Thinking of getting ssd on T61p.

I am thinking of upgrading a 7200rpm 100gb harddrive because I am architecture student and I use hardcore photoshop, illustrator, autocad, Form Z, and other programs and they get pretty slow. I have ordered T61p about 10 month ago it had C2D T7300 @ 2Ghz, 2gb memory, on 32bit. I have upgraded memory to 4gb and it is still somewhat slow. So I thought the bottle neck is the hard drive. I am thinking about OCZ core series 2 ssd. I have heard of pro and con of ssd. people said they freeze so I wan to ask if this T61p has this problem to ssd. Also refer me if other solution or better choice of ssd.
Thanks

 

I don't think the SSD is going to really speed things up. Sure, a faster hard drive will speed up loading times and such...but not the overall computing experience.

What kind of hard drive do you have in the notebook? Not all 7200RPM hard drives are equal, and it is entirely possible that you have a garbage hard drive.

Also, did you try a complete reinstallation of the operating system? It is possible that your T61p has some series bloatware preinstalled...which would definitely slow down your PC. At the very least, post a screen shot of your PC's installed program list...maybe something is there that is not good for you.

Additionally, could you post a picture showing your task manager? There might be some processes taking too much CPU power...or worse yet a virus slowing you down.

 

Mabey upgrading your CPU would be about the samre price as a SSD and yield a better performance increase.

 

I did clean install with my window vista ultimate 32bit, I wouldn't want all the crapware lenovo come with and I run very low stress anti-virus. and I have Hitachi TravelStar 7K100 which is a option in customizing in lenovo laptops. This drive is one of the best 7200rpm drive according to notebookreview.com reviews. And when I load up a 2gb photoshop file it takes about 3 minutes so I think that take way long time possibly because my hard drive is somewhat full and hard drives get slow as it fills up where as ssd does not. Also so when I render 3d models in form z it lags and takes about 4 second. And whatever I do in my computer it rarely hits 100% cpu and memory except when I play games. Usually, it is lower than 50% when I work on these programs, so I thought I dont need too much cpu. And ssd now day are lower than 200$ on 64gb.

 

I'd sure like to know where you can find a SSD for $200...some of them are not so good.

 

I don't know Newegg does 184$ on ocz 64gb 143mb/s read 93mb/s write, 180$ on patriot 64gb 175mb/s read 100mb/s write, so I totally thought ssd got cheap now but so are they not good? like is it false advertising?

 

Those are probably MLC drives. Testing shows they yield no significant performance gains over conventional drives.

 

Alright, let me correct my statement...cheap drives that actually perform at the level I'd expect from SSD.

 

jahoony:

1. From the sounds of what you're using your notebook for: Yes, I think that getting an SSD will give you a very noticeable performance boost (I will disagree with Greg here). Many reviewers talk about how the SSD makes the system much "snappier" and really noticeably cuts down load times.

2. There are 2 types of flash: SLC, and MLC. SLC stores 1 bit per cell, MLC stores 2 bits per cell. Consequently, MLC drives can store double the data with the same number of cells, so they are about half the price of SLC drives. However, they have 2 disadvantages: They wear out 10 times faster, and they are slower. I would recommend that you thoroughly read the following article from anandtech before buying yourself an SSD:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403

It is very interesting and it does a good job at explaining the flash technologies that are out there today. Also, be sure to check out the benchmarks: You will notice that the performance and load times of many applications are greatly improved.

3. Yes, you are correct that your mechanical hard drive will get slower as it fills up - read/write speed usually will drop about 40% near the end of the drive (the hard disk usually fills up from the outside (faster) to the inside (slower)). It will be even slower if you factor in fragmentation of files, since the hard drive's head will have to move all around the platter. The SSD does not have this problem because its random access time is virtually instantaneous no matter which data cell is being accessed. Hard drive seek times are measured in milliseconds, SSD seek times are measured in nanoseconds. That's a big difference

 

If you check the new ssd thread (by Les) here at NBR you will find that the OCZ Core 1 & 2 series suffer from absymal performance in certain scenarios (small random writes).

If you check the OCZ tech support forums

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=88

You will find that their support forum is flooded with complaints, ranging from data corruption, incompatibilities and bad performance of the OCZ Core 1 & 2 series (also check the Newegg comments).

Considering the above, I would stay far away from any OCZ Core SSD drive, if the purpose is to improve system preformance. Either go with a SLC-based SSD drive or wait until the new Intel X25M is out.