New Intel x-25 80 gig SSD low HD-TUNE performance

I am only getting at max 95.5 mbits / second. I have a t61p, and the reviewer was getting 2x that in his test. Any ideas on what I am doing wrong?

 

Three possible things:

1) The writes should be under 90 MB/s as the Intel x-25M is only rated at 70 MB/s (however it holds this even for very small writes due to a controller that employs write combining and NCQ).

2) The reads should be better than 90 MB/s, but you are unlikely to get the full 200 MB/s+ that the drive promises. This is because the T61 (and x61, R61) do not support full SATA 2 speeds. Maximum bandwidth is only 1.5 Gbps versus the 3 Gbps supported on the T400, T500, x200, etc.

3) The Intel drive suffers some issues with internal fragmentation after extensive use (source). You may want to try executing a clean erase and re-imaging your OS onto the drive. This should improve the drive to "like new" performance.

 

It is a new clone from my old hard drive (1 day old) could it become fragmented that quickly? Somehow I doubt that.

I wonder if there is a BIOS setting I need to change? Under policies there is nothing to change with the Intel drive.

Should I disable readyboost?

Phil

 

Leave Readyboost and superfetch enabled.

You should enable AHCI if possible (BIOS), as I've read the X-25M performs far better with AHCi enabled. Also, enable the high performance options in device properties (your battery will act as a UPS, so you don't need to worry about losing data).

It would also help if you could post screenshots of your results from both HD Tune and ATTO.

 

Your speed seems about right to me. The main problem is that you're limited to SATA I speed. When the T61 series comes around, nobody even knows what SSD's are, while HDD at the time doesn't even saturate SATA-I bus speed. That's why Lenovo make a decision (to save battery life, most likely) to reduce the speed down to SATA-I. You can still use SATA-II HDD, but the speed is limited to SATA-I.
Most of the time, you don't have to worry about tweaking the drive. Either a Samsung or Intel drive is fast enough even if you retain the setting of a normal HDD. But at the same time, if you tweak Windows a little bit to accomodate SSD, you'll feel a slight speed increase as well.
I hope this helps.

 

I've re-enabled superfetch, and left readyboost alone. ACHI mode is enabled in Bios, but still no where near the 150 mbits which is the bottleneck for sata I.

 

I assume you talk about read speed. Even though I say that you're limited to SATA-I speed, the situation is worse than that. I tried a Intel SSD in my T60, and the speed is around 100MB/sec. The T60 and the T61 series are not that different, so I would assume that the speed would be around 100MB/sec as well.

 

HD Tune

Minimum = 60.5 mbits
Maximum = 96.8 mbits
Average = 95.1 mbits

Access time 0.2 ms
Burst Rate 56.7 mbits
CPU usage = 5 %

No luck running ATTO...sorry is it for RAID only? Looks like I am getting the max out of T61's ACHI controller...oh well still a lot better than the old setup.

 

You need to run ATTO as an administrator on Vista (it writes a scratch file to the system directory [blocked by UAC]).

Your minimum and burst rate also seem a tad low. On my SSD, the difference between minimum and maximum is <5 MB/s. Unless your minimum is a single low spike, you may have a different problem. A screenshot would be helpful (Alt+PrintScreen with the windows selected, paste into paint).

 

It was just a one time blip on the drop off for the minimum

 

Just did ATO averaging 120 to 140 mbits / second on read 60 to 70 mbits on write.

 

That sounds like the limit of SATA I to me. I think that is the best you are going to do.

 

How do you do that? Is that for all laptops with an SSD running Vista?

 

Just a follow up. I got a W500 and a 256 gb Samsung SSD getting 180mbits/sec write and 218 mbits/write...pretty happy.

 

Where did you get the samsung SSD? I thought they only sold those to OEMs.

p.s. you must mean 180MB/sec not mbits

 

Yeah MB not Mb -- I got it off of Ebay for 649.00 before Live Cashback so final price(Live cashback was 14 percent then) and 20 dollar discount for e-check = a decent price for the size of drive.