List of drives that are compatible with the x220

The M4 has faster random writes and marginally slower random reads than the C300. Not sure which is more important or in what proportion these two specs contribute to OS performance, but I doubt the difference between them is even noticeable in this regard.

Do you know if there is an alternative to Crucial's firmwire if theirs is fudged?

 

I actually think it's way more suble than that and you can't rank them without stating the usage patern first. I looked at Anandtech review of the M4, especially the PCMark Vantage test (the quote is Anandtech's description of the test) :

And the only disk that is consistently better than the M4 in this test is the Vertex 3, I mean the full review by Anandtech is too complex for me but still these tasks are what I will mostly be doing...

 

Hi, I gather that the M4 drive cannot handle the Intel LPM functionality problem properly, from the crucial forums. Hence, even though this problem appears on my T420s, I just want to give a headsup to any X220 users who may run into similar freezeups as I did.

 

I received an email back from Crucial re the m4 SSD (which was/is listed as compatible with the x220 tablet), which comes to the same conclusion that this thread had reached some time ago:

"Thank you for your call yesterday.

We’re currently looking into the Thinkpad range for SSD compatibility as it appears most of them are 7mm.
If yours is 7mm, then I'm afraid our SSDs will, unfortunately, not fit.

If you have further questions please let us know."

Petrov.

 

It will not fit because of the spacer, which props the 7mm drive to 9.5mm. There are 3 other posters, including myself, that received the M4 drive without any warranty stickers on the sides (unlike the C300), so that spacer can be easily removed, making the drive 7mm.

I personally am running the M4 inside my T420s now. Spacer removed in 30 seconds, popped into the main 7mm bay, installed windows 7, job done.

 

Absolutely, I did appreciate that - just would be nice if it was supported out of the box, but as you note it seems the modding process is ultra easy. In fact, so easy I think I'll order one now!

Anyone have tips on where to source the correct brand of screws in the UK once the spacer is removed? Would a PC World or Maplin liklely stock them (and does anyone have the specifics of the required screw)?

Many thanks,
Petrov.

 

M2 x 3 works nicely with the Intel 320 SSD. There's half a chance that the Crucial SSD uses the same. Anyway, once you know what size then have a look for screws on ebay.

John

 

I should be receiving my MyDigitalSSD 64GB mSATA sometime this week. I'll report back with any issues. I plan on using my recovery disks to load the OS for the first try.

 

It uses the same Phison PS3105 controller as the just-released Patriot Torqx 2. Unfortunately I have not seen any benchmarks as yet other than a comment on devicegadget.com:

Notice too that mydigitaldiscount's Crystaldiskmark result of this mSATA SSD uses the older version without multithreaded I/O (4kb Q=32). That's the figure to look at for boot performance.

The Intel 310 or the Renice X3 mSATA SSDs are the high performance units at a higher pricetag.

 

DeadKenny64 did you get it yet? I really want to know what this is going to be like because the price is great so if the SSD is also good then its a done deal for me.

 

The intel 320 looks to use less power then the C300, and have less issue ... one drive I am curious if it works is :

Corsair Nova
CSSD-V128GB2-BRKT


That thing uses very little power at idle and during usage, I wonder if it would fit ...

numbers here :

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3812/the-ssd-diaries-crucials-realssd-c300/7

I really want to retain my battery life.

 

Received it today via First Class Mail. Not sure if I will get it installed tonight or not as it is 80 deg and sunny here after months of cold and rain. I will post an update as soon as it's in.

 

so it looks like im deciding between Crucial C300 128 GB, and Intel 320 Series 160 GB. and also, installing an mSATA Intel 310 would be an option too, but i dont know if I even want a HDD on the computer. Space shouldn't be a problem, so I don't know about that yet. But does anyone have any opinions on the 2 SATA SSD's above. Comparing them, I see Intel gets more rep, but Crucial has SATA III, but then Intel has more space and is cheaper. Seeing as how I potentially would be voiding the warranty, which one is more reliable and less likely to even need maintenance?

Right now I'm leaning Intel 320... anybody else?

