap i guess...for sata 6G vs sata 3G numbers, it's not big difference here from micron atto numbers:
http://www.micronblogs.com/2009/12/as-benchmarks-for-realssd-c300/