Thinkpads Forum

Has anyone tried replacing the regular hard drive in the T60
with a solid state drive? If so, where did you buy the drive
and what was the procedure? Did you find it beneficial to make
the change?

Thanks.

ghanwani wrote:Has anyone tried replacing the regular hard drive in the T60
with a solid state drive? If so, where did you buy the drive
and what was the procedure? Did you find it beneficial to make
the change?

Thanks.

Yes, 30% to 60% faster, depending on what program you are running. Boot times are around 20 secs to 40 secs faster.

General consensus is to disable Superfetch and Prefetch via the Registry, disable Superfetch via Services, and disable Defrag. Don't listen others who make additional wackadoodle suggestions, as they do not apply to solid state drives, and are poorly documented.

I am running three T60 machines using Intel 80 gig SSD. An OCz 60 gig drive also works fine in the T60, but is not as fast.

Microsoft claims that Windows 7 is pretty solid state drive aware and will make settings when it detects. My RC1 Windows 7 does not respond that way however.

Vista and XP run faster, with the above adjustments, even if just an image is laid down on the drive, rather than a fresh install.

I run multimedia from a Ultra Bay mechnical drive, and even then the speed is greatly improved, as the SSD manages files and programs much faster.

Speed with a SSD in Ultra Bay isn't much faster; it's the system drive that makes all the difference.

Thanks for the response. Which drive are you using?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820167005
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820167016

Can I use either of the above?

What transfer procedure did you use? If I buy the drive, stick it
in the machine and do a system recovery, would that work?
Or should I be trying some other approach like doing a hard
drive copy?

I'm running Win XP and no plans to go to Vista or Windows 7.

Just recently upped my RAM to 2 GB (from 1 GB). The machine
is 3 years old, but it doesn't feel like I need a new one at all.
Mainly want to get rid of hard disk noise and the chance of failure
(my T20 drive had failed on me after about 3 years). The
performance improvement would be icing, and if it helps the
machine run any cooler, that would be BIG plus.

Thanks.

ghanwani wrote:Thanks for the response. Which drive are you using?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820167005
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820167016

Can I use either of the above?

What transfer procedure did you use? .

I am using both. Performance is in 5.9 to 7.2 on the Windows Experience Index (Vista-XP does not have that), depending on which machine and which processor.

The Intel brand seems to be the most desirable, and the prices Newegg shows in your link are rather good.

Any old method of getting your new drive loaded will do; I did a clean install of Windows 7, but simply dropping an image (using Acronis or something similar) will work well.

XP will run well (based on my experiments with XP on one of the SSDs, using Acronis. No smoke and mirrors with as SSD, XP just thinks it's on a really fast hard drive.

Just make sure Prefetch is disabled, and do not run Defrag at all. As I recall, Superfetch does not even exist on XP.

I have two partitions on the drives-one for the operating system, and the other for my documents and other files. That's what I've always done on my mechanical drives. Easier system management that way.

The 1st generation Inel SSD will accept the hard drive password out of BIOS (if you use that), the latest 34nm Intel drives have a bug with password. If you do not use a HDD password, the probem is not going to affect you.

Sleep and Hibernate and other power management works fine. Active Protection feature not necessary, but I use it since there's a mechanical drive in my machines in the Ultra Bay.

Thanks again for the info.

I don't use a BIOS password so that should not be problem.

If I doing a clean install with the new drive, how does the drive get recognized by the system?

Here's how I am thinking of doing it, let me know if I need any modifications:
1> Backup data to USB drive.
2> Remove old drive, and put in SSD drive.
3> Put in system recovery CD #1 in DVD drive and power up.

Normally, after step 3, the machine would install all the way prompting me for the other CDs.

Thanks.

ghanwani wrote:Thanks again for the info.

I don't use a BIOS password so that should not be problem.

If I doing a clean install with the new drive, how does the drive get recognized by the system?

Here's how I am thinking of doing it, let me know if I need any modifications:
1> Backup data to USB drive.
2> Remove old drive, and put in SSD drive.
3> Put in system recovery CD #1 in DVD drive and power up.

Normally, after step 3, the machine would install all the way prompting me for the other CDs.

Thanks.

The procedure for a complete re-install with a solid state drive is identical to any other drive. It sounds like you have done re-installs before, so you obviously know that the drives must be set for "compatability mode" in the BIOS for XP to recognize the drive in order to install. XP makes no other allowances for a solid state drive because it is not "aware" of that type of hardware. Therefore, the drive is simply seen as a hard drive in Device Manager.

After install to the solid state drive, simply make the changes I outlined earlier, and that is all you need.

If you run any Microsoft Programs that require Search, then let that run as usual.

Rather than a clean install, a simple re-image of your system will work just as well, and is a heck of a lot faster, and would preserve all your exiting work.

Thanks again for the info.

I haven't reinstalled new disk drives before. I have done system restores, but not an installation of a new drive.

ghanwani wrote:Thanks again for the info.

I haven't reinstalled new disk drives before. I have done system restores, but not an installation of a new drive.

Check this topic:
http://www.thinkpads.com/forum/viewtopi ... 57&t=79096

My WD Scorpio black score compared to ssd in windows 7