 

Yeah, I am contemplating the 320 intel, or the 310 and keep the mechanical drive for storage only...but I want awesome battery, so I am not sure either.

 

I think the practical performance difference is very little for the two drives.

 

Same thoughts here

- Crucial: removing the spacer will void warranty but SATA 6/GB
- mSata: still slower then 'grown up' SSD. limited GB and you'll stil have a potential warmer, noisier HDD
- Intel 320: SATA 3/GB but reliable

At this smoment I would go for Intel 320 but I hope Crucial will reconsider the 'spacermod' or start shipping the M4 without the spacer (7mm)

 

You can get the 256gb m4 for $420 now here: https://www.superbiiz.com/detail.ph...5-inch-256GB-SATA3-Solid-State-Drive-MLC&c=CJ

the Micron c400 (identical) is cheaper still, but I don't think it comes with a warranty as it's only meant for OEMs.

Supposedly the m4 doesn't have a warranty sticker, so modding it will be undetectable. And, even if yours comes with the sticker, you can just peel it off and claim it didn't come with one, since many others here don't have the sticker...I'm not advocating fraud, of course, but if the drive dies and all you did is remove the spacer, I don't see why the warranty shouldn't be honored.

 

bit pricey though ...

 

What is the difference, I am not too familiar w/ SSD drives

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100008120%2050001157%20600038488&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&CompareItemList=636|20-167-055^20-167-055-TS%2C20-167-053^20-167-053-TS

 

yea im not trying to spend more than 400. deals on the intel for about 300 make it my leading choice now.

so having msata ssd + hdd would use considerably more power than just ssd?

 

I think oem means it wasnt manufactured by intel.

 

I had to make the same decision and ultimately went with the Intel 320 due to the additional size for the same price and not wanting two storage devices (mSATA + HDD) drawing power.

 

In this case it means that it comes without the retail box and accessories. Usually it means Original Equipment Manufacturer. For example the intel ssd's use micron chips. Micron is the OEM for the nand chips but intel uses it's own controller.

 

In this context OEM means that it comes in minimal or no packaging with no instructions, the same way the drives are delivered to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) like Lenovo. You don't get a shiny retail box and paraphanalia, just the drive, and it saves you money. Same drive from Intel, different packaging.

 

Actually with the 320 OEM it does come with instructions, and a large sticker But it comes in a plain brown box with some padding and that's it. There's no SATA cables, additional screws, or the mounting bracket for desktop PCs that comes in the non-OEM version. But the drive itself is exactly the same in both cases, and that's all you need for a laptop, just the drive. So go ahead and purchase the OEM one and save yourself some shekels

 

Great
So this will work for the X220; I will go cheaper and get it w/out the box.

 

Does anyone know if the corsair nova, or corsair force series fit? They seem to have much less power draw ...

 

While not officially supported and will probably void the warranty on my SSD drive, I do have an Intel 510 Series 250GB SSD drive in my X220. I took the top cover off, put it in the tray, popped on the rubber sides and slid it in. I did not put any screws in it but it seems snug with the rubber sides.

FYI, I installed from the Recovery CDs (that I created when first booting from the original hard drive just ot make the CDs) since I used to use this drive in my X201. While the 510 was sitting in the X220, I could not just install the drivers over top of the X201 drivers so I had to start from scratch.

Works great but it does rattle a little until you plug it in.

 

OK, I need some help. I installed my MyDigitalSSD 64GB mSATA last night and restored from my disks. Checked alignment - Good. Made sure I was running in ACHI mode - Good. Install went without a hitch. The boot seemed speedier but not by a great amount. Ran CrystalMark and my numbers are horrible. Using the 100MB and 4000MB sizes I am getting SEQ read/write of 130/27 and 4k random of 9.5/2. I was planning on re-installing windows from scratch tonight but I don't have a good feeling about this. The benchmarks on the web page show SEQ of 202/200 and 4k of 15/35 using file size of 100MB.
Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks for the pictures ... useful!

 

How are people's battery life with the C300? I heard they are more power hungry then most SSD's?

