Thinkpads Forum

Process started at 12 noon. I would think this would be faster than using a regular disk. All is going as expected so far

The read speed of your current drive is most likely the reason why it is not going much faster than you thought.

I did not mean that I was dissapointed in the speed so far as I know all is depending on the DVD drive to download the information. On the contrary, the green hard drive light does not blink on and off like it used to do it is either on or off.

The software is now downloaded and we are going into the install mode. There should be a speed increase here.

Does anyone have the time it would normally take to use the recovery disks on the T61p?

Right now I am glad all is working with no error messages

DONE!

1 hour and 32 minutes from the time I started the first CD till the Windows Vista Ultimate Setup screen came up!

I thanks everyone for their help these last few days!

What are the real world speeds with that SSD in place?

At0mAng wrote:What are the real world speeds with that SSD in place?

I will post some performance data tonight. Right now we are whizzing thru the Windows Update Process for a total of 22 updates!

Laptop is without a doubt cooler with less noise. Fan is barely running but pushing a very little warm air out the left vent.

I know some here say that it should not need it but just did a defrag of the SSD with 21gb ofthe drive used and it only took 12 minutes!

Vista Windows Experience is 5.0
Processor: 5.4
Memory: 5.0
Graphics: 5.9
Gaming Graphics: 5.5
Hard Disk: 5.6

I am VERY glad I stuck with my T61p and did not get the X300. The screen on the X300 would have killed me!

i'm actually surprised your WEI drive score isn't higher.   my 200GB hitachi 7K200 is at 5.5 and the X300's samsung SSD has been reported at 5.9 -- which is the highest the rating goes.

it'll be interesting to hear about your overall experience since static scores don't always match the "seat of the pants" scale.

how much was the ssd drive?

Unless you're getting drastically better battery life, I don't see how it's all that worth it. My 7.2k 100gb drive is silent, rarely heats up under use, and my fan is rarely on unless doing graphics intensive work.

not dissing your purchase, just attempting to evaluate the dollars invested/performance gain ratio.

Greg Gebhardt wrote:I know some here say that it should not need it but just did a defrag of the SSD with 21gb ofthe drive used and it only took 12 minutes!

My understanding is that when you defrag a SSD, it appears to be defragged, but is not physically defragged.

The reason is flash memory "likes" to be fragmented. The sectors on an SSD can be written to only a finite number of times. For that reason, SSDs use a wear-leveling algorithm so the same sectors aren't being written to all the time. The algorithm spreads data across the drive to ensure even wear. (e.g., if only the first half of the drive were used, it would wear out in half the time of the expected life of the drive).

G

well i think he said it's $900 he got it for but if i shouldn't have wrote that then a mod edit it. There was another thread where he said he could get it for a sweet price of XXX so i dunno.

Anyways.. i wanna see some numbers too. I would have also formatted and installed cleanly... not from the Restore disks.

I would love to get a 64GB also as i find that would be just about perfect for my uses... i don't think battery life would be helped that much other than maybe the FAN not running all the time. Then again SSDs generally use .5w to 1.5-2ws. Most HDDs use 1.0w to 3.5ws. The fact that SSDs gets it's "active" cycle done faster would make it go back to it's "idle" state faster as well. So there should be some gains but i don't expect much.

lbraasch wrote:how much was the ssd drive?

Unless you're getting drastically better battery life, I don't see how it's all that worth it. My 7.2k 100gb drive is silent, rarely heats up under use, and my fan is rarely on unless doing graphics intensive work.

not dissing your purchase, just attempting to evaluate the dollars invested/performance gain ratio.

You need not worry about "dissing" my purchase. I seek no one's approval for my choices.

Battery Life? I could care less about battery life. I like the performance gain and after only using for a few hours, I have to say it is worth it. My laptop seldom runs on the battery, even the LX570 has 110vac

Boots times are greatly reduced, just installing the software was quicker. Office 2007, QuickBooks Pro and CS3 never installed so quickly on my other drive.

Someone give the URL for a hard drive test which I post results for, I would like to know my self. i can not get over the lack of warmth which means my older hard drive was a major heat producer. My laptop does get use in my lap and less heat will be very nice.

well you can run both HDTune and HDTach tests... those are the default tests people run

SHoTTa35 wrote:well you can run both HDTune and HDTach tests... those are the default tests people run

I will run both this evening and post the results. From what I can see the SSD is not magic but does show some real advantages.

Cost of the drives are still WAY high and for most it would not be an option at this time. BUT, later this year and into 2009, these SSD drives will be common place with prices comparable to todays spinning disks.

First laptops and then they will replace the working drive in your desktop. You might still have a non-SSD drive in your desktop for storage but your working stuff will run thru a SSD!

