Thinkpads Forum

Hello all - I have been lurking reading a bunch of good info and opinions on the x200 and new x201 notebooks. I am getting ready to pull the trigger and order one, I am trying to decide if the SSD is worth the cost over the 7,200 HHD. I have never used a SSD based system before, but with you guys that have - is there a noticeable difference or is the main benefit from the noise and less power consumption?

Thanks for your help and advice,
mobowhunter

I recently bought an Intel X25-M SSD drive and it is awesome. I find a huge difference in system responsiveness (vs a 7200 RPM drive), including boot up and shut down times. For me it was definitely worth the price paid.

I personally wouldn't buy a Thinkpad with the Lenovo SSD. I would get it with the cheapest hard drive, and then buy an Intel X25-M drive (or if you have the funds, an OCZ LE or Crucial RealSSD).

Laptop drives tend to already be pretty quiet.

They do use less power, they are much faster. They are certainly worth it if you have the money. You can either get the one from Lenovo or if you want to save a little money you can get one like this Kingston SSD. Or you can get a 64GB one to save even more. If I remember correctly Lenovo only offers a 128GB SSD with the x201 -- I could be wrong though.

There are just so many options, it really depends on what you want. Do you want to get a drive that uses as little power as possible? Do you just want to get the fastest drive possible?

efrant wrote:I personally wouldn't buy a Thinkpad with the Lenovo SSD. I would get it with the cheapest hard drive, and then buy an Intel X25-M drive (or if you have the funds, an OCZ LE or Crucial RealSSD).

I second that. Manufacturer-provided SSDs invariably cost more, have worse support, and are often one or more generations behind their OEM brethren.

visionviper wrote:Laptop drives tend to already be pretty quiet.

They do use less power, they are much faster. They are certainly worth it if you have the money. You can either get the one from Lenovo or if you want to save a little money you can get one like this Kingston SSD. Or you can get a 64GB one to save even more. If I remember correctly Lenovo only offers a 128GB SSD with the x201 -- I could be wrong though.

There are just so many options, it really depends on what you want. Do you want to get a drive that uses as little power as possible? Do you just want to get the fastest drive possible?

I am more interested in the speed than I am battery life. The 128G SSD from Lenovo is an additional $280 dollars.

Thanks.

mobowhunter wrote:I am more interested in the speed than I am battery life. The 128G SSD from Lenovo is an additional $280 dollars.

Thanks.

Not sure who manufactures Lenovo's SSD's, but I'm sure their SSD's are not one of the fastest. Not worth the $280 IMHO. I would suggest one of these:
Intel X25-M 80GB
Intel X25-E 32GB
Intel X25-M 160GB
Crucial RealSSD 128GB
OCZ Vertex LE

Or, if cost is not important, one of these:
Crucial RealSSD 256GB
Intel X25-E 64GB
OCZ Vertex LE 200GB

Would I have to worry about compatibility with the Lenovo unit if I switched form an HHD to an aftermarket SSD?

Is it pretty easy to duplicate the HHD files over to the SSD, so I could swap the two hard drives?

mobowhunter wrote:Would I have to worry about compatibility with the Lenovo unit if I switched form an HHD to an aftermarket SSD?

Nope, not at all.

mobowhunter wrote:Is it pretty easy to duplicate the HHD files over to the SSD, so I could swap the two hard drives?

Very easy. Just get a hold of a cloning software (I use Acronis) and a USB-to-SATA cable or enclosure (link this one: Enclosure) and clone the drive in the Thinkpad to the enclosure. Then just swap drives. As simple as that.

The SSD market is very new and very high-end. You are talking about $3/gb-$5/gb for performance level SSDs vs $1/gb-$2/gb for performance level HDDs. I am weary of users preaching the fast boot up times and fast shut down times. I personally do not shut down my computer nor boot it up alot; so that benefit is negligible. I notice little performance advantages in actual usage, except large file transfers have been faster. Data is safer, but I have online backup which actually offsets the price of the SSD. Doesn't really save energy, I have a energy meter on my power strip and the power saving is pennies a month if any at all.

I decided not to upgrade my laptop to an SSD after using one my on in my desktop. I don't see the cost advantage of paying that much for an ssd. I also didn't want to worry about carrying and extra HDD for my data, I rather have a 320GB hdd than a 64GB and having to transfer data on and off all the time or carrying around another HDD. I was pretty disappointed in my experience, beyond the initial wow factor of having an SSD the novelty wears out. This is my opinion, you may have a wonderful user experience and that cost could be worthwhile.

jayexel wrote:The SSD market is very new and very high-end. You are talking about $3/gb-$5/gb for performance level SSDs vs $1/gb-$2/gb for performance level HDDs. I am weary of users preaching the fast boot up times and fast shut down times. I personally do not shut down my computer nor boot it up alot; so that benefit is negligible.

