mSATA doesn't seem all that snappy?

Hi all,

I put this( Newegg.com - Mushkin Enhanced Atlas Series MKNSSDAT120GB-DX mSATA 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) ) in my x230 and followed the clean reformat guide. It doesn't seem noticeably faster than the HDD was by default. Was I really just overestimating the effect of an SSD? It still takes over a minute to go from cold to logged in. The only start up software I'm running is Bitdefender's security suite.

 

I would download and run CrystalDiskMark or a similar program to get an idea of well it's preforming. I'm assuming you have all of the latest drivers and the latest firmware for the SSD?

CrystalDiskMark - Software - Crystal Dew World

 

Eh, it looks fine. Crystal has it more than Double the HDD. I think I was just hoping for more.

 

whats your WEI?

 

Have you reinstalled windows, have the latest updated drivers .etc Like Intel's RST.

Although I have a faux-thinkpad Edge S430 I have too installed a mSATA ssd, mine is a crucial m4 and it's fast.
Mine isn't a clean install though, I used the recovery USB to install the OS onto my mSATA ssd.

At first mine did take roughly a minute to boot up as you said, but I have since disabled Lenovo's "RapidBoot Shield" and "RapidBoot HDD" this sped up my boot time from a minute to 20 seconds.

I know you did a clean install but check that those things are either not installed or disabled.

 

FWIW, I have exactly the same drive in an X220, and it performs very well -- the computer boots quickly, programs loads quickly, everything is fast. I don't have the machine with me so I cannot measure the exact boot time, but I think the boot time was below 30 seconds.

I did not do a clean re-install but rather restored from recovery disk.

 

x230 plus SSD should yield a cold boot time of under 25 seconds.

 

my msata is quite slow as well. i always attributed it to the fact that it's only 64gb, i'll check to see if i have the rapidboot stuff install/enabled when i get home from work..where are these options, in BIOS? or uninstallable via control panel?

 

I have the exact same drive in mine, fresh install of Win7 Pro cold boots in about 20 seconds. My WEI score is 7.5 for the SSD.

 

It should be in control panel, disabling it sped up my S430's boot time massively, from 1 minute to 20 seconds.
The size of the SSD shouldn't be a big factor in booting times since it's still much faster than a HDD.

 

I had RapidBoot in my installed programs - removed it and saw no noticeable change unfortunately Was it a gradual speed up, or were you guys instantly able to notice the change? Last time I timed it it took around 1:30 to fully boot up, after disabling my fingerprint login - i still have the hard drive password-protected as well, I'll probably remove all those security features since I'm not travelling as much anymore though..will post results when I get'em

 

Agreed. 1:30 seconds is excessive even for a HDD.

 

Rapidboot? Is that some garbage from Lenovo? My W520 doesn't list it, but that's probably because it's a new install.

 

FWIW, RapidBoot works spectacularly for me. Shield is an okay piece of software, but it forgets to check for certain service configurations and ends up fumbling the boot on SSDs where loading is generally non-linear.

HDD Accelerator is HDD software that is IMO ten years late.

 

Using an mSATA SSD, RapidBoot Shield also negatively impacted my boot speeds.