Thinkpads Forum

I'd appreciate some help clarifying what the sata 1.5 max speed of the T60p means when buying a sata 3.0 SSD drive.

As a frame of reference, I'm looking at this review page from Tom's Hardware:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/win ... 518-2.html

What I'm unclear about is whether there is any point in buying a 'fast' ssd drive, or if I should stick with a cheaper, low performing drive since the computer itself will block any performance advantages of the newer/faster drive. I'm most interested in 128gb capacity, tho I could live with 64.

I've been using a T42p up 'til now, which means my experience is limited to PATA drives. I added a PATA SSD drive to the T42p, and was amazed at the difference - and since UPS should be delivering my refurb T60p from Lenovo tomorrow, I'm already plotting my next moves.

Thanks for your help.

Anything involving heavy read/write operations, copy/pasting files would be an example of this, a SSD in a T60 will be slower than a newer machine with a SATA II controller, but it's the latency, how quick the drive is, is really where a SSD will shine. Here, the the cap on your drive will make little difference as there's not much throughput involved here.

I'm sort of conflicted about SSDs. I've had one in my R60, which like a T60 is a capped machine. One the one hand they do seem a bit snappier. Apps seem to open quicker, particularly slower apps like Photoshop and iTunes for example. Plus they have other benefits like they run cooler and there's no moving parts. Some drives like Samsungs offer some power savings as well. On the other you're paying a lot more for one and giving up a lot of space. I guess it would depend on your wants/needs. So far the answer for me has been no, but that may be different for you.

I'd say get the SSD still, don't go splurging on the fastest one you can find but even the ones at 200MB/s are like ~$400 for 1286GB:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... =128GB+SSD

Surely it's not tons of space but that's what external HDDs (NAS/USB) or even the UltraBay if you barely use your optical drive (i don't, removed it and put in those travel light thing that just fills the space with nothing). I have a 320GB HDD now not cuz i needed the space but cuz i got it for 60 and it's aerial density made of for the lack of rotational speed (5400 vs 7200rpm).