List of drives that are compatible with the x220

The idea is that 9.5mm drives will fit when the rail/spacers (not speaking of the drive's built-in height spacer, if it has one) are not used. It's just 100% drive in that bay now.

 

ok, that sounds great, because I would really prefer a vertex 3. Do I loose warranty claims or is this "work-around" officially supported?

 

@Duffin. thanks so much. I now have no worries that I didn't waste my money on my Vertex 3.
@all. is it better to image the ssd or clean install with back-up dvd's?

 

Lenovo won't support a 3rd party SSD.

OCZ will support their SSD.

Above is my guess.

 

Some people wanted to see some benchies of the M4 128GB in the x220 .. here they are :

Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2 128GB in x220 – modded to 7mm | Vivi The Mage

 

So you mean that by removing the rail and installing the SSD directly in the bay, all 9.5mm SSD will fit in the X220....including intel 510?? Seems that Crucial M4 still requires some electrical tape to avoid shorts. Is this the same for other 9.5mm SSD in the X220?

 

I haven't yet tried it myself, but if you skim through the last 1/3 of the thread and look at Duffin's pics, that looks to be exactly what happened.

Just for the sake of it, I'll test it out with an older 9.5mm hard drive that I don't care about when my e220s arrives. I suspect the drive will overheat, but hey... If it doesnt, then it should be possible to run a faster and higher capacity 9.5mm hard drive.

 

that's a good question and I would also be interested in a response!

 

Just wanted to say that I got an Intel 320 160gb SSD in my X220 and it has made a big difference. Super easy to remove the spacer and put it in. Very happy with it.

 

Wanted to note on the M4 as well, I am getting about 396MB/s read and 181MB/s write using AS SSD on my x220. I bought M2x3 screws to secure the lid after removing the spacer but found it only fit two of the four holes properly. I need to get something a tad longer for the other two screw holes since I can feel it slightly catch on the M2x3 screws (maybe M2x4).

The rubber rail holds the rest securely however and it has been working great for me otherwise. I needed to do the LPM reg patch to stop the hangs I would get.

 

i wonder if Lenovo is shipping out gen2 intel x25's with their customized models... maybe that could be causing the delay i am having?

 

When I ordered in mid May choosing the 160 GB SSD warned of a 3-4 week delay.

That is what we are experiencing.

 

is it worth it spending $500 on the vertex 3 240gb? how good is the sata 3 controller on this system..?

 

Could anybody confirm whether 9.5mm SSD placed in the X220 may overheat?

Another question:
which drive would you recommend between Crucial C300 128Gb and Crucial M4 128Gb for the X220? Are they OK for reliability?

 

can you post benchmarks of these drive?

 

Get the M4 so you dont have to rip off the warranty void sticker.

 

Thanks but according to this Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2 128GB in x220 – modded to 7mm | Vivi The Mage the fit seems tight and I wonder whether the drive may overheat. Do you have some experience with that?

 

I have the m4 and the fit is exactly the same as any other 7mm drive. It doesn't feel more or less tight than the one that came with the system.

 

SSD's aren't mechanical like HDD's and therefore use a lot less power and as a result produce much less heat. AnandTech - OCZ Vertex 3 (240GB) Review the graph shows the M4 idling at .66 W and 3.01 W during usage. Compared to the hard drive shown, its significantly less. So i don't think the snug fit will cause overheating issues. maybe even reducing the risk?

 

While in the past SSDs may have always consumed less power - it actually is a pretty close comparison with modern day mechanical drives. You may not necessarily get better battery life with an SSD vs a mechanical drive.

The hitachi 320gb 7200rpm 7mm drive in the x220 is actually a fine example of that. It is a low power drive. Idle power consumption is rated at .8w, with an average operating wattage of only 1.8w.

Point is - it's false these days to automatically assume that SSDs will consume "a lot" less power. In reality - when compared to the modern day 2.5" drives, it is actually very close.

 

It was just the shorting out. Do electrical tape like listed at that site and it should be fine. I don't actually use the tape; I just put my M2x3 screws in loosely and haven't had a problem.

