W520 and Intel 520 SSD

I have seen some of the reports on the internet about SSD issues with the W520. Has anyone tried the Intel 520 SSD? I was thinking about putting one of these in my W520 but I don't want to purchase one if it's just going to be a source of problems.

Any advice?

 

I have a W520 with Intel 520 120gb and it's working flawlessly. I did a clean Win7 install and made a recovery disc on a usb.

I wasn't aware of any major issues with SSDs and W520, and if there are, it wouldn't be with the Intel 520.

 

Beware the 520 power consumption is on the high side. If you want a fast and reliable drive with low power consumption, go for a Samsung 830.

 

520 in T520 here. upgrade from intel 310, laptop is now faster.
can't comment on the battery consumption but it does not seem any different overall in my daily use.
I use it for software development and word processing, and the wattage seems comparable. if anything, it gets tasks out of the way faster, goes idle sooner.

the samsung 830, according to

AnandTech - Intel SSD 520 Review: Cherryville Brings Reliability to SandForce

and

Power Consumption: 128 KB Sequential (Windows 7/Mac OS X) : Intel SSD 520 Review: Taking Back The High-End With SandForce

consumes much more power than the 520

 

Thanks for the follow-up everyone. I ended up picking up an Intel 520 as well. So far it's doing great.

Sent from my Lumia 800 using Board Express

 

Every other review that tested the 830 got idle consumption around .3W. Storage review, tom's hardware, etc. It's either the 512gb drive they used or some issue in Anand's test that it wasn't actually idle when he measured.

 

first: now you've switched to "idle only"
second: one of the two links is tomshardware
third: if it's sitting idle, it's great, except most of the time something is going on with the computer and it's doing r/w, so really, no point in the idle performance

 

Most of the time the drive is idle even when you're using it. I should have said for typical office use like ppt, spreadsheets, email, browsing. But since you have a W yea maybe your usage will be different.

 

Compare using storagereview.com:

Intel SSD 520 Review | StorageReview.com - Storage Reviews
Samsung SSD 830 Review (256GB) | StorageReview.com - Storage Reviews
Crucial m4 SSD Review (256GB) | StorageReview.com - Storage Reviews

Out of the three, the Intel 520 would probably be my last choice. I'm not really a fan of the SF drives though, despite it coming from Intel. Idle power consumption is probably the most important factor in overall power consumption since majority of the time, the drive is in idle.

 

do what you like but you could not be more wrong unless you're reading pdf or typing text

start firefox, then launch resource monitor (taskmanager-performance tab) and watch the disk activity into firefox's profile folder

and that is not even taking into account what the os does in the background

the diff. between .6w and .8w during idle is a nice 33% but is largely irrelevant unless you're having the computer sit:
-doing nothing after a time of inactivity
-screen dimmed to minimum brightness

a 60% increase in screen brightness in my T520 has the wattage go up more than 1W, which is 5 times that difference (0.8-0.6)

if the samsung writes at >3W and the intel at ~2W, that diff is, again, five times that difference in idle

go measure, be happy, do whatever you want. but if you're actually using your laptop, the wattage during activity is what matters the most