Portégé R500 with Intel X25-M 160GB SSD

In case it helps anyone I’m posting a few notes on how I converted my R500. It was pretty easy to do and I’m getting the benefits I expected – snappier performance with less noise and heat. Here’s what I did:

1. I put the SSD into a spare USB SATA drive holder, plugged it into a USB port on the R500, and opened Disk Management. It showed as drive 1 and I accepted to initialise the new disk after which it showed as 149.05GB, just like the main drive.
2. I used Casper 5.0 ( http://www.fssdev.com/products/casper/) to clone the main drive to the SSD. It took 2h 50m.
3. I removed the battery and opened the R500 following the instructions at http://www.irisvista.com/tech/laptops/Toshiba-Portege-R500/disassemble-laptop-remove-hard-drive.htm.
4. To avoid losing any screws I printed out the pic of the laptop base and pasted it to a piece of corrugated cardboard. I pushed each screw into a corresponding hole in the cardboard. With the case open it was easy to swap over the drives.
5. I reassembled, plugged in the battery, and switched on. Vista booted correctly and requested a reboot after it recognised the new drive. After that it woke as if nothing had happened - except the drive is totally silent and things happen quicker.

I added the following tweaks to Vista to optimise it for SSD. Item 1 is potentially detrimental with SSDs, Items 2 and 3 are not needed, and Intel recommend the fourth because The Windows Vista driver has a bug which does not allow NCQ on Intel SSDs. For Vista, only IMSM is recommended. An update will be provided when this issue has been resolved. (See FAQ for the Intel SSD).

1. I set ScheduledDefrag to ‘disabled’ (via Task Scheduler / MS / Windows / Defrag).
2. I disabled Superfetch (see http://forum.msi.com.tw/index.php?topic=123566.msg933936). (via Computer Management / Services and Apllications / Services / Superfetch / Properties - change StartUp Type setting from Automatic to Disabled).
3. I switched off ‘Hard drive protection’ via ‘Toshiba Assist / Protect and Fix / HDD Protection’.
4. I downloaded Intel Matrix Storage Manager version 8.8.0.1009 from the Intel download site, installed it, and rebooted.

I haven’t tried to do benchmark comparisons but I like the results I’m getting. The machine is quieter and the fan is less active. Programs open faster and the machine is livelier with pleasant absence of delays while the hard drive catches up. It goes to Standby in 7s and wakes up in 10s (including entering the Win password), and boot-up completes in about 2min 50s (including entering Bios and Win passwords). Previously it was more like 4min.

 

Thanks for this info.

Nice if one can afford the SSD.

John

 

Yes SSD prices are certainly steep. However I was lucky because the laptop plus Intel SSD totalled up to just the cost of the drive.

What happened was the laptop came with a 'Reliability Refund' offer by Toshiba whereby if anything had to be repaired during the 3-year warranty period they would refund the purchase price.

As it turned out, after 6 months the Bluetooth module failed. Toshiba replaced it under warranty and then I was able to claim back the full purchase price of the laptop. Remarkable really - and full marks to Toshiba for backing up their product so well.

After that, spending the money for the drive didn't seem too bad.