Thinkpads Forum

I just replaced the 100 GB 7200 RPM drive in my X61S with a new Mtron Pro 32 GB SSD (120 GB/S Read, 100 GB/S write) and here are my impressions. I run XP pro.

Boot time are drastically reduced. Boot times are now less than 20 seconds which is faster than my 3.2 GHZ desktop with a 10,000 Raptor HD.

Times to standby and hibernate and resume are also drastically reduced.

The computer is now dead silent with no vibration most of the time (only sound is when the fan comes on once in awhile depending on use), I never really noticed the noise/ vibration from the HD before but now I do notice the silence.

Applications open very quickly.

I got to "uninstall" the HD shock detection software as that is no longer an issue.

The overall feel of the X61S is now like that of a high powered desktop with 2 10,000 RPM HD in RAID which is to say very responsive.

Battery life is better but not improved as much as the responsiveness. It appears about 10% better.

32GB is enough for my purposes. I use XP and don't need to carry a lot of data with me as I usually just log into remote computers, use office applications and a web browser. I could see that for other uses 32 GB would be inadequate.

Rationalizing the price is a matter of perspective ($1,100). As a "serial upgrader" I can say that this SSD upgrade has had more effect on the responsiveness/usefulness of this system than anything else I have ever experienced (way more than faster processors, more memory, etc.) . No one "needs" an SSD but no one "needs" a X61S either. They are both very expensive and very specialized high performance devices that do what they promise. For a business person that travels it is a nice indulgence (toy) that is also tax deductible. For someone else it is a 60% cost increase to an all ready expensive device.

sounds like a good upgrade for me! lm wondering though, does the lntel bridge in the X6x support >80mb/s transfers? I really want one in any case!!!

I read about the "intel chipset" 80 GB / Second limit with SSD drives and it appears to be true for the X61S. With HD tach I get 80 GB / Burst and 75 GB / Sec. average transfer which is significantly less than the "potential" of this drive when used on Nvidia chip sets. Of course there are the "Intel and Mtron are aware of the issue and working on it" assurances which may or may not be true.

I guess for Intel lap tops it probably doesn't pay to get the fastest drives at this point as they can't take full advantage of them. In any case though these drives are still a big improvement in performance even if not being used to their full potential.

oh wow... at least you can peg the limits of the chipset! Im very impressed with those numbers as I get in the 30mb/s range, and a 15ms latency. Hmmm... looks like I need to justify a new toy!!!

That sounds awesome. Glad it worked out for you.

Now all I have to do is wait a year for SSD to drop in price...

agree boot time & OS on 7200 rpm HDDs are still OK

But IMVHO mentioned are too sensitive even for small turbulences.

FYI it is easy to compare
if film is played:
from 7200 rpm HDD
vs from SDcard

Even during small laptop turbulences (e.g. easy on table)
film from HDD temporary is stopped.
It is not noted with film from SDCard
or USB drive.

BTW the largest 32GB SDcard ~$350 (15MB/sec Read/Write speeds)
SanDisk > Products > Multiuse Cards > SanDisk SD™ Cards > SanDisk Ultra® II SD™ and SDHC™ Cards
http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Item(25 ... _Card.aspx
SDSDRH-032G-A11

GOK still OS from HDD but the rest from SDcard?

Sony has a $4,000 think laptop that has both the SSD and a regular HD which I used at the Sony Store in Manhattan. Apps do load quickly, but I really don't see much advantage really over the X61 w/HD unless you're doing database types of thinks.

Also, Intel came up with a new technology that promises price reductions by a factor of five sometime in the next year or two.

dfumento wrote:(snip)

Also, Intel came up with a new technology that promises price reductions by a factor of five sometime in the next year or two.

link?

Did you remove your HDD as well, this would help to lighten up your X61s too.

Besides, what is the power consumption now without HDD ?

Based on the reviewed results:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/21/ ... page3.html

"At a weight of 114 g and a power consumption of 2.0 to 2.9 W, the Mtron devices are as heavy as a conventional 2.5" notebook hard drive, and they are equally energy-hungry."

i doubt that how much power you can save by using Flash SSD as the Master drive instead of SATA HDD.

Anyone try an SSD in an X61 tablet yet?

The SSD drive is a little lighter, the one I took out (100 GB 7200 RPM Hitachi) 112 grams and the Mtron 86 grams.

Power consumption according to the spec sheets is 0.5 W idle and 2.7 W for sustained writes. Battery life is improved but not drastically. I think Mtron sacrifices some power savings for performance.

For an upgrade there are a lot of upsides (faster, quieter/ silent, lighter, less power consumption, more shock resistant) and 2 big downsides, less capacity and expense.

Usually when you add performance you sacrifice noise, weight, and power consumption.

levimax wrote:...2 big downsides, less capacity and expense...

Cost is the Biggest Concern indeed

Money concerns aside, I too would like an upgrade like this.
I would really like a notebook with fully solid state storage, so that I don't have to worry that the accidental shake can kill the drive.

The Pro series is the best - it has highest rated speeds and guaranteed to work in servers and RAID, but if its price is out of the question for you, the Mobi series may be what you want:

Mtron SSD 2.5" 32GB SATA MOBI 3000 ($699.00)
http://cgi.ebay.com/Mtron-SSD-2-5-32GB- ... dZViewItem

Mtron SSD 2.5" 16GB SATA MOBI 3000 ($395.00)
http://cgi.ebay.com/Mtron-SSD-2-5-16GB- ... dZViewItem

I think, $395 for 16GB model might be a deal for me. I believe the reliability and speed will still be grand for my purposes.

