X201 SSD drives. Prices and size

I have an x201 and want to but an ssd drive. It looks like any 2.5" SSD will fit into the x201.

Where should I but from? Which companies are better then others and why?

What windows settings or bios settings should be changed with running an ssd?

I want it for speed, durability, and better battery life.

How much more battery life will I get? I have a 9 cell battery.

 

I have an intel 80gb and I'm happy with it. I only wish it were larger. I'm looking to go bigger though and haven't decided if I want to get a 160 gb intel or a 256gb samsung.

 

Where can you get a 256GB Samsung? I can't find it anywhere.

 

Also have the Intel 80GB X25-M. Love it, but like the previous poster said, I really wish it were bigger. At the time I purchsaed it, I never thought I'd hit 80GB on my main drive (I have two TB externals for media). However, my music collection has grown quite a bit, and now I only have ~7GB free. It sucks. I can't recommend the 160GB one enough.

 

I'm looking at the 2.5" and not the 1.8". The one I'm looking at is the one Dell uses. Look on ebay.

 

Samsung SSDs give great battery life. Consider too a Seagate Momentus XT hybrid HDD. It's a 500GB HDD with 4GB of NAND giving SSD like speed in some instances.

 

I can't be more happy with my Intel X-25M G2 80GB SSD, which I've been using for about half a year now. It's an excellent performer, and a great value as compared to many other SSDs.

I am relatively conservative with my tweaking - basically, if I don't understand exactly what the tweak is doing, and how it could possibly help boost SSD performance/longevity, I don't change anything from the default Windows setup. That means, the Windows Defragger is off (an automatic setting when Windows 7 detected an SSD), and I am running Intel's driver for the SSD. As my benchmarks were quite in-line with the expected performance, I didn't do any further tweaking.

How much more battery life you get is completely dependent on how the other components consume power. If you're gaming, for instance, and your GPU is stressed and gobbling up energy, an SSD is not going to be much better than an HDD. If, however, you have your screen on minimal brightness and are typing a Word document with the wireless off, then you may notice a significant improvement in battery life.

 

If I make the system restore disks on my x201 I can simply re-install it on the SSD correct? It shouldn't matter if I swap a HDD, but I just want to make sure.


Is this a G2?
Intel X25-M Mainstream SSDSA2MH080G2R5 2.5" 80GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) I found it for 219 on Newegg.com.

 

Yes, it is...

 

Ditto on the X25-M. Actually, I have the X18-M which is the 1.8" form factor version. Otherwise it is identical. I still have the Gen 1 and it continues to work flawlessly with heavy duty usage!

Does anyone know when the next iteration of Intel's SSD is expected to come out? I've been thinking of getting the Gen 2 160GB version for obvious reasons. However, if Intel is likely to release a Gen 3, I guess I'll wait?

 

The x201 can go up to SATA II or SATA III?

 

SATA II......