Suggestions for maximizing user experience of SSD equipped thinkpads

Im thinking of SSDs for the next lappy. How many of you own them.

More specifically, what tweaks and settings do you have to recommend that serves to maximize your experience with the thinkpad.

I guess there are two primary concerns:
(1) increasing performance (that is already better btw because its SSD but I hear it can be improved further with tweaks)
(2) and increasing longevity of your SSD drive (because SSD drives have limited write/erase cycles)

Any suggestions?

 

The Samsung SSDs used in ThinkPads generally don't require tweaks. Most of those tweaks (disabling paging, using ramdisks, custom block sizes, et. al.) are designed to minimize the problems of the J-Micron drives.

My recommendations are simple and short:

1. Perform a clean OS install if possible (improve speed and minimize wasted space).
2. Set your swap file with a low minimum (I use 256MB) and a high maximum (I use 4GB). SSDs don't have much issue with fragmentation so allowing the pagefile to be dynamically adjusted is a more efficient use of space.
3. Disable hibernation. I am able to boot into Windows faster from a full off than resuming from hibernation. Further, this saves 4GB for me (size of hiberfil.sys is equal to RAM).
4. Between operating system installs you may wish to issue the drive a secure erase command using HDDErase 4.0 to restore it to factory status.

That's all the tweaks that I do, and find performance to be exemplary.

 

What about longevity of the SSD. Since its still relatively new and I guess nobody really knows exactly how long it will last. It is likely if one is lucky it will last longer than one needs to until they replace a laptop anyway. But in any case wouldnt you want to minimize unneccesary erase operations on the memory?

Yea like disabling paging (how much effect does this have on performance?) and also maybe disabling system restore? any other possible ways to make windows stop writing and rewriting based on 'luxury services' that ultimately degrade the hardware?

 

I'm not too worried about longevity, although to be fair my SSD is a "Single Level Cell" design and has 10 times the erase cycles as a comparable MLC drive.

Windows depends on paging do a degree and I would not recommend disabling it. However, if you maximize RAM you will page to disk far less frequently (my pagefile very rarely goes above the 256MB minimum).

I did not disable system restore, but I did restrict its allotted disk space (2% or 1200MB IIRC).

 

Oh. So I am assuming you installed your own SSD instead of going through the lenovo offered option? because my understanding is that the samsung SSDs they offer are MLCs.

I'm wondering is it possible to say pop in a second HDD drive in place of the optical drive on say a R/T series then assign all of the file paging to that drive. then completely disabling paging on the SSD drive. Is that doable and will that affect performance?

Edit: I noticed your sig and looked at your SSD review. Nice review btw. It looks like you have a samsung too. Is yours different to the one offered by lenovo? Im assuming so because it appears your SSD looks different.

Edit: o just noticed yours is 1.8"

 

I did purchase mine aftermarket when Newegg was selling them at a very low price (<$200 for the 1.8" version, while they were charging >$600 for the 2.5" version of the identical SSD with a G-Skill or OCZ badge). My SSD is the exact same model that Lenovo initially offered in the x300. Lenovo switched to a 1.8" MLC option several months back to reduce costs (the price of the SSD upgrade used to be much higher). This was probably the right choice as the MLC drive only performs very slightly worse and it is far cheaper.

You can swap the optical drive for a second HDD. This is a good option if you need more than 64GB of storage. However, you will substantially increase the penalty for paging to disk if you put the pagefile on the HDD. A pagefile is arguably one of the best types of files to place on an SSD ( read this Q&A on SSDs from the Win7 design team). I recommend using an HDD for media (videos, music, photos) and other large files. However, you should put your OS and ALL your applications/documents on the SSD if possible.

 

You can also disable search indexing (reduce small writes), disk defragmentation (unnecessary for SSDs), and system restore. If you want to keep system restore, I would recommend reducing the size of the shadow volume to reclaim free space.

 

I read some of the tweaks mentioned in the link posted on the other thread. While some make sense, others do not seem to be good ideas. In particular, I would not recommend disabling the page file, as many applications depend on the page file being in existence.

 

Disk defragmentation is automatically disabled for SSDs in Vista/7. The Active Protection System is also disabled because SSDs don't have moving parts.

You can disable search indexing, but I wouldn't recommend it. Fast search is one of the better features of Vista/7, and indexing is crucial for this (even with an SSD).

 

I think I heard somewhere that windows system restore too is automatically disabled because thinkvantage has their own version?

Im reading some people attempting a novel concept of using an SDHC card slot with a high capacity SDHC and directing all the paging and windows temp files into that. How well do you think this works. Also does the T400 come with SDHC readers. Is the 'media card slot' it? They give absolutely no documentation that i can find on this.

off topic note: yea for the active protection, i'm wondering if apps can still take advantage of the accelerometer which is there anyway.

 

I've had two SSDs. The first was an original Core SSD and a total piece of junk. Thankfully, I only lost a few bucks flipping it on eBay. The second was a OCZ SATA II SSD, which was a rebadged Samsung SLC drive. I don't know if it was something I did, but I couldn't tell much off a noticeable difference between it and my Seagate mechanical drive. All the benches checked out, but other than it booting a little faster and maybe Photoshop opening a little quicker, it seemed about the same as my Seagate for doing regular stuff. My SATA controller is throttled to 150MBps. None of the fastest drives like the X25-M or Vertex will reach their potential in my machine.

 

I don't think that's true about system restore, but I could be wrong.

The SDHC reader is a USB attached device and it is quite slow (fault of both the USB interface and quality of SDHC cards). You could theoretically redirect your paging and temp files to it, but I think it would be a bad idea. A quality SSD will perform far better and have superior wear leveling algorithms (less wear and tear on the flash memory). The "media card [or 7-1]" reader is the SDHC reader (as well as SD, MMC, MS, MSPRO, ?, ?).

Yes, the accelerometer can still be used. My tablet uses the accelerometer for automatic screen rotation, and if you have other applications (e.g. APS games) that can use the accelerometer, they will still function.

 

The SD card reader speed is very, very slow compared to your SSD. I wouldn't recommend it. Rather, I use my slot with a 16GB SD card (sits nicely flush) as a backup drive for all my important documents and files.

 

hmm I'm wondering. what about switching off all virtual memory, then put in a very high memory SDHC card in the media reader and then turning on vista readyboost? Yea it will be slow.... but technically programs the ram should take most of the requirements first and some think that comps with more than say 2 gig ram probably don't need the virtual memory anyway unless youre playing a 3d intensive game or something