As for the small disk size, I managed to get a working Windows XP partition well under 1 GB (no hibernation) and it worked like a snap with 256MB RAM with or without page file. It depends on your tasks, of course.

There are Transcand 32GB SATA SSDs on eBay for US$199 (!!!)

eBay link

Why are these so cheap, relative to the M-Trons? Is it strictly a matter of these being "last generation" SSDs or something, poorer reliability/performance, or is there something actually wrong with these Transcend ones that means they should be steered clear of?

For US$200 it's worth it even as an experiment into SSD land!

EDIT: aah, "Read up to 26MB/s, Write up to 13MB/s". Obviously not a performance option then, but might be worth it for the quietness factor.. the X60s practically never uses its fan anyway...

EDIT #2: the people at notebook review have tried the Transcend, with poor results.. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthr ... ?p=2809867

I have one of the Transcend SSDs (32 GB PATA) and agree with most of the reviews out there in the wild: the product is not ready for prime-time.

I found it unusable in any Thinkpad (T4x) as a primary drive. Most likely, it has to do with how the IDE chipset was implemented but I can't pin down exactly where.

FWIW.

Mitchell

Thanks Mitchell for preventing me from making an annoying mistake!

I have found a Sandisk 32GB UATA 5000 SSD (with 2.5 SATA adapter) at a similar price... looking around the web, it seems as though this one is actually capable as a 2.5" HDD replacement.

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll ... 0215381560

I've ordered one and will post specs/details when it arrives. The fact they're almost all sold out within a day reassures me

Keep us informed of the results.
I am also looking (slowly, to hopefully correlate with a decrease in price) into throwing an SSD into my lappy

Mtron MSD-SATA3025-032 (Mobi 3000) in X60t (CPU Core Solo ULV U1400).

HDtune:
Transfer rate
min 82.5 MB/s
max 94.6 MB/s
avg 94.1 MB/s

Access time 0.1 ms
Burst rate 81.7 MB/s
CPU usage 7.7 %

Thanks for the stats!

Checking twice the chipset does not limit reads at 80 MB/s.

DVormann wrote: Transfer rate
avg 94.1 MB/s

Burst rate 81.7 MB/s

Odd that average is higher than burst.

Where did you buy and how much did it cost, if I may ask?

EUR 533 + EUR 7 shipping.

Minimum transfer rate is higher than burst. Not just average transfer rate.

My Sandisk 32GB SSD arrived yesterday. I haven't had any time to do anything much other than install it and load Windows, but some quick notes:

- the part was new and sealed.

- it was actually a service part from a ruggedised Dell, complete with its plastic cover. The drive itself is a 1.8" ZIF PATA unit, with a 2.5" SATA caddy/bridge.

- the caddy has a shockproof blue plastic cradle for the disk to sit in, and the caddy body is solid metal. Very tough (I assume it's designed for 1.8" HDDs rather than SSDs), but it does increases weight: all up, it's 130g, compared to 95g for the 2.5" 80GB HDD (Fujitsu) that was in my X60s

- Windows install was more or less just as quick as a HDD, sometimes it seemed faster. One note was that in the initial copy section, once or twice the CD drive had to stop for a few seconds while the disk cache was flushed to the SSD.

- you never realise how much you rely the HDD crunching sounds to determine when the computer working, until it's not there The silence is spooky

- in terms of actual system usage, it's every bit as fast as a HDD, with superior system responsiveness.

- HD Tach of the SSD connected to my desktop was an even 61MB/sec reading rate (random, sequential, burst - all the same figure). Haven't done the tests on the laptop yet.

- no idea of power consumption/battery life figures yet.

The eBay seller I bought from (linked in my earlier post) seems to get more stock of them now and again, though now at a slightly higher price. I would still highly recommend them even at the revised price, it's by far the best SSD value buy out there right now and the seller quotes spot-on international postage charges, fully insured/registered.

richarddd wrote:Odd that average is higher than burst.

No drive buffer. I would say that there is problem in method how the measurent is done, because there is lot of variance even with buffered rotational drives.

Update:

Hibernation is dog slow with the (Sandisk) SSD, slow enough to not make it worth using. For a machine with 2GB RAM, it takes ~30 seconds to hibernate. I guess it's one task that really exposes the lower sustained write speed of most SSDs.

wait, how fast is it normally? I haven't used hibernate in years but for a machine with 2GB i suspect it to take a while.... not 10seconds to write that much data. Even a HDD would probably only be able to push 30-50MB/s there.. SSDs as far as i had worked at those speeds or better.

Whoops, typo.. I meant 130 seconds. (just verified it with a stopwatch)

I rarely if ever hibernate the X60 (so have no idea how long it used to take), but the tablet with its 1GB RAM never takes much longer than 15 seconds to hibernate.

My X60t with XP /3GB /USERVA=2900 and only 500 MB currently used requires 17 seconds from the click on "hibernate" to power off.

Suppose this depends on the actual SSD as well as memory usage.

I am running the same system and it's the best upgrade ever. I've carry over the SSD from My X60s. I also use a 16GB SDHC for extra storage