Best Performance, 128SSD or 160gb 7200rpm with turbo?

[Greg Gebhardt]

Which would yield the best performance.

Is there someone out there that makes a 128gb or larger SSD that performs much better? I mean better enough where you can "perceive" the difference. I was not that impressed with the 128SSD in the X301 so I ordered my new W500 with the 120gb/7200rpm with turbo

You thoughts as I might still be able to get it changed but if Lenovo's 128SSD speed can be exceeded

[awolfe63]

SSD is definitely faster. There are good 256GB and 512GB units from OCZ, Supertalent, and others. look for a Samsung or Indilinx controller. Prices are still high - $600 and up.

[awolfe63]

Lenovo has a 250GB SSD as well.

http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/cont ... 3CBEEC65B3

[returnzer0]

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=79105

Apparently Dell is selling the same one for less than $500, or exactly $400 with a 15% of coupon.

[Greg Gebhardt]

But will this speed really equate to a "perceivable" difference in performance by the user. I have had many people, inlcuding the Lenovo salesperson say that with today's SSD technology a 7200rpm drive with turbo will still be perceived as fast.

I do not mind spending the $1k for the drive but wonder if a faster SSD is around the corner. The current crop of current 128gb SSD drive are not so fast.

[awolfe63]

But will this speed really equate to a "perceivable" difference in performance by the user. I have had many people, inlcuding the Lenovo salesperson say that with today's SSD technology a 7200rpm drive with turbo will still be perceived as fast.

I do not mind spending the $1k for the drive but wonder if a faster SSD is around the corner. The current crop of current 128gb SSD drive are not so fast.

I think it is the CPU in your X301 that is not fast.

I've replaced two different 7200 RPM drives with mid-range SSDs - an X61s and a HP mobile WS - the first with XP and the second with Windows 7 - both are noticeably faster.

[visionviper]

I do not mind spending the $1k for the drive but wonder if a faster SSD is around the corner. The current crop of current 128gb SSD drive are not so fast.

Yes, there are. There always will be something faster around the corner. And I disagree with you that 128gb SSDs are not fast.

Besides, what I have come to understand is that the next generation of SSDs that come out are going to use the new SATA 6Gbps spec - which no current laptop (or desktop really) has.

[gpvillamil]

In a W500, SSD will be a lot faster. I recently put two 256GB Corsair SSDs in my W500 (one internal, one in the Ultrabay), and the results are stellar. I had a pair of pretty fast Hitachi 7K200 drives in there before.

Clocking the drive with HD Tune shows a doubling of average transfer rates, with much more consistent speeds regardless of sector address. Access times, which come into play when reading many small files, drop to practically zero from 12 msec.

I'd say the difference in speed is very much noticeable. I also have a Corsair 256GB in my X61 Tablet, and there the difference is not as noticeable, because other system components are the bottleneck. It's maybe 20% - 30% quicker at best, but quieter, and of course, less susceptible to shock and vibration.

Another interesting side-effect of the SSDs is that the system seems more stable overall. I suspect some apparent reliability problems are due to the mechanical nature of regular hard drives: power up and spin-up times are unpredictable, and sometimes lead to time-outs, which lead to errors. Both the W500 and the X61T have been noticeably more stable - even after cloning the previous HD to the SSD directly.

[Greg Gebhardt]

In a W500, SSD will be a lot faster. I recently put two 256GB Corsair SSDs in my W500 (one internal, one in the Ultrabay), and the results are stellar. I had a pair of pretty fast Hitachi 7K200 drives in there before.

Clocking the drive with HD Tune shows a doubling of average transfer rates, with much more consistent speeds regardless of sector address. Access times, which come into play when reading many small files, drop to practically zero from 12 msec.

I'd say the difference in speed is very much noticeable. I also have a Corsair 256GB in my X61 Tablet, and there the difference is not as noticeable, because other system components are the bottleneck. It's maybe 20% - 30% quicker at best, but quieter, and of course, less susceptible to shock and vibration.

Another interesting side-effect of the SSDs is that the system seems more stable overall. I suspect some apparent reliability problems are due to the mechanical nature of regular hard drives: power up and spin-up times are unpredictable, and sometimes lead to time-outs, which lead to errors. Both the W500 and the X61T have been noticeably more stable - even after cloning the previous HD to the SSD directly.

Well I just ordered the 256gb Corsair and it will be here tomorrow. I will make a restore copy tonight and be ready for the change over in the am.

Will report back after the drive settles in. One more question. I have been a firm believer in DIskkeeper. Do you suggest using it with the SSD?

[awolfe63]

Will report back after the drive settles in. One more question. I have been a firm believer in DIskkeeper. Do you suggest using it with the SSD?

No - turn it off.

[Greg Gebhardt]

Will report back after the drive settles in. One more question. I have been a firm believer in DIskkeeper. Do you suggest using it with the SSD?

