Thinkpad x220 not suitable for fast SSD?

[repulsive]

Hi. I decided to try my (not very much used) OCZ Vertex2 SSD in my Thinkpad X220.
I security-erased it, stripped from the metal box wrapped into antistatic material and put in.
Just for fun, I tried simple sequentional read speed. And was very disappointed - the speed never exceeded 60 MB/s. While on my rather old desktop (Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H), the speed was somewhere between 130 - 190 MB/s, depending on block-size used.

I both cases, AHCI mode was used. Also the same operating system (Debian 6 live from CD).
SSD has the latest firmware (1.35).

speed measurement: dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null bs=$((X*512)) count=$Y


Does somene have an idea what is happening here?

[repulsive]

.. ok, so problem was probably in older linux distro.

using archlinux installer (kernel 3.0), the speeds reached are ~ 150 MB/s

[tomartom]

I use the Crucial M4 SSD with the latest firmware update (16 Jan) and I get 6/mbs

Don't forget to disable your TP shock system, SSD's don't require this.

Cheers

[ThinkRob]

Yep, 2.6.32 (the Squeeze kernel's branch) predates the X220 and its chipset by a good bit.

You can still use Debian stable, just grab a recent kernel from kernel.org.

[TheVoice]

X220 is great with fast SSD's.

For optimal SSD speed, you want to

1) Make sure you use a 4k cluster size on file systems
2) make sure your partitions are ALIGNED, as this can be a performance killer. This means that you should be able to divide the partition starting offset by 4096 (Windows: find the offset in msinfo32 --> Components --> Storage --> Disks). Tools like Paragon Partition manager will resize partitions in an aligned way (but not every tool does this). A default windows installation will create aligned partitions automatically. Changing partitions can mess this up.

For windows:
3) Apply a power settings tweak as described in http://forum.notebookreview.com/solid-s ... tweak.html
--> only use first tweak as described by "JJB". It looks complicated but is REALLY SIMPLE and can be reverted by a simple reset of the power profile.

..and watch the magic happen by measuring with CrystalDiskMark (freeware).