OCZ Solid Series SSD on X61(s)

[Fnord]

I didn´t say Vista is better than XP As for Win 7, I hope M$ is going to automatize all these tweaks. If not, I guess we will be doing it in the same old way.

Sorry wasn't sure what (if any) xp symptoms you ment other then the lack of correct offset alignment.

[Marin85]

I only meant the hangs of XP with SSD when not properly aligned on the drive as you have described above.

[Fnord]

As an alternative to the OCZ I decided to order one of these Photofast CR-9000:
http://www.photofast.tw/eng/SSD_CR9000.html
http://www.ultra-imagination.com/Memory%20Card.htm

I am planning to use it just as a spare drive but I was thinking of using it as a primary SSD for my x61t. Anyone have opinions on whether this would be a good idea?

It has a SATA II setting so I'm assuming it would work the same as the OCZ but I'm not completely sure. Also, it only works in RAID 0 which is probably how an OCZ works as well but I would have liked the option to use other RAID options such as 1,5, or 10.

thanks!

Did you notice how the small file write really dropped down when using 3 or more SD-cards?

And also to get speed equal to a cheap simple OCZ SSD like mine you would have to go out and buy 6x of 8GB very fast SLC SDHC-cards. You would get 48GB of a SSD for 300US$+the cost of the host card. And a 60GB standard SSD is like 200$ Or if you only need like 32GB and could take the lower speed the cost would be 200+host card when a 30GB OCZ SSD is like 100.

I would go for the OCZ or some other standard SSD for sure. this product seem to be out of date already when you look at the price for good fast SDHC-cards.

(I'm assuming you would like something like the sandisk extreme III 30MB/s SDHC and the cheapest i could find on ebay is 50$.) I'm not even sure that it is al SLC but i think it is.

[madcow]

What are the advantages of using SSD instead of a regular hard drive? I'm getting an X60 and I'm thinking of switching to SSD to maximize its performance. I want to decrease boot time, and application load time. Does SSD out perform a 7200 rpm hard drive?

[Marin85]

By far (if you manage to apply all applicable tweaks)! But not every SSD would outperform a 7200rpm drive, there are some big failures out there. Also, SSD is supposed to yield longer battery life than an HD, but this is still not very clear...

[Fnord]

What are the advantages of using SSD instead of a regular hard drive? I'm getting an X60 and I'm thinking of switching to SSD to maximize its performance. I want to decrease boot time, and application load time. Does SSD out perform a 7200 rpm hard drive?

Yeah a good or half good (like mine) SSD will outrun a 7200 rpm HDD.
A normal 3,5" 7200 gives you like 70MB/s and a cheap OCZ SSD will give you around 140MB/s.
But my X61s has a speed limit in the interfaces or somthing taking it down to 110MB/s.

And above that it is an even bigger speed difference on smaller files and it has a huge advantage when it comes to access time.

One other thing a like very much is that i can feel safe turning the HDD protection sensor off and no longer getting irritated when it pauses my hdd just bequse i moved my computer a little.

[iamdmc]

Vaio Z series = the right track. I still won't be completely happy until there is a pair of mPCIe SSDs (mirrored) for the OS/programs partition and a pair of 1.8" SATA SSDs (mirrored) for the data. Solid state cooling would also be nice.

No moving parts makes for awesome ruggedness.

[madcow]

I got my X60 and now debating whether I should get a SSD hard drive. The current hard drive in the X60 is a 7200 rpm hard drive. I'm thinking of getting http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820141419 and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820227373 . These are SATA II and I don't know if they will work with the X60.

[Fnord]

I got my X60 and now debating whether I should get a SSD hard drive. The current hard drive in the X60 is a 7200 rpm hard drive. I'm thinking of getting http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820141419 and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820227373 . These are SATA II and I don't know if they will work with the X60.

I have the OCZ Solid 60GB in my x61s and it runs just fine. Sata II is downcompatible with SATA I computers. So i dont think you will have any problems there.

What operating system are you planning to install and are you installing it from Lenovo rescue media or from an original Mirosoft cd?

I have used Vista, 7 and are now running XP. All workes fine but i did not install XP from Lenovos rescue disc, it may be a bit complicated to do that but i'm sure it is possible.

[madcow]

I have the OCZ Solid 60GB in my x61s and it runs just fine. Sata II is downcompatible with SATA I computers. So i dont think you will have any problems there.

What operating system are you planning to install and are you installing it from Lenovo rescue media or from an original Mirosoft cd?

I have used Vista, 7 and are now running XP. All workes fine but i did not install XP from Lenovos rescue disc, it may be a bit complicated to do that but i'm sure it is possible.

I have ordered the OCZ 60 GB. Hope it is faster than my 7200 rpm hard drive.

