Upgrading harddrive on T60; seagate hybrid vs SSD SATA I

[carson24]

Hey guys,

I'm in the process of upgrading the harddrive on my T60. I was looking to get the SSD SATA III but just found out that the bios doesn't support above SATA I. So my quesiton is how's the performance on a SSD SATA I compared to the Seagate momentus xt hybrid?

Any insight is greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Carson

[RealBlackStuff]

The SSD will be slightly faster, but the hybrid-HD will have much more space and offer better bang for your bucks.

[Johan]

You might want to share with us (so that we become better able to share our opinion!) what HDD or SSD size is sufficient?

Notice the many users reporting problems with the Seagate Momentus XT; see e.g. Seagate forum - Momentus XT, Momentus, Momentus Thin, MobileMax, and other notebook drives and Newegg customer feedback and Amazon customer feedback.

Notice that the SSD will be completely silent. Did you check the difference in power consumtion between the varoius drives? If operating on battery, power consumption will directly translate to battery life!

Did you bother to search this forum for ThinkPad-users expereince with the Momentus XT?

Johan

[carson24]

I'm just looking at it from a performance point of view. If the limit on the t60 caps at SATA I, how much difference in speed will I see from a 7200rpm vs SSD SATA I vs Seagate.

The SSD will be slightly faster, but the hybrid-HD will have much more space and offer better bang for your bucks.

[RealBlackStuff]

Fastest: SSD
Slower than SSD: Hybrid
Not much slower than Hybrid: 7200rpm HD
The differences are all relative.
Nowadays a good 5400rpm HD is just about as fast as an older 7200rpm.
And 5400rpm runs cooler than 7200rpm, and uses slightly less energy.

[BootSectorVirus]

I would like to hear from members that have actually upgraded their T60's to SSD or Hybrids. I am considering Hybrid.

How many manufacturer's make Hybrid drives?

Any model recommendations?


Hybrid, fast and more storage

SSD fastest but not a lot storage if you need it when portable

[underclocker]

From what I've read, the hybrid drives are not that reliable and they are slower than the newest 500GB and up mechanical drives.

I actually purchased three, did a little more research, then returned them all, unopened.

I've been using SSDs with T60 and up models for a while now. The performance is outstanding and noticeable with every operation from boot up, to application installations, opening and closing, data reads and writes and shutdowns.

I recently installed an Intel 320 series SSD in my Z61m work machine and the result is awesome. Note, the Z61m was released before the T60! With the current Intel drivers, TRIM is reported as operational, even with Windows XP.

I haven't done any benchmarking, because there's really no need. It's fast. A second or two won't matter now that minutes have been shaved off boot up, for instance.

A current model machine will be even faster, like a T420s with an SSD, but not nearly as dramatic a difference as a T60 with an SSD vs. without one.

Bottom line, if you're comfortable with the reliability and repair aspects of an SSD, and you can afford a size that works for you/your data, then you'll never look back.

[mgo]

I would like to hear from members that have actually upgraded their T60's to SSD or Hybrids. I am considering Hybrid.

How many manufacturer's make Hybrid drives?

Any model recommendations?


Hybrid, fast and more storage

SSD fastest but not a lot storage if you need it when portable

I am currently 80 gig Intel SSDs on a T60 and a W500. The SSD is very fast and very satisfying to use. I have the operating system on a 40 gig partition, and documents, etc. on a second SSD partition. This gives me improved (for me) backup management because there no several gigs of documents and photos to back up...just the operating system and programs. Intel offers a free download utility to manage Trim and other utilities for the newer Intel drives. The speed improvement is flat out worth it, in my opinion.

My larger multimedia files reside on a second mechanical drive in the Ultra Bay slot. Those multimedia files run very quickly, even from the mechanical drive, because the executables that run them are still on the SSD.

I also own and use two Seagate Momentus XP hybrid drives. They are around 80% as fast as a SSD and of course hold more data. They are good bang for the buck. My only quibble is the usual HDD noise, which annoys me from any hard drive. I can tolerate short periods of hard drive noise in Ultra Bay, because I have Power Management (Windows) power down the drives after five min or so.

I have been running solid state drives for my operating systems for around three years. I have had zero problems with them. Highly recommended, as Jerry Pournelle says...

[SaabScott]

I have 2 Seagate Monumentus 500GB drives.

Call me a sucker for punishment, but I bought the second thinking (hoping, believing) that the first drive was just a dud.
Don't get me wrong, they both work and work well, but they both have the same issues (documented here and on the Seagate forum).

To answer your question, I found a marked improvement over the origianl 7200RPM 100GB drive that came in my ThinkPad.
Aside from looking for a boost in performance, I needed/wanted hdd space.

When my drive(s) is performing properly, it is great.
Quiet, the whole TP runs cooler, and fast!

[BootSectorVirus]

I have 2 Seagate Monumentus 500GB drives.

