Thinkpads Forum

I just purchased a W530 3920XM, 16GB, 250GB SSD. It is slow as dirt, slower than my T520 in some categories because the non-factory SSD in it is the worst CNET ever reviewed. I want to put in a mSATA drive. I don't do much with my computers, mostly internet and occasionally DVD's.
A couple questions:

1. Should I buy used? Is there a life span on mSATA drives like in a mechanical drive?

2. Which mSATA drives should I buy? I want above average quality, but no need for cutting edge technology.

3. I have the factory system disks from Lenovo, I would like to install the Win7 OS and recovery partition, but I haven't ever been able to get RnR reinstalled since my T43P. LOL. Which by the way was the best laptop I have ever owned, and as you can see from my signature, I have owned a few.

4. Since most of what I do is Mozilla Firefox should I put that on mSATA?

Do my questions sound like I don't know what I am talking about? Of course I don't, I was software salesperson for 27 years, salespeople don't know anything. LOL. THANKS!

The general mSATA advice seems to be Samsung 850 Evo, followed by Crucial MX200.
Buy new, you never know how a used one has been (mis)treated.
If you install from Recovery disks, fine, but don't keep the recovery partition.
It's outdated and includes all the Lenovo bloatware.
When installation is finished, delete that recovery partition.
Now shrink the main-partition C: until you have at least 15-20% free at the end of that partition.
That space is for over-provisioning.
As for life-expectancy: 10-75 years, depending on work-load.

Well I made some research lately and decided to go for Plextor M6MV. It is fast and power efficient, and what's more - fairly cheap. I have no clue what kind of SSD you have in your W530 at this moment, but please do remember that xx20 and xx30 series have an SATA-II port connected to mSATA slot, so whatever you get it will be limited to 3 Gbps speed. If you really want to improve disk I/O performance I'd recommend to reconsider your options and than invest your money into good 2,5" SATA SSD + HDD caddy for the HDD installed in the primary disk slot.

Pokrzept wrote:but please do remember that xx20 and xx30 series have an SATA-II port connected to mSATA slot, so whatever you get it will be limited to 3 Gbps speed. If you really want to improve disk I/O performance I'd recommend to reconsider your options and than invest your money into good 2,5" SATA SSD + HDD caddy for the HDD installed in the primary disk slot.

That seems to make sense although I do wonder why some fairly knowledgeable people use that strategy, but if 3 GPS is top speed that is no good. So which 2.5 SATA SSD should I get?

Thank you for both of your posts. Yes the Samsung 850 evo looks good and seems to be a favorite here.

2.5" SSD: Sandisk Extreme Pro.

Realblackstuff looks like a perfect choice. Thanks friend.

The 240GB seems to use considerably less power than the 500GB and 1000GB.

Power usage (idle) 5.5mW 19mW 19mW
Power usage (read | write) 2.7W | 2.6W 2.7W | 3.5W 2.9W | 3.6W