Thinkpads Forum

Would the following drives work in my x201s?
What drive would you guys recommend - I was leaning towards the OCZ Vertex 4.

Samsung 830 Series MZ-7PC256N/AM 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC
Intel 520 Series Cherryville SSDSC2CW240A310 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC
Vertex 4 VTX4-25SAT3-256G 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC

While Intel SSDs have the lowest failure rates, they're pretty low for all SSDs. Personally, I'd buy on price.

ZaZ - do you think they will all use about the same amount of power for performance?

did you check in your x201 manual about supporting the disk's capacity that you wrote here ?

from what I know.. x2xxs is usually celeron core and you need to be careful with your ssd attached.

if so

the most recommended disk in my opinion is the Intel try to get the 520 series there much more reliable.

If those are your only choices, get the Samsung 830.

The Intel 520 suffers in power consumption due to differences in the flash memory used (the Intel 520 uses Sync NAND, while the 830 uses Toggle NAND- Sync pulls more power because it needs a clock signal all the time).

Perfomance numbers in excess of 300MB/s on any drive you install can be considered equal since the X201s is a SATA II machine; whose bus just won't take speeds faster than that. The Samsung 830 can do random reads faster than the Intel 520 can, so that's another plus for that drive.

The Vertex 4... no. Don't get this one. It's numbers (which really don't matter all that much, considering what they are) may be higher still, but OCZ is rather hit-and-miss in terms of quality. It's also not that much cheaper, so I would just go with a more reliable manufacturer. Oh, and it's too big anyways; the X201s only takes 7mm drives and the Vertex 4 is 9.5mm tall.

I believe the X201s use a 9.5mm drive just like the X201. It's the X220 that uses the 7mm drives. While it's true Intel has the lowest failure rate for SSD makers, failure rates are pretty low for all manufacturers. I've got OCZ SSDs in all three of my desktops and they've all performed as expected. Since the real benefit of a SSD is the seek times, which won't change from one drive to the next, I'd personally buy on price. The chances you'll experience a problem for any of them is fairly low.

i agree with ZaZ, I have a 2.5" intel 320 in my x201s and it works great! The seek times are the key for sure when it comes to the "snappiness". Definitely buy on price, because most ssd's now advertise sata III speeds, but the x201s can only do sata 2. Good luck!