msata or ssd, this is the question!

I'm torn between getting msata or ssd, I already have an hdd in ultrabay.

I'm leaning towards ssd as it's less expensive than msata + lower power consumption vs msata + hdd + ultrabay hdd.

If I go for ssd, I'm looking at OCZ Technology 120 GB Agility 3 SSD

What do you guys think?

 

If you've already got a hard drive in the ultrabay, I'd got with a small SSD, like 60GB, for the main bay. Why spend more for your boot drive?

 

I personally chose the intel SSDs over the OCZ SSDs because of intel's reputation for lack of failure. Take a look at amazon, or newegg.com reviews, and you'll see way more complaints of OCZ drives failing. I realize this is not scientific, just something to be aware of.

 

I'm not sure if 60gb would be sufficient. Currently, might boot partition is 78gb and already 35gb are used; and that's without heavy apps like Adobe Suite or Projects, etc.

I'm not sure about failing, the OCZ has a very good review. I'm still indecisive.

What about msata? Good option?

msata + main hdd + ultrabay hdd

or

main ssd + ultrabay hdd?

 

When you get the mSata SSD, you are not taking up a HDD bay. So now you can have two HDDs in addition to your SSD.

Even if you don't need the ultrabay for a DVD drive, you would still have the option to either get 3 HDDs or to get a ultrabay battery, for example. If you use an SSD in the HDD bay, the only way to expand is using the ultrabay.

I use my T500 with 2 HDDs in it, one in the regular bay and one in the ultrabay. That said, if I would upgrade to a more current ThinkPad, I would go with the mSata route (I think 80Gb would be enough) and have a HDD in the HDD bay. That way I could use the ultrabay more freely ... unless I would get a X220, in which case mSata is the only route if you want a SSD+HDD combo.

In the end, it really does come down to what you want to do with the notebook, how many HDDs you need at once, etc.

 

any msata you guys would recommend?

 

I'd question the whole lower power consumption of ssd vs msata/hdd/hdd. My intel 80gb only uses .175w while in use. My HDD is spun down for the most part and uses no power. If you can find an SSD that only uses .175w (maybe intel 320's?) while in use then that is probably correct. Most SSD's I've seen use around 1w while active. Even some mSatas use that much power.

 

i would definitely recommend the intel 310 soda creek 80gb, dont go for the 40gb as it is much slower.

after installing windows 7 x64, microsoft office, msn, skype, my music collection and all my other misc applications i still have 20gb free.

its based on the tried and tested X25-M design, so it is known to be reliable, even though its not a speed demon relative to some other ssd's, which is a compromise i am happy to make.

i have a proper hard drive for video files and other bulk items

 

I also recommend the intel 80GB. I bought the 128GB mydigitalssd and it just isn't quite as good as my work Intel 80GB (performance wise in daily usage - identical laptop).

 

Bear in mind you don't have to load everything onto the SSD. I only keep the OS and heavily used programs on my Intel 80gb SSD. The rest are installed onto the 500GB Seagate (in the normal drive bay, the ultrabay has the DVD or an empty caddy to save weight).

The HD has my media files, pictures and infrequently used programs. This works well.

Given the terrific battery life offered in the T420 it's sort of pointless to obsess about power consumption on the SSDs. Yeah, some are worse than others, but you're still not looking at all that serious a hit to the overall battery duration.

 

I wouldn't say pointless. A one watt difference makes a real big difference in battery life. If the OP doesn't care about battery life, then I'd go with the fastest one available! If he does, then I'd try to stick with the Intel 310/320 or something similar. Even half a watt difference makes an impact on those that strive for battery prowess.

 

Big how? More than none, sure, but compared to what the rest of the system draws? I have better things to do that obsess over nonsense like "prowess" with batteries.

 

What the rest of the system draws doesn't really matter. Fat chance reducing your power draw on other components (except screen). However if you can drop a watt just by choosing the right msata/ssd/hdd then it is worth it.

For me, a watt reduction equals another hour in battery life... so yah HUGE difference for those that care.

The prowess thing was a joke by the way, no one is "obsessing" as you put it. Ha, however I don't really see knowing what an ssd draws in terms of power "obsessing". It's plastered on pretty much every sales page, anyone with functioning ojos can see it.

 

You should consider getting the Seagate Momentus XT SSD Hybrid pretty nice harddrive if you can tame the beast lol

 

yea this is the reason i chose the mSATA SSD over the momentus. first generation product from a company with a history of dodgy drives is not risk i wanted to take, especially since the momentus isnt exactly cheap

 

I'm leaning towards the ssd + hdd (ultrabay) combo.

would a 60gb ssd be enough for boot drive?

I already have a 80gb boot partition with windows + apps taking up 35gb. The only big program I have installed is office. That's without Adobe PS, Illustrator, etc, MS Visio..etc.


What do you think?

 

Looking for an Intel 310 80GB mSATA but none available the UK or so it seems.