Ouch! Check out this article.. Maybe the technology is not as ready as we all hoped.

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-989598 ... subj=Crave

ran007 wrote:Ouch! Check out this article.. Maybe the technology is not as ready as we all hoped.

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-989598 ... subj=Crave

I guess we can consider the solid state drive concept still in beta. I've only had two mechanical drive failures in about 20 years (both were 2.5 inch notebook drives), and the speed is satisfactory even at 5400 rpm. Hard drive noise in a notebook isn't all that annoying, the fans can be a little intrusive on some machines, however.

In reading the article that you linked...I just don't understand why some writers insist on black background web pages. Just dislike trying to read from those "gamer"-like formats! I mean, do these guys think black backgrounds are attractive?

maybe they come from the terminal emulation days. At least the font isn't green.

SHoTTa35 wrote:...

Cost of the drives are still WAY high and for most it would not be an option at this time. BUT, later this year and into 2009, these SSD drives will be common place with prices comparable to todays spinning disks.
...

Cost of a so called zero byte HDD is about $40 today. This is cost of making a HDD regardless of the storage capacity. Below that point flash based is cheaper in terms of total cost. Today's flash cost is about $6-7 per GB. So you would have to justify SSD based on factors other than capacity or cost per GB.

This is also why 8GB flash cards are still expensive because few consumers are buying it amongst other factors.

I tried a CF card plus an ATA adapter plus an Ultrabay tray. Boot is quicker but not like returning from sleep. My CF card was too small to make it useful.

SSD is suddenly a big deal simply due to memory manufacturer's push. The technology was made by small companies in the early nineties such as M-System without much notice. Memory companies are pushing SSD because DRAM growth is slowing and Flash card grow is not enough to consume the wafer production volume growth. So prices and profitability is falling faster than in the past.

i thought black backgrounds make text much easier to read then white backgrounds with black text. Sure we write that way with pen an paper but i guess white paper is easier to make than black paper (cheaper too) so that's why I prefer darker backgrounds on my laptop and definitely helps when reading lots of text too in my eyes.

sjthinkpader wrote: Cost of a so called zero byte HDD is about $40 today. This is cost of making a HDD regardless of the storage capacity. Below that point flash based is cheaper in terms of total cost. Today's flash cost is about $6-7 per GB. So you would have to justify SSD based on factors other than capacity or cost per GB.

This is also why 8GB flash cards are still expensive because few consumers are buying it amongst other factors.

I tried a CF card plus an ATA adapter plus an Ultrabay tray. Boot is quicker but not like returning from sleep. My CF card was too small to make it useful.

SSD is suddenly a big deal simply due to memory manufacturer's push. The technology was made by small companies in the early nineties such as M-System without much notice. Memory companies are pushing SSD because DRAM growth is slowing and Flash card grow is not enough to consume the wafer production volume growth. So prices and profitability is falling faster than in the past.

All you had to say was 'Economics 101, it's all about supply and demand, cost of opportunity, and the law of deminishing returns'

As I said, they are not for everybody! I guess they are beta. Not telling everyone to buy one.

What I am saying as just like we saw the demise of CRTs, the spinning hard drive will be replaced, too! Get the bugs out of these devices and there is little doubt they will be faster, cooler, use less power and be more dependable.

There is little doubt, to me, that they are faster. I do not even use OutLook except to sync my Blackberry on occasion. Please, I am not shoving these devices down your throat! The makers will do that later!

ran007 wrote:Ouch! Check out this article.. Maybe the technology is not as ready as we all hoped.

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-989598 ... subj=Crave

have you looked anywhere else of is that it to form your opinion>

Greg Gebhardt wrote:As I said, they are not for everybody! I guess they are beta. Not telling everyone to buy one.

...the spinning hard drive will be replaced, too! ...

Yes, it has. The one inch HDD had mostly disappeared. But the HDD zero byte cost had also gone lower towards a yet to be determined asymtote, squeezing the per GB cost to the lowest level. So both side had casualties.

As long as the device cannot stand the size and power of a HDD, then SSD will be in the sweet spot, such as iPod Nano, iTouch etc. Even the X300 is a hedge machine, big enough for both. At $200 32GB and $400 64GB level, SSD will not replace 160GB, 200GB HDD whole sell.

Since chips are tied directly to the depreciation cost of a fab, they also have an asymtote but different from HDD for sure.

I still say that in the near future, spinning hard drives will be mostly replaced by SSD.

ran007 wrote:Ouch! Check out this article.. Maybe the technology is not as ready as we all hoped.

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-989598 ... subj=Crave

That article is off even though it was posted today. Samsung is releasing MLC SSDs soon. Intel is planning on releasing their ultra fast ones sooner than the end of this year as well.