No - turn it off.

I thought so, Diskkeeper said it has "special" optimization for SSD. I was kinda of doubting it. Making the restore disks as we speak, dive should arrive before 10am on Wednesday

[visionviper]

I thought so, Diskkeeper said it has "special" optimization for SSD. I was kinda of doubting it. Making the restore disks as we speak, dive should arrive before 10am on Wednesday

Their "feature" is just a desperate attempt to keep business in the coming years. It does absolutely nothing to help your SSD and in fact you might be able to say it hurts your SSD.

[Greg Gebhardt]

Well all is OK and the new 256GB Corsair is getting along fine in the W500.

For anyone would wonders if it is worth the money, well my face is still cramping from my big smile. Vista64 cold boots with full sidebar in 55 seconds! I installed my software while Vista was downloading updates and nothing even missed a beat. CS, AutoCad and Quickbooks Pro all installed and updated so quickly it truly cut alot of my time off the re-installs.

All computers should come standard with these things. The Corsair with the 3.06Ghz processor are quite a combo!

Thanks everyone for the support

[mgo]

Well all is OK and the new 256GB Corsair is getting along fine in the W500.

For anyone would wonders if it is worth the money, well my face is still cramping from my big smile. Vista64 cold boots with full sidebar in 55 seconds! I installed my software while Vista was downloading updates and nothing even missed a beat. CS, AutoCad and Quickbooks Pro all installed and updated so quickly it truly cut alot of my time off the re-installs.

All computers should come standard with these things. The Corsair with the 3.06Ghz processor are quite a combo!

Thanks everyone for the support

Welcome to the "Solid State Club" ! Since I do a lot of experimenting and re-booting, etc, it's all so very much more fun with the big speed increase. Even my lowly T60 ThinkPads are quick as a bunny. Like you, Vista is "ready to rumble" in just around a minute, and Windows 7 boots from cold start in around 40 seconds.

Some people suggest disabling Superfetch and Prefetch, as well as Defragmenter. What do you think about that?

[Rochefort]

Well all is OK and the new 256GB Corsair is getting along fine in the W500.

For anyone would wonders if it is worth the money, well my face is still cramping from my big smile. Vista64 cold boots with full sidebar in 55 seconds! I installed my software while Vista was downloading updates and nothing even missed a beat. CS, AutoCad and Quickbooks Pro all installed and updated so quickly it truly cut alot of my time off the re-installs.

All computers should come standard with these things. The Corsair with the 3.06Ghz processor are quite a combo!

Thanks everyone for the support

Welcome to the SSD fans
Can you benchmark your new baby with AS SSD Benchmark ( http://www.alex-is.de/PHP/fusion/downloads.php?cat_id=4 ) ?
the 4K-64Threads is the nearer day to day use for a workstation

My specs for an old T60 SATA 150 with an Intel X25E 32 GB
Sequential:
------------------------------
Read: 129,62 MB/s
Write: 123,53 MB/s
------------------------------
4K:
------------------------------
Read: 14,79 MB/s
Write: 26,55 MB/s
------------------------------
4K-64Threads:
------------------------------
Read: 86,42 MB/s
Write: 133,72 MB/s
------------------------------
Access Times:
------------------------------
Read: 0,254 ms
Write: 0,137 ms
------------------------------
Score:
------------------------------
Read: 114
Write: 173
Total: 351
------------------------------

[gramaphone]

The SSD Stuttering Problem

I have the 128GB SSD drive from Lenovo in my W500 (w/ XP Pro). It suffered badly from "stuttering."

Stuttering happens during a write when the SSD has no more free blocks. A block is 128KB whereas a cluster is a multiple of 4KB. So it has to clear (zero out) one or more blocks before it can write anything at all. Info on stuttering and how to address it at http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/24728 ... ook-solved and especially http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum ... hp?t=43525

On the W500 it was awful: a 3-5 minute complete lockup (with the HD LED on). Totally unresponsive to the keyboard. This happened about once a week with the default (shipped) settings. I used the info in the links above and now the lockup happens only about once in 6-8 weeks.

The stuttering problem arises because an SSD sector/cluster cannot be overwritten in place like a magnetic HD. "Ones" can be written over an all-zero (blank) SSD cluster, but not vice versa. Instead, during any write the current cluster is marked unusable, copied into a buffer where the new data is applied, the the updated cluster is written into a blank cluster. (The SSD keeps track of where clusters are; there is no correspondence to any "physical" location as in hard drives.)

To address this problem you have to eliminate unnecessary writes to the SSD. I don't remember all the things I did, but this list is mostly complete.

1 Disabled paging!
2 Disabled hibernation
3 Disabled "Most Recent Access" for files -- Important!
4 Disabled Windows Indexing


Regarding point 3 -- for every read access, the file header is updated with the current time stamp. This action causes the SSD drive to run out of writable clusters in a hurry! (I think turning OFF Most Recent Access involves a registry key.) Google SDD stuttering for more info, and check the links above.