 

If you're using a X220 or a T420 (and the W520 too?), go with a SATA 600 solid state drive, like the newer Intel drives (510 series). The mSATA drives are slower:
Inside the Box SATA 3.0 600MB/s on ThinkPad Notebooks

 

I personally would choose intel's 320 ssd (3Gbps SATA) over the 510 ssd (6Gbps). I'm sure the 510 is a fine ssd, but it has lower random read write than the 320, or even the older x25-m ssd.

On Random reads, notice the lower random read speed than the older x25-m G2 160GB.
AnandTech - The Intel SSD 510 Review


From Anand's conclusion on the 510.
AnandTech - The Intel SSD 510 Review

The 510 is the only intel SSD to use a non intel controller, it uses a Marvel controller. Intel has essentially sacrificed the speeds that mater most, the random read/write, for the speeds that don't, the sequential read/write.

Check out the 510 SSD reviews for yourself.
AnandTech - The Intel SSD 510 Review

Intel's new 510 series is not quite as hot as their first shot | PC Perspective

 

I'm considering the 120gb version over the 60gb because my current 80gb partition already 40gb full, having office 2010 and Adobe PS CS5 installed only. What if I installed virtualbox, Visual Studio? 60gb is a bit risky, don't you guys think?

 

This isn't making much sense to me. Why are you not considering

msata + main hdd

? (ETA: What lenardg said. ) You'd then be able to keep your ultrabay for use with the DVD drive, if that's useful to you.

BTW the lowest power consumption you can get (as well as best reliability) is to buy an Intel mSATA or SSD, and the power consumption is the same for each. The Intel 80 GB mSATA is generally $170-180 if you shop around. I'd go for that one-- and did, and have not regretted my choice.

A watt of power difference is a big deal IMO; it results in a quite big difference in battery life. If you take wkearney's attitude that you don't care much about an hour here or there, this might not matter to you. Under light use my T420 uses 5-7 watts using a .175 watt Intel mSATA SSD as the boot drive; so you could subtract probably around 15% or so of the battery life I'm getting (which is admittedly good) if I had gone with a more power-hungry SSD. I wouldn't personally make the tradeoff for less battery life and reliability just for a little extra performance; my machine is quite snappy with this Intel 310 as the boot drive.

ETA: Wow, just read that the OCZ Agility 3 uses 1.5 watts when idle, 2.7 watts under peak load, for a difference of up to 2.5 watts compared to the Intel 310! That will result in a huge difference in battery life.

 

I've got the 80gb Intel mSATA and the 500gb Seagate hard drive in the normal HD bay. The combo works great. Just choose the HD when installing infrequently accessed apps.

Or go in after the fact and move excessively large and/or non speed-dependent data from the SSD to the HD and setup links to the moved folders/files. This is a bit more tedious to accomplish though.

An hour? Puh-leeze, if you're going to sling back-handed insults at least be accurate. Speculate your nonsense with someone else's reputation, not mine.

 

More like several hours, which you've said you just don't care about one way or the other. My T420 idles down to 5W total power consumption, and I see 6-7 in actual light use. You're talking about an extra 2.5W for the OP's chosen SSD vs. the Intel 310. Pointless? Maybe to you.

(Hint: it's not a back-handed insult to rely on your own words and the facts. HTH)

 

OK so:
- you consider 120Gb over 60GB?
You will be enough with 60-64GB SSD. At first you will delete hiberfil.sys file because you have no need to use hibernation for SSD. It eats about 1X-1.5X of your RAM. Interested?
- you will decrease or put paging file on HDD. You won't need big paging file if you have 6-8GB of RAM. If you have 6GB -then use from 0 to 1GB if you are not professional. If you have 8 then use the same in any case.
While windows by default set 1.5X bigger than your amount of RAM. Stupidness.
Also you may not use Windows restore points. Why? It is much faster to create image of your all drive. Also it will kill your SSD much faster.
All these will save you from 15 to 2x GB of available space.

Now about SSD you want. If you still are looking at OCZ then don't. You can buy it cheap right now for 85$ with rebate on newegg. But it is what you don't want. And I am not talking about quality and reliability. I a talking about speed.
You better choose 64GB Crucial M4. It is much better and faster. I have recently searched 60GB SSD and I found that Crucial is what I need. OCZ power consumption sux.
Also Solid and Agility 60GB are also ugly slow on writing speed. Even newegg results shows this under sequential speed. So Crucial isn't bad. It writes up to 105 no matter official statement is 95

 

I wondered the same thing iphetamine, I've got a 120Gb OCZ Vertex 2, and I've got the OS, VS2010 with IIS, resharper and some addons, virtualbox on it, plus office 2010, a few other apps and a day to day copy of my work stuff that gets backed up - the total is 57Gb....I hope that gives you an idea of Visual Studio and Office anyway...

I reckon I could get away with a 60Gb Runcore and install some other apps onto the vertex possibly.

But then if mSATA slot is restricted by mini PCIe then I may as well stay with what I've got. I hope someone tests the runcore in a T420 soon, I wonder what the mini PCIe max bus speed is with one of those in it...

