Intel x25-m 80GB SSD drive in my 2 year old DV7t

A great friend of mine got me an intel SSD drive for my bday. I installed it into my dv7t (replaced one of the two 500GB drives I had in there) and installed Win7 onto it.

I don't know if it's just me, but this drive FLIES! true, the bootup time did not change drastically (~50 seconds from the second i press the power button). however, from the second i click shutdown, my laptop is fully powered off in 7 seconds!

for kicks, i copied my 33gb itunes folder to the SSD drive. i launched itunes and had it "import" my 7,000+ songs - this took less than 3 minutes! as the top of itunes says "song 1 of 7,000".... "song 2 of 7,000" etc, this literally flies so fast you can't read any of the song titles. i had my 33 gigs of music imported in less than 3 minutes!!! i could not believe that.

even copying files to a usb drive is much quicker. I am able to copy a 4GB ISO file onto an external hard disk (not powered) in about 2 minutes. the copy is amazing - right when the copy starts, the SSD drive says it's transferring at over 600MB/sec! it then comes down to the 80-120mb/sec range.... why oh why can't it stay steadily at 600mb/sec!!?!?!?!

anyway, just sharing my experience. IE loads as soon as you click it, msword loads in a second or 1.5 seconds roughly. the drive was about $250 w/taxes+shipping and i did notice a boost in many areas like i've mentioned.

i play unreal tournement 3 and the game play seems much more fluid now. going between menus is much quicker as well.

just posting my experience. my machine has the t9600 core2duo proc and 4gb ram. the way it flies now with the ssd drive, the computer literally feels like it's never going to become obsolete! LOL. im going to try to stay with this 1 machine for as long as i can.

an aside - my boss ordered a lenovo t500 laptop with the latest samsung 256gb ssd drive - this thing has 128MB cache! he was able to backup an 8gb virtual machine within 6 minutes! i dont have the figures on that machine/drive but it is significantly faster than the intel drive i have since my intel drive has 32mb cache. i told him to give me his laptop when he's done with it
- tsd

 

Awesome..I remember seeing you in the dv7t owner's lounge 2 years ago when I bought my dv7 too. I'll be getting an SSD in my next laptop and I'm hoping for the same results.

 

excellent. yeah, im still around. some people gave the drives bad reviews because it didnt make their computers FLY but in many cases where you are copying a ton of files, accessing/writing to the disk often, there is a noticeable difference. it's not going to make internet faster, bootup time isn't going to become 10 seconds. LOL

are you considering the 80gb intel drive as well or another drive? what drive(s) do you have in your machine now?

that was the downside for me sort of - i went from an almost full 500gb drive to this 80 gig drive. lol. i backed up most of the things i hadnt accessed in a while and now i have about 50 gb out of 74.5 gb used on the ssd drive. the speed definitely makes up for it though. im not complaining one bit.

the dv7t has been absolutely bulletproof. after hearing of many people killing their units by updating the bios so i dont think i've updated it since i got the unit. everything has been working perfectly, fan spins when i play games (as expected), etc. im absolutely loving this unit.

 

Well, I'm looking to buy a dm4 tomorrow when it gets released. I'm hoping they offer an SSD option--the previous model had the 160GB option of the intel drive you got. At $340, it's a pretty good deal in my opinion. If it's not offered in the configuration options, I'll probably buy the 80GB version and install it myself.

 

i would have thought the boot up time would be less using an SSD, even with an older CPU. maybe a fresh install of windows would help, or download"autoruns" and use that to uncheck most of the programs that are set to launch at startup. i put an x25-M in my Envy with a clean Win 7 and its boots to desktop in like ~10 seconds, shutdown in ~3.

 

10 second bootup? are you serious?!?!

i will go to msconfig tonight and uncheck most of the stuff on there. i have maybe 2 or 3 apps running. when the windows welcome screen loads, i get my desktop within 3-4 seconds. it's the boot process that takes most of the time. i really have to look at some of these speed/performance/tweaking sites in order to lower the boot time.

but 10 seconds is insanely fast. i'll post my results later.