Regarding paging -- if it's not necessary, then for heaven's sake disable it! All those writes gobble up free clusters. Ditto for hibernation if you don't need it.

The W500 didn't have Defrag available from Start/Programs. However you can run it from My Computer/Properties/Tools. But DON'T "defrag" an SSD! First of all, the concept of physical fragmentation is meaningless for an SDD (where all clusters are equally distant from each other). Second, "defragmenting" simply causes the SSD to be rewritten, rewritten, rewritten, ... ad infinitum. Besides being purposeless, defrag wears out the SSD with useless write operations.

If you have an SSD you will experience these momentary lockups.

[ZaZ]

Which drive is it? Perhaps it's defective.

[Greg Gebhardt]

The SSD Stuttering Problem

I have the 128GB SSD drive from Lenovo in my W500 (w/ XP Pro). It suffered badly from "stuttering."

Stuttering happens during a write when the SSD has no more free blocks. A block is 128KB whereas a cluster is a multiple of 4KB. So it has to clear (zero out) one or more blocks before it can write anything at all. Info on stuttering and how to address it at http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/24728 ... ook-solved and especially http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum ... hp?t=43525

On the W500 it was awful: a 3-5 minute complete lockup (with the HD LED on). Totally unresponsive to the keyboard. This happened about once a week with the default (shipped) settings. I used the info in the links above and now the lockup happens only about once in 6-8 weeks.

The stuttering problem arises because an SSD sector/cluster cannot be overwritten in place like a magnetic HD. "Ones" can be written over an all-zero (blank) SSD cluster, but not vice versa. Instead, during any write the current cluster is marked unusable, copied into a buffer where the new data is applied, the the updated cluster is written into a blank cluster. (The SSD keeps track of where clusters are; there is no correspondence to any "physical" location as in hard drives.)

To address this problem you have to eliminate unnecessary writes to the SSD. I don't remember all the things I did, but this list is mostly complete.

1 Disabled paging!
2 Disabled hibernation
3 Disabled "Most Recent Access" for files -- Important!
4 Disabled Windows Indexing


Regarding point 3 -- for every read access, the file header is updated with the current time stamp. This action causes the SSD drive to run out of writable clusters in a hurry! (I think turning OFF Most Recent Access involves a registry key.) Google SDD stuttering for more info, and check the links above.

Regarding paging -- if it's not necessary, then for heaven's sake disable it! All those writes gobble up free clusters. Ditto for hibernation if you don't need it.

The W500 didn't have Defrag available from Start/Programs. However you can run it from My Computer/Properties/Tools. But DON'T "defrag" an SSD! First of all, the concept of physical fragmentation is meaningless for an SDD (where all clusters are equally distant from each other). Second, "defragmenting" simply causes the SSD to be rewritten, rewritten, rewritten, ... ad infinitum. Besides being purposeless, defrag wears out the SSD with useless write operations.

If you have an SSD you will experience these momentary lockups.

Sounds like my X301 with the 128gb SSD. It would go into times when it was useless.

[visionviper]

Sounds like my X301 with the 128gb SSD. It would go into times when it was useless.

Strange... I have a X301 with a 128gb SSD as well I don't get those kinds of issues.

Have you tried something like FlashFire to see if it helps?

[Greg Gebhardt]

I tried three X301s, all with 128SSD and they all did the same. Went back to new W500 with new Patriot SSD and it is AWESOME!

[pdth]

In a W500, SSD will be a lot faster. I recently put two 256GB Corsair SSDs in my W500 (one internal, one in the Ultrabay), and the results are stellar.

I will be purchasing a new Thinkpad soon, probably a w500, and am interested in this configuration, with Windows 7. Does anyone have experience with database-bound applications (such as large engineering apps) on this kind of setup? From my understanding, SSD should significantly help the execution times.

Also, the Lenovo web site only offers 128GB SSD on the w500. Is there a vendor who will preinstall Windows 7 on a 256GB SSD?

[freakwave]

yup, I have the T500 with 2 Intel 160GBytes MLC SSD. One for the OS and apps, one for the vmware with Oracle database for Enterprise applications.
Performance is amazing. You should get the intel drives for database applications since they have by far the best IOPS with small block sizes.
Still running vista64 but planning already for the windows7 64 move.

Wolfgang

[pdth]

yup, I have the T500 with 2 Intel 160GBytes MLC SSD. One for the OS and apps, one for the vmware with Oracle database for Enterprise applications.
Performance is amazing. You should get the intel drives for database applications since they have by far the best IOPS with small block sizes.
Still running vista64 but planning already for the windows7 64 move.

Wolfgang

Thanks Wolfgang, that's very encouraging.