SSD vs. 5400rpm HDD

How much performance difference will I see between the two (durability, boot times, etc)

Any compelling arguments for the SSD? It's quite a price premium...

250 GB Hard Disk Drive, 5400rpm - Low Halogen
Intel 80 GB Solid State Drive, Serial ATA [add $93.50]
128 GB Solid State Drive, Serial ATA [add $178.50]

-Oh, and on an unrelated note, will there be higher capacity Lenovo batteries for the T410S released in the future?

Thanks

 

Have you ever read at least one review/article about SSDs at all? One that has benchmarks, charts, etc... in it ?

 

Check the SSD link in my sig. I went from a 2.5" 5400 RPM Hitachi 5k320 to a 1.8" Samsung SLC SSD. The difference on the T410s will likely be even greater due to the slower 1.8" 5400 RPM HDD and faster SSDs that are currently available.

 

If it's only $93.50 to upgrade to the Intel SSD, that's probably worth it for the T410s. The SSD that I have in my T500 is a huge jump over the Hitachi 7200RPM 160GB drive that I ordered the laptop with.

And no, I doubt there will be higher capacity batteries for the T410s - it does not have its battery at the rear like the other Thinkpads, so there's no clean way to make an extended battery. The only potential possibility would be a slice battery, but given that this machine's strengths are thinness and portability, I doubt Lenovo would release one.

 

I would definitely go for the SSD if I were you- the upgrade is not that expensive and you will definitely notice a huge change in performance and the drive will be more durable (no moving parts)- just search around the web for SSD reviews and you'll see the huge difference between the drives.

If storage space is an issue for you, get an Ultrabay adapter and put in another (5400/7200 RPM) hard drive for your media files and the like.

 

Cool, it's nice to hear about actual user experiences... I've decided on the 80GB SSD.

Got it. Seems like there's a very definitive boost, and thanks for the ultrabay tip.

Thanks, your review was very comprehensive.

 

If you could afford it, I would definitely say get the ssd option. What the ssd do is it read/write data from the hard drive faster. This mean that the boot time will be faster. File will open faster and you can save faster.

 

For what it's worth, is there any significant difference between intel and samsung made drives??

 

Intel make better drives, they are faster

 

The Intel controller is superior and it generally performs better (especially for 4k random writes). Both are good though.

 

Depends on whether it matters that one drive is 80GB and the other 120GB! (i.e 50% bigger). If 80GB is plenty big enough for you, then the Intel is the way to go, as it is a better performer (though you may or may not actually notice the difference - certainly any where near the vast difference you will notice most definitely notice between either of these SSD's and any HDD). However, if 80GB is not sufficient space, you will find the choosing the SSD with 120GB a much more significant and crucial difference. Both SSD's have far more in common with each other than to any HDD. They are both hugely quicker in multiple ways, silent, vibration-free, very much tougher, and lower in power use and cooler.

 

In addition to what the prev. ppl said:

Samsung's drives still don't support TRIM. If you look on the internet you'll see a huge issue with SSD's. The performance of an SSD drops significantly as u fill up the drive, up to 50% from it's brand new state (even at that level it's stil much faster than a normal HD).

Intel released a fix for this called TRIM, the drives that support that feature have a very small drop in performance (5%). However TRIM is supported only on the latest generation of SSD's i.e. G2.

As I said in a previous post I can confirm that Lenovo has no more stock of the older G1 drives. My T410s which arrived today has a G2

 

Awesome! Ordering mine as we speak...

 

The "internet" may say that (and I have read many of them), but for 8 months I had no TRIM on my Samsung-driver OCZ SSD, and experienced no change in performance - and periodic tests backed my subjective experience. Definitely not anywhere near "50%" change ; not even even 5%. Maybe some ways of using SSD's (and filling them to the brim? - not good for HDD's either!) might? But quick degradation of performance is not a "given".

In December I installed the TRIM-enabling OCZ firmware update, and though the same tests showed write speeds were immediately better, I can't say I noticed a difference. It is nice to know one has TRIM, but I haven't found it an issue.

 

Theres information available just about everywhere.

To help u a bit, when deciding between ssds, the speed you want to be most interested in IS NOT the large sequential read that most use to differentiate between drives. This method of disk access is used less than 1% of the time.

Small random writes (reads and writes actually) are used just short of 50% of the time to get programs running ans keept them going. This is where you will see the most visible difference in the drive you choose and it is why th Intel stands out, even the Intel X25v.

If you are new to the ssd, there are lots of places to turn for help...

Oh and Mythos comment above is a complete fallacy...Im sorry to be s direct but its true. Drives lose performance because of people not understanding them at all. I ran several drives since 2007 and not one lost performance as they filled. I also never used the system restore at all. Only recently it has been discovered that system restore is devastating to ssds and slows your performance significantly as new restore points are created.

There is a direct link between what he wrote and system restore and, quite frankly, its probably the plausible explanation to what he believes. In any event, leave restore off if you havent got trim and you are fine.

 

What should I use for backups then? I'm quite the beginner... can I just use COMODO Time Machine, or is that detrimental as well?

 

1) The built-in Win-7 imaging program is great to burn everything periodically to an external HDD.
2) For incremental backups of data files, I suggest the free and very fine program Synctoy 2.1 from Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...36-98e0-4ee9-a7c5-98d0592d8c52&displaylang=en
(in 32bit and 64bit versions).

 

I'm not puling these out of my head, neither are all the review sites out there. If that was the case Intel woudn't have released G2 so soon. After the following article that was referenced countless times Intel initially declined everything and said that the scenarios used were unrealistic. Up to extent they were as the reviewers fell upon a firmware bug that literally destroyed the performance of the SSD (Intel later released a firmware update). If you read the following article you'll understand tha degradation is built in the original design of the SSD, it's not like I'm gonna use it the right way...

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=669&type=expert&pid=1

However people started looking at the SSD degredation issue and found that it was in fact happening. Intel came back and admitted the problem anouncing the release of G2. G2's main advantage is TRIM, all other features are very close not justifying a different generation. Take a look at what TRIM is doing before you call my statements complete fallacy.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2865

It's very possible you won't notice the difference as you fill up your HD gradually and not within a day. Do me a favor and run "HD Tune" on one of your used SSD's, if it returns anything close to 10% of the out of the box performance ill retract all my statements.