 

Sure, two drives will use more juice than one, but are we talking much?

 

How's the benchmark on those? is it running at sata3 speeds (6gbs)

 

Well, my 64GB Crucial M4 arrived this week and I finally got a chance to make the swap. A few observations/questions:

Recovery Disks

I was able to build recovery "disks" without an optical drive by using a 16GB flash drive I had handy. The recovery process to the USB was quite seamless, it took 10GB of space on the drive, made it bootable, and I didn't even have to change BIOS settings to boot from it. In terms of time, installation of the Lenovo image took about 13 minutes from the thumbdrive to the SSD. Much shorter than I thought, considering the size of the image.

SSD Installation

As noted above I purchased a Crucial M4 64GB (largest capacity I could afford given the price I paid for the laptop). The old 5400RPM Seagate drive was easy to remove -- one screw and pull the folded-over ribbon to extract the drive. Removing the spacer on the M4 took a minute, tops. I unscrewed the four screws on the top of the drive, pulled the spacer from between the lid and the bottom, and put the lid back on. I don't have replacement screws (yet) to lock the lid in place, but the HDD caddy and the rubber rails did the trick just fine. My replacement screws are due to arrive later this week or next, and it will be easy to install them then. But at the end of the day, the drive slid in perfectly and doesn't rattle or move at all.

Boot and Setup

The image split the SSD into a primary partition (~45GB) and a recovery partition (~10GB). The base Lenovo image was roughly 23GB of installed space and after removing a few programs (pre-installed Office image, and a few others) I got the footprint down to 20GB. Reallocating the recovery partition to the primary partition was easy, just clicked on the recovery partition and told it to give me back the space it was using.

Stats

• WEI Pre-SSD: 7.1/5.9/5.8/6.3/5.9
• WEI Post-SSD: 7.1/5.9/5.2/6.3/7.9
• Boot time pre-SSD: 91 seconds
• Boot time post-SSD: 31 Seconds

I installed the updated Intel graphics drivers (thanks to LoneWolf15 for this post), and I did experience the freezing problem that some have talked about with the C300s/M4s. After applying two of the fixes listed in this thread (I did both the registry entry and the uninstallation of the Intel AHCI driver), the problem appears to be fixed but honestly I haven't used the laptop long enough post-fix to be sure ( Update: 2 months now and not a single freeze).

It's amazing the difference the SSD makes in the feel of the laptop. My old laptop had an OCZ Vertex in it, and switching to this X200 with the 5400 RPM drive actually felt like a major downgrade. Now with the M4 in the X220 I'm feeling like I finally have the pocket rocket I ordered.

Now that I'm getting settled with the toy, a few questions:

1. In the interest of reducing bloat and saving disk space (on such a small drive) can I uninstall the ThinkVantage Toolbox safely?
2. The folder "SWTools" is quite sizeable and I was hoping to delete it (appears to be just driver installation files, etc). Safe?
3. Any other tips for freeing-up some space on my small SSD? Other programs or files that I should look to delete?
4. There's some talk of alignment issues when using the factory image on an SSD. How do I check that?

Thanks to all in this thread and on this forum who helped make this HDD/SSD swap pretty painless. I'll update this post if any thing changes over the next few days.

 

1. Yes of course it's safe to delete.
2. Safe to delete.
4. Hearst (a member here) was able to confirm the allignment on SSD using the recovery discs was correct. I don't know how he did it though and I didn't bother to check myself. But everything is working fine and dandy for 2 weeks now on Intel 320 SSD and I used the recovery discs

 

Ok,
Before I pull the trigger on the SSD, a few more questions

I had several people in the office ask me do I really need to get an SSD and my reply was yes, but not really good reasons as to why.

They asked me these questions and now I wonder do I need an SSD or do I want one because it’s newer technology than my HDD.

So maybe you guys can help out.

