SSD in X61S tablet?

Hey all

I've considered throwing a SSD in my X61s tablet, and I've gotten a sweet deal on a Crucial C300 64GB SSD.

Do you guys know if it'll fit?

 

definitely.

 

You sure Erik?

I tried Googling the issue, but I've found that people aren't really agreeing that much.... I've heard that there's a new generation of SSD's on the way, do you think its worth the wait?`And secondly, is it difficult to put the SSD in (if you know)

Thanks a lot for the very quick reply. All the best.

 

Oh, and by the way, does it matter if its 1,8" or 2,5"?

 

as long as it's 2.5 9mm sata in X61s it should fit. If it's 1.8" sata, ssd has to have this connector.

 

Enhedstype Solid state drive - intern harddisk
Width 7 cm
Depth 10 cm
Height 9.5 mm
Weight 74 g

And it is SATA.

So it should definitely fit, right?

Thanks again

 

having owned ~36 thinkpads (including the X61T) and nearly a dozen SSDs, i'm sticking with my original answer of 'definitely.'

as long as it's a 2.5" SATA SSD then it will bolt in place without any issues.   given the dimensions you've provided, it will fit your system.

 

I've put a 2.5" SSD in an x61s (non tablet). That part is easy, it just plugs right in.

I see the Crucial c300 supports Trim. Do you plan to install windows7 or do you already have it?
PcPer.com ssd decoder chart, always handy.
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=736&type=expert

The trickier part, for me anyways, was getting windows installed and activated. The x61s had vista installed, but I wanted to upgrade to windows7. I bought a windows7 upgrade disk, and ended up doing a clean install on the SSD with it. The method, installing windows once choosing custom, then again choosing upgrade, is outlined in an article by Paul Thurrott, link below.

Clean Install Windows 7 with Upgrade Media

 

That sounds perfect! Im so going to buy it. I'm planning on doing a clean install of Windows 7 x64, do you think that will be a problem? Also, I tried googling TRIM, but I'm not sure I get it. Is it a good thing, or?

Thanks again guys.

 

If you have 2 or 3 computers you'd like to upgrade to Windows7 it makes sense to buy the family upgrade disk. It costs around $200, but it can be activated on 3 different computers at the same time.

EDIT: actually windows7 family upgrade disk is $124 on newegg

Yes Trim is a good thing. For Trim to work you need an OS that supports it, Windows7 supports it, Vista and XP don't, and you need an SSD that support it.

To understand what Trim is I recommend you read this article from anandtech.com The SSD Relapse: Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD It will help you understand how TRIM keeps SSDs from slowing down over time with use.

Anandtech is one of the best website for computer tech. Their articles are very thorough. PCper.com is also good.

As I mentioned, the SSD Decoder Ring, it's really just a big table, is a great resource for comparing different SSDs. Crucial is on there, the 64GB SSD model number CTFDDAC064MAG-1G1 supports Trim. There's also a link to the PCper Crucial SSD review.

Make sure you check out SSD prices at newegg.com (newegg.ca for Canada). I see the 80GB intel x25-m SSD is $172. I'm not saying Crucial isn't a good brand, but for SSDs intel seems to have the best reputation for reliability. Check reviews on amazon.com and newegg.com to try and get a feel for customer feedback on crucial SSDs. I almost bought an OCZ vertex2 SSD, but after seeing a larger percentage of people complaining of the drive dying on amazon and newegg I went with intel.

If you're interested in learning more about computer hardware in a more general sense I recommend you listen to the PCper.com podcast. They are always talking about SSDs, you can send them questions too.

Another podcast is TWICH (This Week in Computer Hardware). Not quite as technical as the pcper podcast.

WindowsWeekly is also good, but is even less technical.

 

Well, I've never installed 64bit windows7 on a thinkpad tablet. The issue would be weather there are x61s tablet drivers are available for the 64bit windows OS. I would assume yes, but I don't know for sure. Start a new post maybe, asking if anyone has done it. I stuck with 32bit windows.

 

First of all, thanks for the very thorough answer gmoneyphatstyle!

I'm currently running windows 7 x64, so that's not an issue, unless running Windows 7 x64 from an SSD in it self, potentially causes problems?

Also, do you think there will be a big difference in speeds going from a 5400RPM HDD to an SSD? I read that the motherboard can be a bottleneck.

Thanks again mate.

Edit: Some guy on a Danish forum said that SSD's are only worth getting, if you plan on getting two of them. I asked him why? The guy never answered... Do you know if there's any truth to that?

 

If you're running windows7 64bit now without problem then it'll work just fine on a SSD.

Yes there will be a big difference in speed going from an harddrive to a SSD.

Yes the motherboard is a bottleneck. But it doesn't matter, because using one SSD is noticeably better than a harddrive.

On my x61s, boot up time with a harddrive was around 1minute, with the SSD it's around 35seconds. Part of the reason that boot up time with an SSD isn't faster still is because of it takes around 10-15 seconds for the BIOS to boot up. The BIOS is firmware installed on the motherboard, it boots up first and then loads the windows operating system. BIOS is old technology going back to the the 1980s, (earlier maybe). There are desktop computer motherboards now for sale with the next gen replacement for the BIOS called UEFI . It boots in 1-2 seconds. I'm not sure if there are any notebooks for sale yet with UEFI. That might take another year. Video of UEFI .

Some people in these forums say they get boot times of 20seconds with an SSD.

The other motherboard bottle neck is the speed of the SATA connection that connects the motherboard to the harddrive. Most computers sold today use SATA 2.0 which is 3 Gigabit per second. Desktop motherboards are coming out now with SATA 3.0 which is 6 Gigabit per second. I haven't seen any notebooks using SATA 3.0 6Gbps yet. Some SSD manufacturers are releasing SSDs with SATA3.0, like OCZ vertex3 . Intel's next gen SSDs will still use SATA2.0 though. The faster SATA speed is great for harddrive intensive tasks like video editing, but it is less of a concern for the average notebook user because the vast majority of notebook tasks (like startup, or opening an appplication) require the SSD to read a bunch of small files spread out over the drive. SSDs do this kind of radom reads much faster than a regular harddrive. This is why the random read performance of SSDs is the major indicator of it's performance.

The forum you read is correct in that you can get greater performance using two or more SSDs in RAID than you can with just one. But it is rediculous to suggest that having one SSD isn't a major performance upgrade over a harddrive.

So a boot time of 35 seconds is good with an SSD, but it is not amazing. It is still a noticeable time that you have to wait for your computer to boot. But once the windows environment is loaded the experience is much better. Applications open and close much faster. Virus and Malware scans run faster. Everything is faster.

Funny how you don't realize how much you typed till then end.

 

You might want to read:

Installing Windows 7 using usb thumb drive
Installing Windows 7 using usb thumb drive - AVIRAJ AJGEKAR'S BLOG... - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

Engineering Windows 7 Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives
Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives - Engineering Windows 7 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

 

I should of mentioned earlier, that the 120GB intel SSD is $229 at newegg

 

I just installed the C300 in my X61S, and its awesome!

Thanks a lot for the help!

I'm booting in 27 seconds now

 

Glad to hear it.