 

Provantage is now allowing preorders of the Z5K500, saying they'll ship in 3-4 weeks. They seem to be the only reputable selling it so far.
For myself, I think I might be comfortable holding off until a larger capacity drive comes out next year, considering how steep this one is per megabyte and the fact that it's a 5400rpm drive.

 

Same here... I was thinking of upgrading right away, but I can easily make do with a 250GB internal drive in favor of something significantly better than what is currently available. Will hold out for either a 500GB 7200rpm, or a higher capacity (640 or 750?) 5400rpm.

 

I wonder if it is possible to fit a 9.5mm drive, with some modifications of course.
This guy here (in German) measures the Hitachi HDD with the bumpers at 8.9mm and a standard HDD at 9.3mm. So the difference is 0.4mm.

In this picture you can see the drive when the keyboard is removed. It is underneath the Keyboard bezel, which can be removed as well. So I wonder if it would be possible to fit a 9.5mm drive from "above" rather then pushing it in from the side.




Edit: I contacted a number of retailers last week in the UK and Germany about the Z5K500, and a couple of them said it had been discontinued...I hope that's not true.

 

Sorry to create a new thread for this.. but on the list of HDD/SSD for the X220 they are busy taking about something else...

So ill get this lappy on thursday and i want to add an SSD to it.. im between the vertex 3 240gb OEM edition, or the vertex 3 120 max IOPS

is there a big difference "speed" wise between those 2?

any other sdd i should consider?

 

an Intel 320.

 

I hope so too. I ordered one.

 

seems like a very slow performer compared with the vertex 3 AnandTech - The Intel SSD 320 Review: 25nm G3 is Finally Here

 

Well, have fun with your reliability. Anyway, any more discussion of this topic really belongs in the thread that's already existing.

 

Thats because the Intel 320 is a SATA II drive, the Vertex 3 is a SATA III drive so naturally it will be faster than the Intel 320.

Things to be careful of the Vertex 3 is that it can be a hit or miss in terms of installation to the X220, the system wasn't designed to take such sized drives in the first place. Also with the Vertex 3 you need to do some tweaks with the operating system otherwise it will occasionally freeze or crash completely.

Personally if I had the X220 for peace of mind I just stick with the Intel 320 with the spacer removed.

 

is there a faster SSD that has the right size for this laptop?

 

I would actually prefer the 320 because of AES enryption - that's more important to me in a Laptop then a few MB/s more or less (Interesting benchmark would be 320 vs Bitlockered Vertex 3/Crucial)

 

The intel 320 also has full drive encryption, capacitor backup for improper shutdowns, and a 5 year intel warranty.

 

ummm i dont really care about about the encryption.. but the cap backup for improper shutdowns sounds nice

 

whats the fastest sata 3 drive that is 7mm?? or 7mm convertible by removing the spacer

 

Crucial M4, how to can be found here (thnx vivi, love Final Fantasy IX, almost as good as XII )

 

if you always have the battery plugged into the unit, it's like an UPS - hence the merits of the sudden power loss doesn't really come into play.
ie more so for the desktop without UPS.

 

My write speeds may be low due to throttle limits.

 

In terms of reliability, would you still say that Intel 320 is better than the M4? It seems that people say Intel is more reliable but is this still true?

It is true that a SATA3 drive would make sense in the X220 but reliability is really important. I wonder whether we would see any real life difference between these drives...

 

Read a lot of reviews with people frustrated with the Crucial M4 and windows freezing. I did not want to deal with fixes and tweaks in order to get it work correctly with Windows. So I went with an Intel 320 and am very happy with it. Put it in the X220, installed Windows and it works great! Speeds are not as fast as the M4, but I have read many people state that most people will not see the difference in speed between the two in everyday use(of course there are exceptions).

 

I think that's a bit misleading. While it does not matter for a desktop system that your disk uses 0.8 watt or 0.2 watt in idle, it does matter for a X220. And the difference is magnified under load. The Hitachi is consuming up to 5 Watt under full load, while a C300 (for example) has a consumption of 2 Watt. And in addition to the lower power consumption you have all the other benefits of an SSD (far less weight, no noise, higher reliability due to a lack of mechanical parts, and far better performance). If there is anything useful you would want for a X220 (or a similar system) it's certainly a SSD.

