Thinkpads Forum

Hello all,

I'm getting a T410 soon and I'm planning on upgrading to an SSD. I was hoping to get some suggestions on some good SSDs that I'd be able to buy (I live in Canada, so if there are any with Canadian deals, all the better). This would be a linux laptop mainly for programming when I'm away from my main desktop computer, so I don't need too much space (probably 128GB would be perfect).

I was looking at Kingston HyperX Fury (http://www.ncix.com/detail/kingston-hyp ... 1-1481.htm), SanDisk (http://www.ncix.com/detail/sandisk-sdss ... 8-1251.htm), Patriot (http://www.ncix.com/detail/patriot-pb12 ... 4-1251.htm) and was wondering if anyone had good things to say about them/suggest one over the other...

Also, does anyone know what sort of rails does the stock T410 comes with?


Thanks,

Peter

From the three you mention, definitely the Sandisk Ultra II.
It is a 2.5" wide, 7mm high drive.
The standard T410 HD drive bay can accommodate up to 9.5mm high drives.
The special T410s HD drive bay can only accommodate 7mm high drives.
You'll need the special 7mm rubbers for the 9.5mm bay, see http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=116890
http://www.ebay.com/itm/111505229063
Depending on where or from whom you buy, the T410 might or might not have a HD caddy and rails.

The Sandisk Ultra II uses 'TLC' nand (as does the Samsung EVO series) rather than MLC nand like other brands/models. Some folks on this forum really dislike the concept of TLC nand and it's inherent qualities of : less cost, less reliability, and less longevity.

100% larger than the 120GB model and only $20 more :
SanDisk SDSSDHII-240G-G25 Ultra II 240GB ... http://www.ncix.com/detail/sandisk-sdss ... 9-1482.htm

Many folks would recommend this SSD to be the best choice :
Crucial MX100 128GB SATA 2.5" 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter) Internal SSD CT128MX100SSD1 ... http://www.amazon.ca/Crucial-MX100-adap ... 205&sr=1-9

I just purchased and installed a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-75E500B/AM) in my new (to me) T400. The 850 EVO has a 5-year warranty and has an endurance rating of 150 TB. Even though the T400 only supports SATA II, the performance gain is substantial!

I have been looking at the SSD technology for a while now. I was teased by a Newegg special on the 850 EVO. What finally got me to pull the trigger on this was the very low percentage of negative reviews. All the other consumer level products I had been looking at showed failure rates of 5% or more, according to the reviewers. Even with good customer service and hassle-free returns, it is still an awful PITA to have a drive fail after the work of installing and migrating, not to mention the loss of data.

I admit that I don't really understand the TLC v. MLC issue, but I understand that it goes to endurance. Since the new 850 EVO technology appears to address that issue in some other way, I'm happy with that.

As far as I understand it, TLC vs MLC is not just about endurance, but also (perhaps more) about performance. TLC is harder to read, so it's slower. In the EVO 840 Samsung combined slow TLC flash with fast SLC cache to achieve performance better than most MLCs at comparable price points.

That was at least until an issue was discovered that drastically reduces the read speed of files as they get older (that is, written to the flash and untouched for a long time). And by "drastically" we mean "to a speed that can be lower than a rotational drive" (although, to be fair, not always).

No one is sure if the issue is a firmware bug, a hardware limitation or something inherent to the TLC flash. What is certain is that Samsung released a "fix" that was claimed to solve the issue, but it solved nothing, and at this point no one is certain that a real solution is even possible with the EVO 840. How the EVO 850 will fare - time will tell.

To further obfuscate the issue, I see that Tom's Hardware UK calls the 850 EVO an MLC drive:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/ssd-recom ... 904-2.html

When applied to NAND Flash, MLC means "multi-level cell". In practice, this has come to mean two bits per cell (or four possible charge levels). TLC is a "triple-level" cell, or three bits per cell (eight possible charge levels). Without knowing the exact details behind the memory controller, I would imagine that there's a fairly substantial error-checking system being used (e.g, parity bits and error correction code [ECC]). As the cells wear down and/or the storage charge leaks off, more and more of the cells will need to be "corrected" when read. That could attribute to the "slowdown" of the access time.