I don't shut down my destop computers at home or work a lot, but I shut down (or hibernate) my laptop very often (i.e., 1-4 times a day). So I see a huge benefit here. Boot up in less than 10 seconds from off is a big improvement for me.

jayexel wrote:I notice little performance advantages in actual usage, except large file transfers have been faster. Data is safer, but I have online backup which actually offsets the price of the SSD.

Not sure what drive you were using to say that performance advantages are little. However, I can tell you from my experience, my x200s is significantly noticebly snappier in general usage than when using it with a 7200RPM drive. Don't forget, that the cheaper SSD are not that good, and random read/write performance on them is not comparable to say an Intel X25-M.

jayexel wrote:Doesn't really save energy, I have a energy meter on my power strip and the power saving is pennies a month if any at all.

Agreed.

jayexel wrote:I decided not to upgrade my laptop to an SSD after using one my on in my desktop. I don't see the cost advantage of paying that much for an ssd. I also didn't want to worry about carrying and extra HDD for my data, I rather have a 320GB hdd than a 64GB and having to transfer data on and off all the time or carrying around another HDD. I was pretty disappointed in my experience, beyond the initial wow factor of having an SSD the novelty wears out. This is my opinion, you may have a wonderful user experience and that cost could be worthwhile.

Again, not sure which drive you were using, but based on my usage, it was definitely worth the $400 for a 160GB drive. Also keep in mind that SSD performance degrades over time unless you use TRIM or zeroing software. As far as capacity, I have never needed more than 100GB on my laptop... Different story on my desktops and NAS's, but not on my x200s. I guess my usage pattern for computers is different than yours.

I have not used an SSD in Win 7. My desktop runs XP so there may be significant improvements I am missing out on that would affect my experience but TRIM was not supported until fairly recently. TRIM support on a firmware level is coming out now. It will be a generation or two before I commit to another SSD.

jayexel wrote:I have not used an SSD in Win 7. My desktop runs XP so there may be significant improvements I am missing out on that would affect my experience but TRIM was not supported until fairly recently. TRIM support on a firmware level is coming out now. It will be a generation or two before I commit to another SSD.

I think that is one issue: I've only used a SSD with Windows 7. Moreover, the drive that I have is a second generation one, with TRIM support at the firmware level.

I spent sometime today trying to figure out what SSD Lenovo uses in the new x201s and x201 but I did not have much luck.

efrant wrote:keep in mind that SSD performance degrades over time unless you use TRIM or zeroing software.

That's not strictly true. A lot of the newer drives have garbage collection capabilities that obviate the need for that sort of maintenance.

mobowhunter wrote:I spent sometime today trying to figure out what SSD Lenovo uses in the new x201s and x201 but I did not have much luck.

If I had to guess I would say the new Samsung 128GB drive they are using the the x200/x301.

vision - is the Samsung drive one of the generation two drives as they talked about earlier in this thread?

Thanks.

ThinkRob wrote:
That's not strictly true. A lot of the newer drives have garbage collection capabilities that obviate the need for that sort of maintenance.

Garbage collection is something different, and all SSDs have it. TRIM is an ATA command sent by the OS that tells a TRIM-enabled SSD that those blocks can be deleted. As far as I know, TRIM is only supported (on the OS side) on Windows 7, irrespective of what SSDs have it supported in their firmware.

visionviper wrote:If I had to guess I would say the new Samsung 128GB drive they are using the the x200/x301.

My X200s shipped with a Toshiba SSD (THNS128GG4BAAA-N). This drive currently doesn't support TRIM.

From what I've read elsewhere its not currently possible even to flash the firmware on this drive (although I may be coming to an erroneous conclusion and would be happy to be corrected).

Having said that, I'm actually really pleased by the drive (it's fast in use and obviously silent) and I expect I'll upgrade it before I notice the lack of the TRIM function (say 2-3 years time).

ansible212 wrote:[snip] I expect I'll upgrade it before I notice the lack of the TRIM function (say 2-3 years time).

Don't think it will take that long to notice. I would suspect performance would start to degrade once you write more than 128GB to the drive (assuming you don't "zero" it at any point, which would put it back to "new" condition).

efrant wrote:Don't think it will take that long to notice. I would suspect performance would start to degrade once you write more than 128GB to the drive (assuming you don't "zero" it at any point, which would put it back to "new" condition).

I understand that. I don't actually intend to fill the drive up, assuming 128GB doesn't refer to a cumulative write of 128GB to the drive over time (my understanding of SSDs is limited TBH).

I also expect that I'll dump a disk image periodically, zero the drive and re-image (assuming that you can zero the Toshiba drive).