 

Your figures for the C300 appear to be misleading as well:

AnandTech - The SSD Diaries: Crucial's RealSSD C300

I think it's safe to say that the disparity in power consumption is not so wide.

 

As far as I can see, the 5W power on the Hitachi is only a brief start-up requirement to get the drive spinning. If you want to compare power consumption then Tom's Hardware has a range of measurements for both HDDs and SSDs, although not all drives have been tested.

One advantage of SSDs is that they can quickly power down when not being accessed whereas HDDs will keep spinning until they reach a power down time-out. However, in use the power requirements may not be so different - compare the video playback power requirements at the above links.

John

 

just to add to what John said;
i think the mechanical HDD needs some time to "spin up" from idle? ie in contrast to the SSD.

Some people have asked which drive to buy, and raised concerns on reliability.;
I'd like to share my thoughts.

These are the factors that matter to me
1. Performance
2. Reliability
3. Capacity

While it'd be more "quantitative" to justify the purchase decision by assigning a weight
to each factor, and thereby coming up with a score for each model,
I didn't do that.

Initially I leaned towards the Intel 320 300GB because it's got reliability, compatibility (no messing with the registry to disable LPM), but I didn't like the SATA 2 limitation, and the sub par performance. And of course, it fits the HDD bay perfectly.

Then I started comparing it to the Intel 510s and other taller drives.
the 510 isn't good at random access, hence leading to the Vertex 3.

I had also looked at the Crucial/Microns - but didn't like the idea of voiding warranty, and especially tales of short-circuiting (I'm not going to put tapes on a $400-$500 drive!).

For reliability -
statistically Intel has the least amount of failures/returns.
However, in real life, how do you know you won't get one of the intel lemons?
Although the probability is lower, I don't see a huge difference between <1% and 2%, and SSDs aren't that reliable anyway.
If you need to keep something secure, backup to other HDDs and DVDs.

 

It depends how you define "wide"

According to this: Anand Review: Crucial C300 power consumption. the peak "load" C300 power consumption is 3.04 Watt. The peak load consumption for the Hitachi is given in the linked spec with 5.5 Watt. That's a difference of more than 75%. Probably the difference for average usage is lower, but even if it's only 25%, it's still a substantial factor. I took the C300 just as an example. There are other SSD which use less power.

The C300 (again just as example, I'm not pimping this SSD) is listed by TH for "FullHD 1080p Video Playback" with 0.6 Watt. The same video playback with Hitachi Travelstar Z7K320 shows a consumption of 1.42 Watt. That's again a difference of more than 50%.

I think it's safe to say that the disparity in power consumption between a SSD and HDD is quite substantial.

 

ima go with the vertex 3 240GB as well..


ordered from newegg

 

You conveniently took the figure for the 128GB, which was over 1W better than the 256GB, but whatever... I'm just posting to point out the erroneous data. (the reason I draw more attention to the 256GB is because it's the closest capacity to the minimum HDD we'd receive in our laptops, and it happens to be closer to the maximum draw for an SSD, which is what the pro-SSD people are doing with 2.5" HDDs)

 

thanks for the feedback. I always thought ssd were more reliable then hdd due to lack of moving part. Why do you say ssd are not that reliable? What would be a typical ssd failure?

 

Hi Kilou,

I apologize for my poor choice of using the word "reliability";
in my mind, reliability doesn't relate to "ruggedness", as in how many Gs it can endure (ie no moving parts which is certainly true).

The reliability stems mainly from the max expected write/pe cycles, and the "overlay" required (ie wear leveling).
I don't think HDDs have a defined max write limit.

In the worst case, if I run unit testing for an app that does multi-threaded read/writes to a db, then my usage is definitely going to be higher than the average user, and leading to early write failure.

I'd be curious to know - if I exceeded my write cycles before warranty expires, would I get a replacement drive...

In the article below they talk more about this -
SSD vs HDD Lifespans? - [H]ard|Forum

 

Does anyone know if the new Corsair force 3 series will fit?