June 30 update:experiments with solid state drive onT60

[mgo]

June 30 2009: Further findings on Ultra Bay hard drive problems. The PATA adapter with certain brands of drives works well now in Windows 7. It's SATA drives in the SATA adapter, that appear to have the problems. The "trouble maker" appeared to be a Hitachi 200 gig drive in the SATA adapter.

Since the PATA adapter works fine in a T60, I will just run with the drives that work, and "not worry be happy".

UPDATE: 6/29/2009, 5:37 PM: blue screen with large SATA drives in Ultra Bay when running Windows 7 RC1. PATA drives in the Ultra Bay work well with Windows 7, but a large (two gig or over) SATA drive in the Ultra Bay is a guaranteed blue screen generator. Perhaps it's a bug that will be sorted out later. In the meantime, I will just run Vista (faster than hell with a SSD or XP for my daily machine usage) I'll spend money for future solid state drives instead of coughing up yet more money to Microsoft for three copies of Windows 7. This problem does not show up with Vista or XP on the SSD,

8:18 PM 6/28/2009

The drive is a Intel X25M 80 gig solid state hard drive. Installed on a ThinkPad T60. Cost? Not cheap; $398.00 at a local computer store. True, a luxury, but since I am an computer "experimenter" it's worth it for me in entertainment value.

Results:
- It is faster, by far than a mechanical drive. I estimated it runs 30% to 60% faster, depending on the job being done.
- The drive generates very little heat, so the computer’s fan rarely runs.
- Imaging the drive using my Acronis program takes around a third of the time. That is 3-4 minutes vs. 8-12 minutes with the older type drives.

Internet Explorer runs much faster, and web sites seem to load much faster.

More speed notes:
- It does not seem to matter if the operating system is installed brand new on the SSD, or if it is a image that was already backed up. Speed appears about the same, whether Windows 7 or Vista. This tells me that it is the throughput that gives the speed, rather than how the operation system installer reacts to, and adjusts for, the solid state drive. (this is really great news, because it means that any and all of my Acronis images will run very fast on the drive)
- Anti-virus scans are of course much faster on the solid state drive. This means that a full scan is much less annoying to run as compared to the old mechanical drives.

Windows XP with service pack three was very fast. Boot up time ran around 30 seconds. Since Vista seems to do a better job of managing such programs as Office 2007, those programs loaded quickly, but not any faster than in Vista or Windows 7.

Vista with SP2 boots up in around 60 seconds.

Windows 7 only takes around 30 seconds from cold start to ready to go.

Since this is my first solid state drive, there are a lot of things I do not know, such as "should I defrag" and "should I use Superfetch". Based on articles on the 'net, the answer seems to be, no and no.

The Windows 7 install which was done fresh on the SSD the install set defrag and Superfetch to "manual" in Services.

Based on my one day's experience, I will buy more SSDs, but only after I can get at least 160 gig for less than a King's ransom.

Heat is reduced a lot; the T60's fan rarely runs now. There is almost no heat on the palm rest. The 2nd hard drive in the Ultra Bay is nearly silent, anyway, and the lack of sound from the main drive is very remarkable.

I'm guessing battery life is around 30% longer now, but there is no science or data to back that up.

Based on articles I've read, Windows 7 is best suited for a solid state hard drive, since this newer operating system is more "aware" of them. Vista is also pretty good with solid state drives, and XP is still much faster with a solid state drive, but not as responsive as I expected.

-comments and discussion about my amateur "mad scientist" experiments are welcome...

[tower]

I put one (Samsung) in my T61 and my impression is about the same as yours. I would say it is a very nice upgrade.