Thinkpads Forum

If I make the restore disks using the utility on my X200, could I then remove the existing 160gb hard disk, insert the new 256GB SSD and use the restore disk to bring my laptop to out of the box condition with the SSD?

Yes. Been there, done that.

aau007 wrote:Yes. Been there, done that.

I thought so, I thank YOU for the time you took to answer.

thats an interesting question btw, taking it further is that possible to reinstate lenovo recovery partion as well ?
also im wondering - as of now, what are best option for SSD given that price doesnt matter, purelly best performance

and will x301 be able to take advantage of that performance ?

elvair wrote:thats an interesting question btw, taking it further is that possible to reinstate lenovo recovery partion as well ?
also im wondering - as of now, what are best option for SSD given that price doesnt matter, purelly best performance

and will x301 be able to take advantage of that performance ?

Yes, the recovery disks will recreate the recovery and system partitions. This is exactly what I did with my X200s, which shipped with XP Pro pre-installed: I took the Vista recovery disks and installed on the 5K500.B.

OCZ Vertex series is currently one of the fastest SSD options. There is a decent review with lots of benchmarks here:
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=670&type=expert

But SSD performance is still evolving quickly ...

When I used the Recovery CD on a blank SSD, it created the recovery partition. Now when my machine starts up, I can hit F11 and Rescue and Recoverery will start and let me "Restore my hard drive to the original factory state".

Unless something else is newer, I think the Intel Xtreme is the fastest SSD now.

aau007 wrote:Unless something else is newer, I think the Intel Xtreme is the fastest SSD now.

The Intel X-25E and OCZ Vertex are both at the top of the heap. But there are so many ways to define "fastest" that I would encourage anyone contemplating buying an SSD specifically for performance to read the many benchmarks out there on the 'net, and especially to pay attention to the ones that match your own usage patterns. Otherwise you may end up paying a good chunk of money and being disappointed ...

The Memoright 128GB ssd is currently the fastest. The soon to be released 256GB version was just announced and its faster yet. The 128GB size was recently reduced to $3195.00 from a starting price of 3999.00. Rumor has it the 256GB model will be sold for 3999.00 to start with predictions that the price will be discounted to approx $3,500 by years end.
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Cheers...
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One thing I know for sure is the stock 128 SSD is not very fast. I also has "hesitation" with my X301 that never occured with a 7200rpm disk drive in the same machine. Mt latest X200 has the 160gb 7200rpm disk and it is fast compared to my X301 with 128gb SSD. My X200 does the momentary freeze thing and I have had two X301's with 128gb SSD and they both exhibited the exact same freeze. They ONLY advantage I found with the stock 128gb SSD is Vista booted slightly faster. The did not make up for 3-5 second or sometimes longer periods of the unit not responding to any user input.

I am just wanting put the new 256gb Samsung SATA2 drive in my X200 to check it out. If it is slow of has a problem I will use it for storage in the ultrabase and go back to the 160gb drive.

Greg Gebhardt wrote:I am just wanting put the new 256gb Samsung SATA2 drive in my X200 to check it out. If it is slow of has a problem I will use it for storage in the ultrabase and go back to the 160gb drive.

Is that the Spinpoint M7 250 GB? That's a really impressive data rate for a 5400 rpm drive (single platter with a super-high data density). It beats out my Hitachi 5K500.B in that department, although the .B has even lower power consumption (1.4W read/write, 0.5W idle), which clinched my choice for the X200s. Both are very quiet at 24/26 db. (I might have bought the 250GB version rather than 500GB, but no one had it in stock.)

But I do agree with your conclusions -- for me it's not yet time for an SSD. The technology still needs to mature, the capacities go up and prices go down. Maybe sometime next year they'll be at a point that I'll install one, but in the meantime the latest 2.5" hard disks are incredibly impressive.