Recommendations on which SSD to get for T420

[icecream123]

Hello everyone,

I just bought T420 and it has 500 GB HDD.
I've read online that using SSD can decrease the boot up time by half, so I'm planning on buying an SSD.

When it comes to buying SSD, I did some research on this forum and other places, and got confused.
Seems like some SSDs are stable but offer lower speeds, some are faster but have had recalls and complains in the past.

Which one should I get?
I'm basically looking for speed, capcity doesnt worry me much, I can live with 80GB as well (since Im guessing it will be cheaper )

I'm guessing I can put the SSD together with 500GB HDD and put OS on SSD to gain speed for day to day use. Right?

Thanks

[mulambo187]

i picked up a 160gb intel x25-m second hand off craigslist for 180, a little risky and supposedly slower in some specs, but i have great luck with a few other intels as well. i highly recommend them.

[icecream123]

Did a bit of research, seems like I have 3 options:

1. Get Intel 310 80GB mSATA, use this as primary and the standard HDD as secondary (storage) drive
2. Add SSD to ultra bay, remove dvd drive
3. Replace HDD with SSD

I'm interested in options 1 and 3 only.

It seems that the Intel310 80GB mSATA SSD is slower than some of the other standard SATA SSDs available out there like Intel 510, Crucial, Samsung and OCZ ones.
I do see the benchmarks for all of them and the difference in sequencial read/write, random read/write etc, but what I dont know is that how much of a difference those numbers are actually going to make? Would it be a noticable difference?

Also, some drives are SATA 3 which supports 6 Gbps, so that means whatever is the read/write speed of SSD is, if its SATA 2, the bus itself will be a bottleneck?

[icecream123]

after weighing in all the pros and cons, i decided to go for intel 310 80gb msata one.
i can always use the SATA drive for more storage but the mSATA SSD would give me speed for day to day work

ive been told that going from HDD to SSD would be huge perf improvement but going from faster SSD to fastest SSD wouldnt be that much noticeable unless you move around a lot of data daily

[pipspeak]

Good choice, IMO (because I did the same for my T420)

SSD speeds do differ, but from what I've seen most people would be hard pressed to notice those speed differences. The important thing is that any SSD will blow an HDD out of the water speed wise, and the intel SSDs (X-25, 310 mSATA, 320, 510) do seem to be considered the most reliable, if not the fastest (intel 320 8MB bug notwithstanding).

Like you, I am setting up my T420 with an 80GB mSATA for the OS and applications, and leaving the 500GB 7200rpm HDD for data storage.

[jvarszegi]

Another good thing about the Intel 310 series is the low power draw, one reason I also picked it. You might even see a modest battery life increase if you spend most of your disk-access time accessing the SSD. IIRC its power draw is quite low-- 75 mW idle, 150 mW peak.