TBH, if I hadn't ordered my X200s in such a hurry I may have specified it with a regular HDD and then upgraded to an Intel. However, that would still have cost me a fair bit more so it's not so bad.

ansible212 wrote:
I understand that. I don't actually intend to fill the drive up, assuming 128GB doesn't refer to a cumulative write of 128GB to the drive over time (my understanding of SSDs is limited TBH).

I also expect that I'll dump a disk image periodically, zero the drive and re-image (assuming that you can zero the Toshiba drive).

TBH, if I hadn't ordered my X200s in such a hurry I may have specified it with a regular HDD and then upgraded to an Intel. However, that would still have cost me a fair bit more so it's not so bad.

I actually WAS refering to a cumulative amount over time. Once you zero it (and yes, you can with that drive, or any SSD for that matter), you start with another 128GB of cumulative writes before you'll notice anything.

efrant wrote:I actually WAS refering to a cumulative amount over time. Once you zero it (and yes, you can with that drive, or any SSD for that matter), you start with another 128GB of cumulative writes before you'll notice anything.

Thx for the clarification... I'll make sure to zero the drive periodically and then re-image it.

I have a Samsung SSD 128 GB in my X301 and I have to say I'm very happy with my choice.
I tryed a brand new T510 with HDD and Win7 (so, no additional software apart Lenovo utilities), and I have to say that my X301 is faster even with a "reduced" CPU-power and many software installed and automatically starting-up.

So, if you can live with the 128Gb-limit, go for a SSD.

Regards

efrant wrote: Garbage collection is something different, and all SSDs have it. TRIM is an ATA command sent by the OS that tells a TRIM-enabled SSD that those blocks can be deleted. As far as I know, TRIM is only supported (on the OS side) on Windows 7, irrespective of what SSDs have it supported in their firmware.

AFAIK, it's a different feature, yes, but the goals are pretty much the same: actually freeing erased blocks, remapping as necessary, so as to reduce the performance degradation caused by the need to erase when writing. In the case of GC, this remapping is done when the drive is idle, i.e. "in the background", such that when a write request is serviced, the drive needs to erase few (if any) blocks. This means that the drive can write the data write away, just as it could when it was new.

(NB: the above is a *very* simplified explanation. Read Anand's articles for a far better, more accurate description.)

Not all SSDs have this -- at least they don't have what I just described. All of them do some form of remapping, yes, but not necessarily the background freeing/remapping that a drive with "garbage collection" does when idle.

Oh, and Linux supports TRIM just fine, but not all filesystems support it.

ThinkRob wrote:AFAIK, it's a different feature, yes, but the goals are pretty much the same: actually freeing erased blocks, remapping as necessary, so as to reduce the performance degradation caused by the need to erase when writing. In the case of GC, this remapping is done when the drive is idle, i.e. "in the background", such that when a write request is serviced, the drive needs to erase few (if any) blocks. This means that the drive can write the data write away, just as it could when it was new.

Yes the goals are the same, but garbage collection is inferior to TRIM: Garbage collection requires you to leave your drive idle for an extended period of time. TRIM, which is natively supported on Windows 7 (but only with Microsoft's AHCI driver... not Intel's Matrix storage driver or any RAID driver...), runs in the background while you are using your system normally.

ThinkRob wrote:Not all SSDs have this -- at least they don't have what I just described. All of them do some form of remapping, yes, but not necessarily the background freeing/remapping that a drive with "garbage collection" does when idle.

Ok, I'll buy that.

ThinkRob wrote:Oh, and Linux supports TRIM just fine, but not all filesystems support it.

You're right, since the 2.6.33 kernal was released Feb 24, 2010.

efrant wrote: Yes the goals are the same, but garbage collection is inferior to TRIM: Garbage collection requires you to leave your drive idle for an extended period of time. TRIM, which is natively supported on Windows 7 (but only with Microsoft's AHCI driver... not Intel's Matrix storage driver or any RAID driver...), runs in the background while you are using your system normally.

The duration of time for which the drive must be "idle" depends on the drive in question. Some drives, such as the 2nd gen. X25s, don't require prolonged idle times at all -- word is that their GC can run "continuously".

You're right, since the 2.6.33 kernel was released Feb 24, 2010.

The kernel? Indeed. hdparm, however, has supported it (and allowed for automatic TRIMing) since mid-2009.

Anyone here have the new Intel 160 GB SSD G2 in their X201 or X201s yet? Boot times?

stylinexpat wrote:Anyone here have the new Intel 160 GB SSD G2 in their X201 or X201s yet? Boot times?

I have the X25-M Gen 2 160 GB (150 usable) and yes,the boot time is fast. I have extra software so it is even faster for those without it. Check out reviews for X25-M on www.newegg.com for more info.

If you're only worried about boot times then I would not get SSD. I use it for database, development, etc. and then it is is more relevant to use expensive and relatively low capacity SSD in the X201(s).