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    W510 SLC vs. MLC Question

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by jerybak, Mar 16, 2010.

  1. jerybak

    jerybak Newbie

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    my w510 should arrive this week, I upgraded to the 128gig SSD, after reading about all the different drives and folks switching to intel from samsung it has me wondering if I should buy a new SSD and install it.

    My question is has anyone tried a Intel X25-E Extreme SSDSA2SH064G1 2.5" 64GB SATA II SLC in the w510? Or any SLC SSD in a w510, I am just wondering if it makes a huge diff on the SLC vs. MLC.

    I figure if am going to purchase a new SSD to out perform what ever drive I get in my new laptop i should go with the fastest...... will there be a noticeable difference.

    I am a crazy nutball about boot, re-zoom, and shut down times, also will my image disk i create maintain the Lenovo Windows 7 Enhanced deal I paid for?

    Or perhaps a Crucial RealSSD C300 CTFDDAC256MAG-1G1 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC ??? Any help would be great!
     
    jerybak, Mar 16, 2010
    #1
  2. LaptopGun

    LaptopGun Notebook Evangelist

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    You sound like you've done a bit of homework on SSDs. At this point the vast overwhelming majority of users won't notice the difference between the two. The 160 GB Intel G2 MLC is still the gold standard for SSDs. I'd tell you to wait a little while longer to hear what users say about the speed demon (on paper) C300 and whether it has any problems (see OCZ's recently released Vertex Limited Edition with the buggy SandForce controller). The W510 and as far as I know every other available notebook is SATA 2 so you'll not see the SATA 3 speeds. You would have saved yourself some money not upgrading to the Samsung SSD but its not an epic fail. Sell it or buy the Ultra Bay adapter. Put all your music and movies on it and you have a great low power system.

    My only question is, what do you plan on using your W510 for? If you imagine you'll be doing 5GB or more work of AutoCAD, SolidWorks, or other such software daily, then your workload might wear out MLC flash in like 8 years.

    Let me preface this by saying I've never used any SLC drive, Samsung SSD, or Indillix based SSD.

    If you absolutely want 60GB SLC for your boot drive, spend half the money and get the Agility EX (which looks to be disappearing actually) http://www.google.com/products/cata...ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CAsQ8wIwAg#ps-sellers

    It's SLC and Indillix based. Not as fast as the Intel Extreme but it will blow your Samsung out of the water. Intel and Indillix drives are pretty much the Coke and Pepsi of SSD drives. Both those drives have high random reads and writes, much higher than the Samsung drives. Those random/small numbers are pretty much what dictate how fast a computer feels. Samsung have the most power efficient drives. I believe Samsung might boot a second faster than an Intel, if I remember some of the old arguments from the SSD Megathread.

    If it matters, I believe the Agility Ex and its more expensive hardly noticeablely faster brother the Vertex Ex are the only two SSD's that support Trim. I haven't confirmed this, ask in the SSD Megathread

    I did a clean install of my OS and I use Vista (those switchable graphics issues). I have no idea about the speed certification, but I saw there was a thread about it in this subforum in the last week
     
    LaptopGun, Mar 16, 2010
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