Call me a sucker for punishment, but I bought the second thinking (hoping, believing) that the first drive was just a dud.
Don't get me wrong, they both work and work well, but they both have the same issues (documented here and on the Seagate forum).

To answer your question, I found a marked improvement over the origianl 7200RPM 100GB drive that came in my ThinkPad.
Aside from looking for a boost in performance, I needed/wanted hdd space.

When my drive(s) is performing properly, it is great.
Quiet, the whole TP runs cooler, and fast!

Can you give me the short list of the most annoying issues with the hybrid Seagate drives?

Thanks to all who have posted, you guys are great!

[lemonstar]

So - while on the subjecg of SATA and upgrading hard drives - what do I have to look for or avoid when deciding what to upgrade to?

A couple of months ago I bought a 2007-CTO T60 - has a Hitachi 100G SATA I.

Looking on ebuyer for a larger drive well under £100 I can see plenty of 2.5" WD SATA-II drives 5400rpm.
Who is the prefered manufacturer- (suggestions here, as I understand it, to avoid the Momentus) I don't know whose drives (of this type) are considered to be the most reliable these days - there are so many to choose from. Obviously battery life, noise & heat are other factors but reliability has to be first even though reliability in my experience, has been great - I've had only a couple of hd fails on all the machines (PC's and many many laptops) I've used at home & work (as a programmer) and not lost anything data wise.

I'm out of touch with HD technology atm as I don't buy that many these days - I know of (but not a lot about) the hybrids and the SS ones and I'll have to go away and bone up on those. For a start I'm just looking on the ebuyer site.

Does the Scorpio Blue equate with 5400 and the Black with 7200 - is that the basic difference? Is it always advisable to go for 7200 over 5400 (majority of drives on ebuyer are 5400), 16MB over 8MB cache (majority of drives on ebuyer are 8M)and the largest GB size you can afford or are there reason not to do that - I was thinking of reliability. A 750G drive is only £65. To me 7200 and 16M means faster and probably more battery drain and possibly less reliable but the differences for reliabilty could be as-near-as-d a m n-it negligible in practice or simply unknown if the truth is told.

The BIOS is version 2.26 although I just checked on the lenovo.com site and it says that BIOS 2.27 was released on 25 Aril 2011. Can I put a SATA-II or III drive in?

Incidentally - why, when I get the lenovo site to autodetect my machine type does it say:-

"T60 (2007-WM5) Based 2007-CTO", etc..

when the label on the bottom of the machine says 2007-CTO?

cheers
Neil

[BootSectorVirus]

I am running the Scorpio Black WD brand in all three of my notebooks, one being the T60, they are fast, relatively quiet and run cool, I would not consider the blue series myself.

Other than higher rpm which equates to more performance, i think the overall quality and lifespan is better also.

[lemonstar]

OK - thanks for that BSV

Didn't take long (I was dead tired last night posting here) this morning to find this article from May 2009 comparing Scorpio Black & Blue with a Toshiba drive and a 256G SolidData drive with some extra comparisons with a Seagate Barracuda (desktop) drive.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.a ... D=4954&p=2

Roughly what is says is:-

• WD drives are as fast as a desktop drive like the Barracuda
• Cooler - Black ran at 30-33C cf 42-49C for the Toshiba
• Quieter - Black & Blue ran at 26-29dBA, Barracuda & Toshiba ran at 30 & 34dBA
• Surprisingly Black no quicker than Blue
• SolidData drive transfers data at 4x the rate of the WD drives
• Black 5 yr warranty, Blue 3yr

FWIW looking on ebuyer now (Aug 2011) they have
Black - 160/320/500 for £33-£50
Blue - 160/240/320/500/640/750/1000 from £30-£103
the 500G drives are Black £49.98, Blue £41.42

So I can put a SATA-II drive in but it won't run at SATA-II speeds - is there anything that neds to be configured in the BIOS and will I have to put a jumper on the new drive to set it up for SATA-I transfer?

cheers
Neil

[RealBlackStuff]

T60 is hardware-limited to SATA-I speed, no way to change that!
You can put in a SATA II or SATA III drive, but they will still only work at SATA I speed.
Some drives need a jumper set to work at SATA I speed, others auto-adjust without jumpers.

The T61 on the other hand can be BIOS-modded to work at SATA II speed.

[lemonstar]

OK thanks for that - that's all clear now.
I think I'll order the 500G Black WD.
I didn't know the T61 could work with SATA-II.

[electronic_use_only]

I recommend buying momentus xt

[goraman]

I am using a 500 gig Momentus XT in my T61 as we speek I have had it for 30 days now.
I have returned one of them right out of the gate it was bad and wouldn't load anything.
I took it to Fry's and there tech tested it,seems if you get a good one they last as long as any other drive but the interface between the solid state and the hard disk is the key.