Intel SSD on T60

[ghanwani]

I have a T60 that I bought in early 2006.

I just recently ordered an Intel SSD 80 GB drive.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product
The hard drive in the current machine is 100 GB 7200 RPM.

I am still running Win XP and will continue doing so.

I will probably get started on the installation this weekend
and as of now, I'm planning to just remove my existing
hard drive, put the SSD in, stick the 1st restoration CD
in the CD drive and power up. I'm hoping that will take care
of everything including formatting the new drive if needed.

If you have any tips on installation or things like TRIM support,
I would appreciate it if you could share them.

Thanks,
Anoop

[mgo]

I have a T60 that I bought in early 2006.
If you have any tips on installation or things like TRIM support,
I would appreciate it if you could share them.

Thanks,
Anoop

XP does not support TRIM, only Windows 7 does that. However, you only need to disable defrag on XP for the SSD. Other settings "suggestions" for setting up a solid state drive found around on the Internet are just bogus, and should be avoided. Just disable defrag.

I have SSDs on my T60s with Windows 7 and it's super fast! I also experimented briefly with XP on a SSD on my T60 and it worked very well, too.

You will be spoiled by the speed, so have fun!

[ghanwani]

XP does not support TRIM, only Windows 7 does that. However, you only need to disable defrag on XP for the SSD. Other settings "suggestions" for setting up a solid state drive found around on the Internet are just bogus, and should be avoided. Just disable defrag.

I have SSDs on my T60s with Windows 7 and it's super fast! I also experimented briefly with XP on a SSD on my T60 and it worked very well, too.

You will be spoiled by the speed, so have fun!

Thanks for the reply.

Are there no third-party utilities (or possibly something from Intel) that would do TRIM for XP?
When you installed, did you do a clean install or clone the old drive?

Anoop

[mgo]

XP does not support TRIM, only Windows 7 does that. However, you only need to disable defrag on XP for the SSD. Other settings "suggestions" for setting up a solid state drive found around on the Internet are just bogus, and should be avoided. Just disable defrag.

I have SSDs on my T60s with Windows 7 and it's super fast! I also experimented briefly with XP on a SSD on my T60 and it worked very well, too.

You will be spoiled by the speed, so have fun!

Thanks for the reply.

Are there no third-party utilities (or possibly something from Intel) that would do TRIM for XP?
When you installed, did you do a clean install or clone the old drive?

Anoop[/quote]

I am not aware of anything to add TRIM (or something like it) to XP. When I ran XP on the Intel SSD it was just long enough to check the speed and other performance. I am strictly a Windows 7 user, so I gave minimal attention to XP with the SSD.
When I installed XP on the solid state drive it was simply dropping an XP Acronis image on the drive, not a clean install. Even then, the speed increase was dramatic. I suggest you Google around for "XP on a SSD", or a similar query, and see what comes up. Disregard tips from people about "no virtual drive" "no indexer" and that sort of thing, as that is just silly methodology.

[istudio]

I recalled someone saying that to prolong the life of the SSDs you may want to disable defrag, pagefile & indexing services...

(check again if you want to disable pagefile)

[tporter]

You may disable paging file if you have 3Gb RAM installed.
But even in this case system may run out of resources... I would recommend to allocate around 1Gb to pagefile.

Disabling indexing - it's a first thing to do on any drive, not just SSD.
Because that indexing service is crap, simple.

[Vempele]

Disabling indexing - it's a first thing to do on any drive, not just SSD.

Or maybe restrict it to just the start menu.

Because that indexing service is crap, simple.

+1.

[ghanwani]

You may disable paging file if you have 3Gb RAM installed.
But even in this case system may run out of resources... I would recommend to allocate around 1Gb to pagefile.

Disabling indexing - it's a first thing to do on any drive, not just SSD.
Because that indexing service is crap, simple.

I have only 2 GB on this machine.

Can someone help with pointers for how to disable defrag and indexing?

Thanks,
Anoop

[mgo]

You may disable paging file if you have 3Gb RAM installed.
But even in this case system may run out of resources... I would recommend to allocate around 1Gb to pagefile.

Disabling indexing - it's a first thing to do on any drive, not just SSD.
Because that indexing service is crap, simple.

I have only 2 GB on this machine.

Can someone help with pointers for how to disable defrag and indexing?

Thanks,
Anoop[/quote]

It's been years since I've used XP, so my memory is dim about degfrag on XP. Did you go to the defrag utility in Accessories\system utilities and check to see if there is a defrag scheduler? If so, simply disable its checkbox...

here's another link that may help:
http://www.instant-registry-fixes.org/h ... mentation/

As far as indexing, do not worry about it. I have yet to see any authoritative documentation about indexing or pagefile vs. SSDs. I do not adjust those in any way, and my SSDs have run for months with no slowdown or complaint. Defrag is the only utility that I recommend to disable. On my Windows 7 machines with SSDs, I did NOT disable prefetch or super fetch or indexing or anything else. Only defrag is disabled on all four of my machines with a solid state drive on board.

[ghanwani]

It's been years since I've used XP, so my memory is dim about degfrag on XP. Did you go to the defrag utility in Accessories\system utilities and check to see if there is a defrag scheduler? If so, simply disable its checkbox...

here's another link that may help:
http://www.instant-registry-fixes.org/h ... mentation/

Thanks for the pointer. I'll have to check my machine when I get home, but I think auto-defrag might
already be disabled because the computer came with a free version of Disk-keeper lite which requires
me to manually perform defragmentation. It keeps asking me if I want to upgrade so that it can do it
automatically, but I haven't tried to do that in the nearly 4 years that I owned the machine.