[Fnord]

I have ordered the OCZ 60 GB. Hope it is faster than my 7200 rpm hard drive.

It is faster, no worries about that.
I forgot to test the speed of my 5400rpm before switching to SSD in my X61s so i can not give you any speeds of that drive.

Please do some speed testing on your laptop before and after the disc change so that other people who are thinking about going SSD know the diffrences.

Here is a simple but good tool to test read and write speed of your disc.
Crystal Disk Mark - Free to use of course.
http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html

Testing on my desktop computer and X61s i get these read speeds from my disc drives
Raptor 74GB (older 3,5" version) 10.000 rpm = 63MB/s
Standard 400GB SATA 7200rpm = 49MB/s
OCZ Solid SSD 60GB = 138MB/s (on desktop SATA II-controller)
OCZ Solid SSD 60GB = 110MB/s (on my X61s with slower SATA-controller)

[Marin85]

Are you sure it´s appropriate for testing SSDs? (asking this because some mainstream benchmarks like HDTach and HDTune turned out to be not suitable for this purpose due to their testing algorithms)

[Fnord]

Are you sure it´s appropriate for testing SSDs? (asking this because some mainstream benchmarks like HDTach and HDTune turned out to be not suitable for this purpose due to their testing algorithms)

No not sure, but a lot of people including some working pro with ssd testing uses it.
At least it should get you something to compare with even though it may not be 100% accurate.

[madcow]

Got my SSD installed.
Installed Ubuntu 8.10.
So far, no problem.

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 2386 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1193.97 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 288 MB in 3.00 seconds = 95.91 MB/sec

95.91 MB/sec seems low compared to the 1110 MB/sec.

[red bioroid]

Has anyone document what their new battery life is on the old hard drive versus new ssd drive ?

[madcow]

I don't think there's much difference.

[ratoto67]

Hi there,
What would be the best option for my "old" X60. I would need 60 Giga. Do I need any adapter ?
Thanks

[madcow]

Hi there,
What would be the best option for my "old" X60. I would need 60 Giga. Do I need any adapter ?
Thanks

I bought the OCZ 60 G from newegg. I have the link in one of the above post.

Although the OCZ is SATA II, it works perfectly with the X60 (no adapter require).

I install linux (ubuntu) on it. It works exactly like a spinning hard drive, except booting is much faster. Loading is much faster. I don't suffer problems like others. My computer doesn't stutter.. Everything just goes smoothly..

[aceo07]

OCZ Core Series V2 OCZSSD2-2C120G 2.5" 120GB SATA II & Mini USB 2.0 Port Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.a ... 6820227361
$199.99 Seems like a good price to me.

[pegleg81]

I seem to have problem using the factory recovery partition.

I took out the factory drive, put the factory hdd into an external firewire drive, put the OCZ SS SSD into the X61s, put on Ultrabase and booted up using an Acronis boot up DVD I made using True Image 10.

Cloned the external drive, targeting the internally installed SSD.

Vista seems to work fine, but when I boot up and try to use the Rescue and Restore (or was it Restore and Rescue?), I can go through all the menu items, and after setting the custom install setting so that I'm not restoring some of the bloatware, I get an error message.

Anybody have the same problem? Is there something I'm missing for this cloning?

Thanks in advance.

[nblanton]

Does anyone know if these will work in X61t's?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

Its an OCZ SSD that plugs into a mini-PCIe port. I know that there are two mini-PCIe spots on the mobo, one has the wireless NAT and my other slot has my Intel Turbo Memory card in it. I was thinking about pulling the Turbo Memory card and replacing it with this, and using the HD as a secondary storage drive. I know that this device is primarily intended for use in netbooks, but I thought it would be awesome if it worked in other applications. I read on another site that Lenovo has disabled mini-PCIe cards that are not identified in the bios as compatible. The big benefit of this card over a drive is that the SATA controller is on the card and they are cheap ($185 for 64GB MLC).

[ThinkRob]

OCZ Core Series V2 OCZSSD2-2C120G 2.5" 120GB SATA II & Mini USB 2.0 Port Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.a ... 6820227361
$199.99 Seems like a good price to me.

That's a pretty bad drive though. It's got horrid random write performance, so unless you're doing primarily large sequential reads your money might be better spent on a different SSD.

It seems like a lot of folks in this thread are seduced by the high sequential speeds. Unfortunately, most desktop usage consists of small, random reads/writes -- and that's something that the JMicron-based products absolutely suck at. Sure, there are some "tweaks" that OCZ and the like will tell you -- but those just mask the problem. There's no magic registry tweak or partition alignment "tweak" that will fix the fact that the controller is poorly-designed w/ regards to random I/O.