Thinkpad SSD brand?

If I order a Thinkpad with an SSD from the factory, what brand/controller is it? Samsung? Crucial? Sandforce? Or is it a lottery with multiple suppliers?

 

It's a lottery. Different sizes have different suppliers, and Lenovo has in the past used Toshiba, Samsung, and Intel. They may now use an even wider spectrum, but I'm not super up-to-date on what the current lottery options are.

 

Very true, if one includes the mSATA SSDs (16GB or 32GB) used as "file cache."

If you want to use SSD, the best approach is to buy the one you like (in terms of manufacturer, quality, size and price) and "move the bits" yourself.

One day, we users will be relieved from such concerns and just buy "A Great Computing Tool."

 

I had a Intel 520 180GB ssd for a x230t that I refunded.

 

I've had two T530's with Lenovo installed 180gb SSD's. Both were an INTEL SSDSC2BW180A3L. This is the Intel 520 series, which I think has a Sandforce controller.

 

Yes, the 520 has a SandForce controller, SF-2281 to be exact, but it's running on custom Intel firmware at the very least.

 

Intel is most common choice of Lenovo nowadays, though they used to stick to Samsung and rarely to Toshiba in the old days. It doesn't really matter what SSD you get, (almost) all modern SSD are good enough, you don't have to worry like back when SSD's were still an exotic upgrade.

Even Sandisk (X1 Carbon) is okay.

 

Between how we enthusiasts tend to go crazy over tiny incremental improvements and the way people obsessively measure and compare SoC performance, I have a feeling that won't be happening in the foreseeable future

Which Sandisk is that? There's the embedded U100, the Sandforce-based Extreme, and the Marvell-based Ultra Plus.

I really, really hope it's not the U100.

 

I have no idea. If you don't have an X1C it doesn't really matter does it?

 

Built-in encryption is a big feature for SSDs, and integrates very well with Thinkpads. Mobile devices are lost/stolen/forgotten daily and using full disk software encryption product on SSD is a lot of extra pain, and kills performance for Sandforce controllers.

So Intel / Plextor M5P / Samsung 840 Pro / Sandisk Extreme have real benefits. Luckily, Intel overprovisions their SSDs, so with high probability anything 180/240/480GB in a Thinkpad is going to be Intel.

 

Following up on the previous post... perhaps a bit off-topic, but it still might be a relevant piece of information for some. There is a bug (or an intentional feature?), which results in after-market SSDs (with ATA password / FDE encryption enabled) not accepting the password upon warm reboot. A pretty irritating issue, which forced me in the end to give up on this feature. See the discussion on Lenovo Forums: T420s and Intel 520 SSD - ATA password issue.

 

It is indeed, but compared to troubles with using, say, using Bitlocker (even ignoring performance/SSD wear issues), pressing power button for 3 seconds on every warm reboot is a very small price to pay.

 

I believe it's the X100, which is the Marvell-controller-based SSD

 

When I bought my T420s I could have bought other T420s that it had a Micron C300 SSD:

Mfg P/N FRU P/N Description Serviceable
45N8006 45N8193 SSD-ASM7 128GB Micron Yes

Mine came with the Samsung PM810 128GB; swapped recently with a 256GB M4.

 

All of the T430s and T530 models I've been getting for my client have come with the Intel 520 180GB SSD.

It seems hddbenchmark has a variant of this drive among the top benched drives on their list.

 

The encryption used by SandForce eliminates the need for external host based encryption. Since it works at the hardware level it will be faster and not take any host resources.

"I thought the Intel SSDs used in the Thinkpads used SandForce."

 

I think the current gen 24 and 32GB SSD caches are all Samsung drives.