 

you know why your 160gb is probably fast? i couldn't find the specs but i think the 160gb drive has double the cache of the 80gb. that definitely makes a difference. my bosses samsung drive with the 128mb cache is absolutely insane in terms of speed and the cache is the reason why.

 

A guy called Les has his startup down to 7 seconds if i remember correctly. He uses the Intel 160gb G2 drive. Maybe he'll turn up and give you some tips (or you can PM him).

 

A Guy Called Les eheheheh.

Not quite 7 seconds but close. That, as well is a raw boot time with services and startups shut down and in safe mode. My normal start time with everything running is about 14 seconds.

With respect to your start time, the suggestion above to reinstall Windows 7 is a great suggestion because it gives you the opportunity to build your OS from new. Many don't know it but our systems slow drastically because pretty much every application we install also installs automatic startups that start whether the application is in use or not. The same is with auto updates which are a killer for performance and start times.

There are a few great optimization guides around that will suggest ideas and even explain some of the reasoning.

One I would definitely advise is to turn your system restore off. With this drive, the system restore points don't get along with TRIM and there is every indication through testing that TRIM does not function with restore on. I can always explain this in more detail if need be but its rampid about the net.

Good luck!!!

heres a few things to bait you however...my best boot score and latest SSD Crystal score with the new OWC drive! Wanna notice something different? Check out how full the SSD was during testing eheheh.

 

Well, not quite. Just got home and timed it and it takes 17 seconds from clicking power button to desktop. Maybe the new Vertex 2 SSD could shave a few seconds off of that.

 

LES - 9.4 seconds! this is madness!!! lol

my 50 second boot time was from the time i press the power button (including the POST). after the machine boots from the hard drive, i started timing it just a minute ago and from that point til i get to the desktop is 33 seconds. how the hell do i make it go down to 9? or even 20? LOL

i am going to look for guides over the web. thanks for the tip on system restore - i turned it off. im going to see what else i can find around the web.

off the top of your head, les, how much cache does your ssd drive have?

 

I just installed the boot timer and it says that my machine boots up in 24 seconds. thanks to LES - i followed some of the performance tips on his site and i got this figure. not bad at all. i cant wait to get a more expensive drive lol

but im happy with this for now.

 

good to hear it worked out. i like the SSD i put in my laptop so much i got another one on the way for my desktop. no need to upgrade the old Q6600 yet, but the system hard drive has to go!

 

How hard was it to install it? I just ordered one of these: Amazon.com: Intel 2.5-Inch 160 GB X25-M Mainstream SATA II MLC Solid State Drive - Retail SSDSA2MH160G2R5: Electronics

And a dm4t

 

wasnt hard at all. it was plug and play actually. backed up the files i needed from my old drive onto a usb hard drive, removed the old drive, intsalled the new drive, installed windows, drivers, apps, restored some data (favorites, wallpapers, etc) and that was it. it's as easy as installing a regular hard drive - almost no difference really.

dude u got the 160gb model??! your results are going to be better than mine!!!!! congrats on such a nice drive.

 

Thanks! It's going in this:

HP Pavilion dm4t customizable Notebook PC

* • Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
* • Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-620M Dual Core processor (2.66GHz, 4MB L3 Cache) with Turbo Boost up to 3.33GHz
* • 3GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
* • 320GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
* • 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon(TM) HD 5450 switchable graphics
* • 14.0" diagonal High-Definition HP BrightView LED Display (1366 x 768)
* • SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support
* • HP TrueVision Webcam + Fingerprint Reader + Digital Microphone
* • Intel Wireless-N Card
* • Full-size island-style keyboard
* • High Capacity 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (standard)
* • Microsoft(R) Works 9.0
* • HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope

Can't wait lol..new i7 with SSD should be amazing.

 

damn dude, that is a killer setup! enjoy the hell out of it! ur as crazy as i am, i always go for the fastest cpu when i spec a system out since i wind up keeping it for a few years. i remember the T9600 option for my dv7t was a $625 option or something like that.

your machine is going to FLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

 

Oh yeah, the i7 with a ssd will make pretty much anything you put on that thing fly! Oh and the temperatures will be great to boot.