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    Which SSD for W520

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by tomex, Jun 26, 2012.

  1. tomex

    tomex Notebook Enthusiast

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    I plan on upgrading my 500GB 7200RPM Seagate to a 512GB SSD, but I am not sure whether I should go with the latest or the moderate and stable SSD.

    Price is not an issue.

    I have narrowed it down to the OCZ Vertex 4 and the Crucial M4.

    I know that the controller on the OCZ is much better than the previous OCZ models, but after reading various forums it seems that overall users say to go with the older and slower Crucial than the faster and newer OCZ.

    I need to run several VMs as the W520 is my main machine.

    What do you guys think?
     
    tomex, Jun 26, 2012
    #1
  2. Frenchie1000

    Frenchie1000 Notebook Enthusiast

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    The Samsung 830 is my personal favourite, the ones normally reccomended seem to be Intel, Samsung and the M4, I don't think you can go wrong with any of them, I would see which one was the best deal and purchase that.
     
    Frenchie1000, Jun 26, 2012
    #2
  3. Gandalf_The_Grey

    Gandalf_The_Grey Notebook Evangelist

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    The Crucial is not that much slower...
    Welcome to the wonderfull world of marketing :D
    For the best performance get the Samsung 830 or the Plextor PX-M3P.
    Otherwise get the Crucial M4 or the Plextor M3S.
    And also this is marketing, most likely you wouldn't notice the difference in the real world.

    Based on:
    Storage Review: Leaderboard - Best Hard Drive, SSD and Storage Solutions | StorageReview.com - Storage Reviews
    This wonderful forum: http://forum.notebookreview.com/solid-state-drives-ssds-flash-storage/
    Anandtech: AnandTech - Storage
    The dutch site Tweakers.net: GoT - Opslagmedia & I/O Controllers - Topics
    The SSD Review: http://thessdreview.com/
     
    Gandalf_The_Grey, Jun 26, 2012
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  4. power7

    power7 Notebook Evangelist

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    If you want to keep the drive encrypted (and laptops are lost/stolen/forgotten/sent to service/etc.), look at the ones supporting AES encryption in hardware. Like Intel 320/330/520 series (AES-128 only, but it's not less secure than AES-256), apparently all or some of the Samsung 830s etc.
     
    power7, Jun 26, 2012
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  5. sanzaborn33

    sanzaborn33 Notebook Enthusiast

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    I was using an Intel 520 480GB without issue in my (now sold on eBay) W520 for about 6-7 months. Certainly not the cheapest SSD but also never gave me problems in that machine.
     
    sanzaborn33, Jun 27, 2012
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  6. ZaZ

    ZaZ Super Model Super Moderator

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    The performance difference in SSDs is very small because for most uses it's the seek times that make the difference and they don't change from one drive to the next. I'd buy on price. If you're not using WWAN, I might suggest the mSATA SSD that plugs into the miniPCI slot under the palm rest. This way you'd get a fast SSD for the OS and can keep the 512GB platter drive for storage where speed is not as important.
     
    ZaZ, Jun 27, 2012
    #6