Thinkpads Forum

In the future I am interested in upgrading to an SSD, but I have a few questions.

1.) What is the term "aligned" referring to? How do I achieve this and how does it affect performance?

2.) If I am looking at 120gb drives, how much is taken away after formatting and (?)wear levelling?

3.) What is latency and what specs should I look for with it?

4.) I have basically rounded my options down to an Intel X25-M 120GB or an OCZ Vertex 2 120GB. Which is the better drive? I will be using the T400 for some light gaming, schoolwork, and Internet browsing, and the occasional VM to test the latest software. I imagine read speed is where I will need the most performance.

hunterman223 wrote: I have basically rounded my options down to an Intel X25-M 120GB or an OCZ Vertex 2 120GB. Which is the better drive? I will be using the T400 for some light gaming, schoolwork, and Internet browsing, and the occasional VM to test the latest software. I imagine read speed is where I will need the most performance.

What matters most for typical users is random <= 4K read/write performance.

Personally I'd recommend the X25-M. The controller is one of the oldest, best-tested designs, and Intel's failure rate is exceptionally low.

I *am* quite biased in this, but only because of my experience: I've owned several X25-Ms (G1 and G2) and two OCZ SSDs with the SandForce SF-1200. Both of the SandForce drives failed within the first six months of use. All of the X25-Ms are in service and have experienced no problems whatsoever.

The other big perk of the X25-M is that the performance of an unaligned drive is actually fairly close to that of an aligned one. Conversely, the SF-1200 controller's performance suffers tremendously when partitions are not aligned.

I was actually leaning towards the intel, since I have noticed many of the people on this forum use and recommend them.

What is "aligned" in an SSD?

Is there any performance difference between the 80gb, 120gb, and 160gb? I don't use a lot of HDD space so I am thinking of getting the 80gb and putting a 500gb HDD in the ultrabay.

hunterman223 wrote:I was actually leaning towards the intel, since I have noticed many of the people on this forum use and recommend them.

What is "aligned" in an SSD?

I'm a little confused by the whole alignment thing myself, but SSD's with fresh install of windows7 shouldn't have alignment issues..

My understanding is that newer HDD's have different sector sizes, which is not an issue with SSD's, unless you clone a drive from a HDD to SSD.

I read this on another forum:

'Run msinfo32 and look under Components > Storage > Disks.

Under the partition starting offset, this number should be divisible by 4096, and if not, then it is not properly aligned.

A fresh install through the Windows 7 installer will automatically align the SSD.'

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2031156

Hope that helps..if anyone can explain alignment simply please do!

I just bought an intel X-18 80GB SSD for my t400s and was considering cloning my existing drive to the SSD but now I plan to start from scratch to avoid the whole issue.

And i also found from multiple sources that the ocz drives have a pretty bad rep compared to intel's.

Thanks for summing that up, I was finding bits and pieces but couldn't find a straight answer. From what I have read that seems to make sense.


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miscthree wrote:..if anyone can explain alignment simply please do!

I'm with miscthree... I need a course in "SSD alignment 101"

Can anyone point out some links to basic reading material? Google results were all over the place.

Thanks in advance!

nikki605 wrote: I'm with miscthree... I need a course in "SSD alignment 101"

Can anyone point out some links to basic reading material? Google results were all over the place.

Thanks in advance!

Anandtech has an excellent series of articles on SSDs. I'd recommend you read them to get a good start -- particularly the SSD Relapse one.

Thanks, I think I will benefit from reading those too.


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Can anyone vouch for the new G3 SSDs? I guess the 320 series uses the same controller chip from the G2 X25-M, but is offering new functionality.


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hunterman223 wrote:Can anyone vouch for the new G3 SSDs? I guess the 320 series uses the same controller chip from the G2 X25-M, but is offering new functionality.

No problems here, but my drive is barely a week old and hasn't seen regular use yet.

i upgraded to a 160GB intel 320 in my thinkstation purely due to the on-board capacitors and increased reliability.

287 power-on hours (just short of 12 days)
7 power cycles (all due to OS installation and updates)
382.31 GB host writes
1.15 TB host reads

zero issues.

i use the drive for the OS (server 2008 R2 EE SP1) and as a scratch disk, nothing else.   all working files are stored on a RAID 1 SAS array.

so far i'd say it's been a great SSD.   i plan to buy more of them.

Thanks. I am thinking about getting the 120GB because that seems to be the sweet spot for speed and price over here.


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