Lenovo SSD Drives

Hey Guys,
Question for everyone:
How are the SSd Drives that come from Lenovo? I saw a T400 in there outlet online site and was curious if the drive is good or should I stay away. I have no expierence with the SSD drives, I have read a little about them on line but I am not sure which model comes with notebooks, any help would be great, thanks in advance.


Val

 

if it's power of 2 (64gb, 128gb, 256gb) it's mostly a samsung drive. some of the older samsung revisions are slower, so you can't be sure which you get with a refurbished notebook. if it's 80gb or 160gb it's most probably an intel drive, but they usually advertise it than and only a few have these drives.

i'd however check twice if it's a good deal. hdd/ssd replacement is a very easy swap, you may get a better deal if you replac the drive yourself.

 

Yeah good point I should have thought of that before I posted. The unit is listed as a Refurb and that to has me a little concerned. I think I'll wait and see what happens with the new T410.
Thanks for the reply.


Val

 

"Power of 2" also conforms to the hardware memory itself.
Renee

 

Thanks guys I went back to check into a bit more and I can't confirm but I believe it to be the older ssd a few others I saw on their site were the older samsung.

 

The older Samsung is awful. Avoid. Unless you can get a recent model SSD from Lenovo, go third-party. The latest Intel 160GB is the best, but there are many very fine present-generation SSD's to choose from.

 

Why do you say like that ?

The older Samsung SSD isnt that bad. I heard that in everyday usage you wouldnt notice the difference between the older one and newer one.

 

It's not a bad SSD at all. It may not have the highest consecutive throughput or the tremendous small random write performance of the Intel SSD, but it's still quite good. Access time is very near zero, power usage is very low, and the Samsung SSDs have never had any issues with stuttering. That being said, I agree that the Intel and Indillix based SSDs are a better choice for those concerned with top performance.

 

I think I overstated, sorry. Having an early generation Samsung SSD would still be, as both previous posters correctly point out, still wonderful - silent, almost instantaneous in reads, low heat, etc. It is just that the next generation Samsungs (with much better write speeds) have been out for a long time now, and the latest Intels are another generation better even than them. If Lenovo and others charge full price for long-superceded SSD's IMHO is wrong. But I concede that in the real world they are still SSD's - an incomparably better form of storage than the HDD. (smile). I have not in 20 years experienced a bigger improvement to a computer than the simple move from a HDD to a SDD.

I bought third party - about 8 months ago - I would have preferred to buy from Lenovo, but not at inflated prices for inferior options, at least at the time I was looking...the prices do appear better now... I have a OCZ Summit with the newer generation Samsung driver, and it has been great the whole way; and now it has TRIM support to increase write speed further. OCZ has apparently discontinued production of the Summit - I guess to concentrate on their Indilinx-controlled SSD's.

 

Speaking of SSD's offered by Lenovo, I recently received an incorrectly spec'ed x200 with a Toshiba SSD (thns128gg4baaa-n).
Where does this fall? "long-superceded" or "recent model"? in comparison to Samsung, Intel?

 

Here's some info about my Samsung SSD in my X200:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=439217

It is not the latest version Samsung SSD, hence one of the older generations. I believe my version was introduced around Q4 2008/Q1 2009.

Nonetheless as you can see, the numbers are still more than respectable and real life performance is spectacular. So my recommendation is: if you can a good deal on a refurbished ThinkPad with a SSD in it, go for it.

 

Hello Jon

Back in the mists of time (early 2008) you said "In the near future (<12 months) you should see a good quality 1.8" SSD at 256GB+". I am desperate to upgrade my Lenovo X300 from 64Gb to 128Gb or better but I can't find a compatible SSD drive anywhere. Any pointers?

Brian

 

That 256GB+ prediction was based on Moore's law, and has already come true (it's still expensive though).

If all you need is 128GB+ I would probably recommend the 160GB Intel x-18M. Here is a Google shopping link; only a handful of these retailers (the more expensive ones) have stock, but this SSD is available and will work.

Additionally, any of the 1.8" SSDs on this Samsung list will work. Any of these (e.g. the 256GB MMDPE56G8DXP-0VB) would make a fine, albeit expensive choice.

 

I will most likely go with a third party, it will be cheaper for me in that respect since a family member of mine has ties to a computer distribuator. I am still trying to make a decision between a T400 or wait for the T410. I want to see what the actual specs come out for us in the next few days. Until then I'm holding off from ordering anything. Thanks again for the advice on the SSD drives. One thing that you all made me relieze also is that it will be quieter with the SSD over the HDD. Plus the heat should run cooler in the SSD over the HDD. Two pluses in the "get one" colume

 

My T400 (ordered beginning of Dec 2009) came with a 128GB Toshiba SSD (THNS128GG4BAAA-NonFDE AGLA0203). Pretty snappy but I am not sure how it compares to any other SSD as I've never tried another. But sure feels faster than my 60GB 4200rpm .

My Win7 Hard disk Windows Experience Index is 6.8 or 6.9.

On a side note, when I ran the WEI assessment from the command line it said that WEI for memory is maximum 5.9 if it is on a x64 system and memory is less than 4GB - 64MB. My BIOS seems to take some 120MB so my memory index is capped by that. Maybe there's something like this to harddisk scores too.