I have a question about one of the previous replies on this thread...some said something about
"if you have 3GB RAM...". Why would one need that much memory? When I check the memory
usage on my machine, it is usually < 1 GB. I have 2 GB and task manager usually shows > 1GB
as available physical memory.

Anoop

[mgo]

It's been years since I've used XP, so my memory is dim about degfrag on XP. Did you go to the defrag utility in Accessories\system utilities and check to see if there is a defrag scheduler? If so, simply disable its checkbox...

here's another link that may help:
http://www.instant-registry-fixes.org/h ... mentation/

Thanks for the pointer. I'll have to check my machine when I get home, but I think auto-defrag might
already be disabled because the computer came with a free version of Disk-keeper lite which requires
me to manually perform defragmentation. It keeps asking me if I want to upgrade so that it can do it
automatically, but I haven't tried to do that in the nearly 4 years that I owned the machine.

I have a question about one of the previous replies on this thread...some said something about
"if you have 3GB RAM...". Why would one need that much memory? When I check the memory
usage on my machine, it is usually < 1 GB. I have 2 GB and task manager usually shows > 1GB
as available physical memory.

Anoop[/quote]

If you *right click on My Computer on your desktop you will see how much ram is on your machine. 1 or 2 gig is plenty for XP. RAM is there to hold programs that you are running so the hard drive does not have to keep loading them up. XP is not all that sophisticated with RAM, so don't worry about it. The SSD will give you the speed, and it will manage ram as per XP instructions, just as if it were a mechanical drive.
Disk Keeper Lite might still be useful to defrag any non-SSDs, such as a drive in Ultra Bay or a USB external drive. Chances are it allows one to select a drive for defrag, thus bypassing the C:\drive.

[gaphic2]

I'm a bit late, but manual TRIM is possible, and very advisable, on XP.
Just install the Intel SSD Toolbox, http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_ ... ldID=18455.

Set it to once a day and forget about it. Enjoy your SSD, I know I do.

[ghanwani]

I'm a bit late, but manual TRIM is possible, and very advisable, on XP.
Just install the Intel SSD Toolbox, http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_ ... ldID=18455.

Set it to once a day and forget about it. Enjoy your SSD, I know I do.

Thanks a bunch for the pointer. I recalled seeing something like that mentioned
somewhere, but then couldn't find the exact info.

BTW, I just went through the install process today. I replaced the old hard
drive with the SSD and did a clean restore. Took about 3 hrs so far. I still
have to download all the apps (like Office and other stuff). Right now XP is
busy downloading the bazillion updates that it needs from the ca. 2006 version
that came preinstalled on the machine when I bought it.

I have a question:
When installing the drive, all I did was remove the rubber edges from the old
drive and put them on the new one and then I stuck the new one in the slot.
The original hard drive came with a sleeve which allowed me to "pull" the drive
out of its slot. The SSD doesn't have anything like that. So if I ever need to
get the drive out, how would I do that?

Thanks,
Anoop

[mgo]

I have a question:
When installing the drive, all I did was remove the rubber edges from the old
drive and put them on the new one and then I stuck the new one in the slot.
The original hard drive came with a sleeve which allowed me to "pull" the drive
out of its slot. The SSD doesn't have anything like that. So if I ever need to
get the drive out, how would I do that?

Thanks,
Anoop

The original caddy has screw holes that mate exactly the same on the SSD. (or it does on all three of mine)

If you opt not to use the caddy, just put a piece of nylon strapping tape or other wide tape to create a pull tab, similar to the tab on the original caddy.

[ghanwani]

The original caddy has screw holes that mate exactly the same on the SSD. (or it does on all three of mine)

If you opt not to use the caddy, just put a piece of nylon strapping tape or other wide tape to create a pull tab, similar to the tab on the original caddy.

Bummer. I didn't think I needed to unscrew anything from the old drive. The rubber edges were a little loose, but I guess my impatience got the better of me. I should have asked on here before proceeding.

Any suggestions for how to pull it now?

Anoop

[mgo]

Bummer. I didn't think I needed to unscrew anything from the old drive. The rubber edges were a little loose, but I guess my impatience got the better of me. I should have asked on here before proceeding.

Any suggestions for how to pull it now?

Anoop

Should be easy to do. Just use a long nose plier or even large tweezers to *gently pull on the rubber bumpers till the drive eases out. Since it is a SATA connection there will only a little resistance on the contacts. Wiggle gently as you pull on the rubber bumpers.

[ghanwani]

Should be easy to do. Just use a long nose plier or even large tweezers to *gently pull on the rubber bumpers till the drive eases out. Since it is a SATA connection there will only a little resistance on the contacts. Wiggle gently as you pull on the rubber bumpers.

Tried this but didn't work...guess I'm too clumsy. Anyway, I'm hoping I never
actually need to do this, so it might be OK stuck in there for life.

Let me know if you have any other suggestions.

It's weird that the T60 service manual didn't mention anything about needing to
transfer the casing when replacing the hard drive. They only thing they mentioned
there was to transfer the rubber rails.

Anoop

[AMATX]

Should be easy to do. Just use a long nose plier or even large tweezers to *gently pull on the rubber bumpers till the drive eases out. Since it is a SATA connection there will only a little resistance on the contacts. Wiggle gently as you pull on the rubber bumpers.

I've always been able to pull on the rubber railings/bumpers by hand to get the drive out(Z61p).
Sometimes it feels as if it's really stuck in their, when in reality it isn't. Just be sure what however you pull it out, you don't wiggle toooo far to either side; try to pull mainly straight out. My observation has been that the connection setup is not nearly as dainty as would might assume. And, I've done this a lot, as I have two Z61p laptops(redundancy) and have swapped out many, many drives over the last couple of years.