• Do I care if my OS boots up ~ 30 - 45 seconds faster – No
• Is the difference in battery life significant – No
• Is heat an issue – No
• Has the HDD in the previous and present computer ever failed – Once out of 12 different Notebooks I had in the past 5 years - 8.3%
• Is the current drive too slow and if it is for what programs or read writes is it lagging that the 8gb of memory will not help – No
• What programs do you use that would benefit from SDD – None that I know of.
• What programs are used majority of the time on the Notebook - Excel always on and running, Outlook always on and running, Firefox, on 90% of the time


Looking like I don’t need it, anyone disagree?

 

Let's start with this duck fart ... what do you plan to use it for? What programs? What daily 'tasks'?

 

Duckfart: no, you don't need it. Battery life gets a 5-10% boost though, depending on your usage. But if you don't care about all the other things, keep the HDD. I just read an article that said that by 2012 SSD prices will come down to $1.00/GB. Currently it's at $1.5-2.00/GB. So quite a drop. I'd suggest you wait a year or two and then jump on it since by then it will be relatively cheap and worth getting for the minor bonuses it provides (to Average Joes)

Right now SSDs are just WAY overpriced (by value to the consumer that is) for what they provide over HDDs

 

value is in the eye of the beholder .. at the price they are at now..SSD are very much worth it, for the what they bring to a computer.

 

You don't need it anymore than you need a 7200rpm drive over a 5400rpm one.

How much it's worth it to you depends on you, and how much you're willing/able to spend on the upgrade.

 

Daily work
Excel,Outlook, Firefox and proprietary database similar to Sage.

 

Thanks.

I agree I think I will wait on my next notebook in a year or so to update if it drops in price.

I really cant think of the benefits when I break it down ; of course I am talking about me.

 

I'm interested if see if the few others who's using the spacer-modded M4 are getting results similar to mine (note: taken with a T420s i7 instead of a X220).



Any thoughts?

 

called Kingston, the SVP100S2 series will NOT fit...unless you bubble wrap it, there is no spacer.

 

As others have said, you don't need it. But knowledgable people have called it the single most noticeable upgrade you can do to your computer.

Everything about the computer feels more snappy. Browser windows and most programs load right away. Starting and shutting down Win7 is crazy-fast.

In my mind, the SSD just makes the PC feel more "snappy". I was using a 5 year old Dell with an SSD up until my X220 was delivered. And with the 5200 RPM HDD, the X220 felt much slower than the Dell, despite having a much more advanced processor and twice the RAM. Everything took forever. Installing files, opening browser Windows, booting, etc.

So, definitely worth it to me. I really can't say if it's worth it to you.

 

@Duckfart:
Before I upgraded to a SSD on my main laptop, I had gotten into the habit of keeping everything open--PDFs, Chrome Tabs, email, etc-- simply because it took too long to load back up. (PDFs took a good 30 seconds to just open acrobat.. also acrobat haters no need to bash that i'm not using Foxit or whatnot.) This was how I adapted to the slow load times, I took advantage of my 4GB of RAM and just kept everything loaded at all times. After getting a SSD, I can finally actually start closing things. Most apps open instantly, PDFs in acrobat take around 2 seconds to fully load up, etc. It also sped up my computer simply because I didn't have to load 500 programs up into ram and have them idle. I've recently removed my SSD (in anticipation of the X220) and boy have things slowed down @.@ Do be warned though, once you go SSD its hard to go back.

 

hey chaos, have you had any problems with your c300 in your sony?

 

After reading all 25 pages of this thread I just ordered my X220 with the Intel SSD from Lenovo.

I presume that is the X25.

With the 12% off employee pricing from Mastercard Marketplace the drive was only $320 for 160 GB and I didn't figure I could do much better.

BTW, the install to an SSD is way simple. I did it on my W520. However I didn't have the 7 mm height problem to complicate things.

Perry

 

Here's my stats on the Intel 510 Series 250GB SSD drive on the X220. Unfortunately, I don't know what the numbers mean. Is this good/bad/okay?

 

Here's mine. Not sure if the write is slower because the drive is smaller (less scratch space) or if I have something configured wrong. Also it might be because I uninstalled/deleted the Intel AHCI driver and I'm using the MS one. Either way, I'm pretty happy with the way the drive feels.