 

Ok, interesting posts lately, thanks guys.

I have the T420, i5(2.3ghz), 8gb ram, Win7 Pro. Currently on 2 regular hd's, main + ultrabay.

I tend to hibernate A LOT! I like to resume where I left off...

 

My opinion, go for mSATA, use mSATA for OS and APPS, use the original hard drive for storage. You have speed and space. I'm also looking for the mSATA. MyDigitalSSD looks good from the tweaktown review. Hope the review is accurate. I also read the review on mydigitaldiscount says the WEI for 128GB is only 6.9. I was confused. The WEI of intel 310 40GB on my x220 was 7.5.

 

I'm seeing the exact same numbers in my x220 and I agree with everything you've said.

And yes, it does make a big difference in the ssd you choose.

.175w vs 2.5w active is a huge difference in the x220. Just from that alone I would probably add 1.5 hrs. That is basically what I saw installing the 310 along with my HDD. Went from 8-9 to 6-7 in use. Resulted in about 1.5 hr increase. HUGE difference for those that care.


I would urge people to go for something around 80gb or over. But if you don't have huge programs you could get away with 40 or even 60, 40 is pretty tight though. My partition currently sits at 41.6 gb. That is with the full Adobe CS4 collection, full Office 2007 collection and a few sizable marketing programs. That is probably about as big as my partition will get, so 80gb was perfect for me.

Touche

 

8 gigs of RAM means that you more likely don't need a paging file.

About hibernate. Shutting off hibernate is in a list of SSD tweaks. You still can use sleep mode which lets you resume. Also Windows loads in 15-20 seconds on SSD so you will not notice any difference.
Some people recommend to do this also because every time you hibernate all 8 GB of data in RAM (when its full) are going to be written to SSD. You will kill it. Of course some other people say that you won't kill it in first 2 years anyway but I will be happy if my SSD (when I buy it) will live longer than 5 years.

 

SSD for speed
MSATA SSD if you need a HDD for storage

Go Crucial M4 imho. The new 0009 firmware upfrade has this drive reading at 500MB/s

 

This is for what size versions of Crucial? I saw only ver 0002 available to download on official site couple days ago

 

I think 80gb would be just right for me as a boot drive. Might consider an msata. Any recommendations from Ebay or Amazon, as I can only buy from these 2 sites.

 

don't buy ssd from eBay. They are too expensive.

 

then best option for me is Amazon?

 

It's available a little cheaper here on NewEgg, which is a very reputable retailer.

 

I understand Newegg is very reputable, but it doesn't accept international credit cards!
I had good experience with ebay and amazon.

The 310 is also http://www.mydigital discount.com/solid-state-drives-msata-ssd/, even cheaper! but never tried this site before..
I don't why "mydigital" "discount" doesn't appear

Btw, Zaz, 580gb in your x220?

 

Broken link

 

Am I part of the Psychic Friends Network and supposed to know where everyone is located?

 

I found that there is a seller on eBay called "buy". It is representer of Buy.com I think. So you can check on Buy.com and then buy it from buy member ebay

 

Is that the M4 you're talking about, James D?
Crucial Technology 64 GB,Internal (CT064M4SSD2) (SSD... | eBay

 

Note that that one is a 2.5" drive, i.e. a normal notebook drive. The mSATA drives are little cards that fit in the WWAN slot of your notebook; they don't even have drive casings.

 

No. I was thinking to buy it but then decided not to risk. Why? Did You made a bid?
This is one But as I see it is for US only. You really should efit your previous post. You should write that you can мгн from eBay IF it ships to write your country

Agree. This is not mSata. I suggested to find mSata on buy.com but now I think every item from eBay seller "buy" is only for US

 

How's this for an msata?
Intel 310 Series 80GB mSATA mPCIe SSD SSDMAEMC080G2C1 | eBay

Good deal?

 

time left: 2 days. I guess in 2 days it will become more expensive

 

We'll have to wait and see. But for the product, is it worth it and a speedy msata ssd? Recommended?

 

Excellent information here, thanks. I wrote my comments before discovering that the SSD in my X220 is a 320 series drive. The SSD is from Lenovo, not an after-market upgrade.

I've changed my tone, and being very satisfied with my X-25M G2, I'll go with the 320 drives. I didn't know the 510 drives used Marvell controllers! I'm behind on my homework .

My comments were based on the 6Gbps capabilities in the X220/T420 models, but I'd rather take the reliability (at least what I've experienced) of the Intel controller vs speed.

 

Get a full SSD.

 

mSATAs are "full" SSDs, and that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. There's not much point for a boot drive. I think that (barring use of the WWAN slot for a WWAN card) it makes much more sense to get an mSATA and get a huge data drive. Then the DVD drive can be kept in the machine, a spacer used to save weight, or yet a third hard drive added when the time comes.

 

If you want some speed and storage go the msata+HDD route. If not get a ssd.

 

mSATA is not a full SSD IMHO.