My view is that TLC is inherently more at risk for this cell mis-read. It's harder to accurately and repeatably determine the state of charge in the memory cell when dealing with eight possible levels with TLC, versus 4 levels of the MLC. For example:

MLC    Normalized charge
Bits   level (voltage)
1 1    1.000
1 0    0.666 <-- 0.333V spread between levels
0 1    0.333
0 0    0.000

TLC
Bits
1 1 1  1.000
1 1 0  0.857 <-- 0.143V spread between levels
1 0 1  0.714
1 0 0  0.571
0 1 1  0.428
0 1 0  0.286
0 0 1  0.143
0 0 0  0.000

TLC cells also have less endurance (number of write cycles before cell is damaged) when compared to MLC. As far as I know, the current-generation Samsung 850 EVO is TLC. I just recently bought 3 250GB drives. I'm not exactly sure what's in the 840 EVO. In fact, right now I'm installing W7 on one of my T420 systems with an mSATA 840 EVO card inside.

SSD for general use? Plenty of options. My T410 has a Crucial M4 and an Intel 330. Samsung are obviously one of the other big brands and their latest drives have good warranties. I chose Intel and Crucial on the basis that they had a good reputation for reliability, decent warranties, had a history of firmware releases (so didn't drop support for drives soon after release), and provide their firmware as ISO images, so don't need Windows to install firmware updates.

Really though I think for general use you could choose any of the major brands, and I would focus more on warranty/reliability/returns process in your country more than absolute speed benchmarks, any modern drive will be fine. I bought all of my 3 Crucial M4 drive second hand.

rkawakami wrote: I'm not exactly sure what's in the 840 EVO.

Standard 840, 840EVO and 850EVO are all TLC-based.

The first two drives were affected by serious slowdown issues, for which Samsung issued a fix (EVO only) which hasn't proven to be a long-term solution for a number of users.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1507897/sams ... -the-drive

Personally, I'd stay away - very far away - from any TLC-based drives. They are simply not inexpensive enough IMO to warrant possible issues that may arise with them in the future.

Just came across this:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8997/sams ... -the-works

I have a T410 with an 840EVO.

I've been following the goings on with regards to the performance degradation some people have been reported.

Yes my drive feels slower than the day I installed it. But I attributed that to Windows cruft and build up of junk. Unfortunately I do not have any benchmarks from day 1 to compare to today. That being said my drive still feels far faster than a mechanical hd.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Temetka wrote:I have a T410 with an 840EVO. I've been following the goings on with regards to the performance degradation some people have been reported.

Yes my drive feels slower than the day I installed it. But I attributed that to Windows cruft and build up of junk. Unfortunately I do not have any benchmarks from day 1 to compare to today. That being said my drive still feels far faster than a mechanical hd.

You may want to run 'SSDReadSpeedTester2.04' (see the first post in this thread ... http://www.overclock.net/t/1512915/read ... ected-ssds).
It gives a nice picture of read response times by age-of-files.

Some folks have continued to report slowdowns with the 840EVO and others have reported no problems.

The new version of Samsung Magician scheduled for release in March will start the 'fix, wait two months, re-run SSDReadSpeedTester' process all over again.

I've a 840 EVO in a netbook thats never recovered from the slowdown as it's a low usage machine, while perfectably usable there's too many questions over TLC devices from Samsung. I've gone over to Kingston but Intel mSATA devices are quite cheap now.

Thanks for the input. Decided to go with a Crucial MX100 instead. Seems like it's getting good recomendations from a lot of places.

RealBlackStuff wrote: The special T410s HD drive bay can only accommodate 7mm high drives.

For the record, you may be thinking of the T420s that require the 7mm height.

The T410s were the ones that uses the goofy micro SATA 1.8" drives