Thinkpads Forum

At work I have got my boss to get me a T420 instead of my t60.

I would like to have the 420 with a SSD disc.
The field service guy tells me that the 420 is fast without SSD disc, but someone have told me that with ssd disk i get faster
startup and many other things.

But there will proberly be some limit on the price of the ssd disk.

What SSD disk fits/works best in the T420 when price also does have something to say.

Size of disk is not so important.
The 75 GB in my T60 is enough for me.

I use my work laptop to manage servers.
Transfer large files from my laptop via citrix to our management network.
I have a lot of programs open.
I do a lot of undocking and docking.
the laptop is in sleep mode many times a day.
Moves around between company locations office and server rooms.
Some weeks my laptop is'nt rebooting or shutdown for many days.

The Intel 320 is a nice SSD for a T420. Price out the 80Gb or 120GB version for your needs.

I agree with Harry - I moved an Intel 320 from my T400 to my T420. It is MUCH faster than the 500G drive that came with the T420. If you do not use the WWAN slot in your T420, you could also get a small mSATA drive to put in there. I did this in a friend's T520 and she loves it. We have a 120G mSATA drive in the WWAN slot that holds the system and all of the programs. The 500G drive that came with the system is still in the standard hard drive position and is used exclusively for data. Best of both worlds.

Bruce

bblumberg wrote:I agree with Harry - I moved an Intel 320 from my T400 to my T420. It is MUCH faster than the 500G drive that came with the T420. If you do not use the WWAN slot in your T420, you could also get a small mSATA drive to put in there. I did this in a friend's T520 and she loves it. We have a 120G mSATA drive in the WWAN slot that holds the system and all of the programs. The 500G drive that came with the system is still in the standard hard drive position and is used exclusively for data. Best of both worlds.

Bruce

OK. thanks...
Don't need extra data space at this work pc.
But maybe the private one... hmm...

But what is a mSATA drive.. as good as a SSD intel 320?

If you are from US could you tell me what the price for a intel 320 drive is or where to find it cheapest?

Harryc wrote:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820167047

Thanks... same price as in Denmark.
normally cheaper in US..

I still can't find out what msata is and if it's better or egal a ssd disk.?

Sorry found it:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo- ... rimer.html

Is WWAN the same as we call 3G modem slot?

If yes... is the WWAN modem standard in lenovo 420 or is it extra?

koden wrote:Is WWAN the same as we call 3G modem slot?

Yes.

You need to specify a 3G card in the configuration if you want 3G connectivity. The same slot can mount a 3G card or an mSATA card, so 3G and mSATA functionality is mutually exclusive.

I configure my **20 systems with a internal 3G card and an Intel 320 SSD in the main drive bay.

Cheers,

Bill B.

But better yet are other SSDs. Ones that aren't stuck at SATA II speeds. Ones that are twice as fast as the Intel 320.


If you can find, say, a Corsair Force 3/GT, a Mushkin Chronos (Deluxe), a Patriot Pyro or WildFire drive, an AData S511, or anything based on a SandForce SF-2xxx drive (for a reasonable price), get one of those instead because they're twice as fast.

Other alternatives are a Crucial M4/C400, or an Intel 510 drive. They are slower than the newer SATA 6GB/s SandForce drives, but they still beat the 320 in terms of speed.

Q-Ball wrote:But better yet are other SSDs. Ones that aren't stuck at SATA II speeds. Ones that are twice as fast as the Intel 320.
[...], get one of those instead because they're twice as fast.

It might be worthwhile to properly define what "speed" and "fast" are meant to imply in which context when buying an SSD.

If a maximum of sustained data transfer rates on the SATA bus are the main concern, than it does make a difference which SATA revision one chooses, and one should aim for the highest revision levels, if the SATA bus of the target machine is up to handle it. But, unless one doesn't constantly move large data files around between different drives, this does not really have any major importance for normal daily use.

The main reason for people to be so impressed by SSD speeds is the almost immediate random data access offered by this technology. In fact, the sustained data transfer rate is largely unimportant if one mainly cares about the random access to data located on the disk. It is the immediate data delivery which makes a real difference in daily standard usage patterns, and not the higher sustained data transfer rates on the the SATA bus.

To summarize, if one is mainly concerned to speed up random data access during normal daily operations, one should rather try to get hold of the drive with the best GB per Dollar ratio and the longest warranty period. If one expects to move around lots of data, only then SATA speeds should be of any concern. Personally i wouldn't want to spend any extra money on SATA bus speeds from which my daily work does not really benefit, and i would be very well off even with a cheaper SATA I drive offering more storage space than speed.

So what it meens is that intel 320 is the cheapest way to get a SSD disk as I understand.
it "only" runs SATA II but the for startup pc and programs startup I won't feel any difference, only by moving large files.
Is that correct?

How many SATA possibility is there.. and what speed are they running?
the laptop BUS also have some kind of limit...i expect?
sorry for all the questions. But when we talk about bus and sata, i'm a little "ut of bounds".

What kind of WWAN modem have you guys purchased for your laptops?

found something here:


http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-a ... d-p/399387

Notice that speed of the modem meens something.
In DK we are running 20Mbit at the moment, so it would be a good idea to by the fastes one.
So Ericsson must be the choice.

data on:


http://shop.lenovo.com/us/ww/pdf/t420_t ... asheet.pdf


So if I buy this:


http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-SSD-320-S ... 2313d0114d

and

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ericsson-F5521G ... 2313b62256

then i would have something useful

but have to find out if antenna for WWAN is mounted in the T420

What are they doing by Lenovo..
No USB 3.0 on the T420. Only T420s has 1 USB 3.0 port..
[censored]...

To summarize, if one is mainly concerned to speed up random data access during normal daily operations, one should rather try to get hold of the drive with the best GB per Dollar ratio and the longest warranty period.

(The reason I suggested the others is because they share the same $/GB ratio. Though, the Intel 320 does have 2 more years of warranty and going to the others only yields, in Windows startup, around 5 seconds worth of speed.)


For the USB 3.0 problem, there's always this (http://www.dealextreme.com/p/34-54mm-ex ... ull%20view).
A review of that is here (http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardwar ... ter-6.html).

Unless you have more than one ExpressCard/34 device that you need, or more than one USB 3.0 device, that is- but otherwise this one should fulfill the need for USB 3.0 speeds without needing to go 's'.

Thanks .. Seems that i have all i need now

intel 320 or intel x25..

is the x25 faster and would this fit in the lenovo 420?

Or is the 320 the only one supported by Lenovo?

Any 2.5" x 9.5mm SATA device is supported.

Q-Ball wrote:But better yet are other SSDs. Ones that aren't stuck at SATA II speeds. Ones that are twice as fast as the Intel 320.

If you're willing to sacrifice reliability (most people aren't), and if you've got a workload which will benefit from the added performance (most won't), then yes, pursue other options.

If, however, you're not doing heavy VM use, software development, or A/V work, and if you value reliability over having whatever's currently the best-benching drive, stick with Intel or Samsung.