Need advice on SSD upgrade and Windows version

[cacophony]

The hard drive in my primary T60 (model 200755U running XP Pro with 2 Gigs RAM) is starting to make rather loud chirping noises sometimes, so I'm starting to think about an SSD upgrade. The two that seem most recommended are the Samsung 830 and Crucial M4.

I've read it's best to do a fresh install of everything, but here's what I can't figure out:

Do I stick with Windows XP? I've read in other threads that I need to align the partition first for an SSD, but I don't have access to Windows Vista/7 to do this alignement. Is there some freeware to do this? Is there some reason why Windows XP wouldn't be stable or recommended with a SSD? I've heard about lack of trim control, but I've also heard it's not a big deal because of built-in SSD garbage collection.

Or do I purchase and install Windows 7 or Windows 8? I'd prefer 7, but it's currently much more expensive than 8. You can apparently download the Window 8 Pro installation for $40, and Windows 7 is closer to $100.

If I go with the Win 7/8 route, will I have to do separate installation of Thinkpad specific software to make everything work correctly? How do I know what to install?

Any advice appreciated!

[ajkula66]

Any of these two SSDs will be a good choice. Samsung is supposedly better if you're planning to stick with XP. Haven't tried it myself...

Personally, I'd move to W7 since it runs like a charm on T60/p generation, but it's your $$ to spend or not...

If you move to W7 you can run the System Update and it will take care of the most - if not all - drivers and utilities. You can also download them manually from Lenovo's site.

Happy upgrading.

[twistero]

Parted Magic is a freeware Linux boot disk that includes alignment-aware partitioning tools (and drive cloning tools + other useful stuff).

[cacophony]

Thanks for the replies. I ordered the Samsung drive and will attempt to install next week. Still haven't decided which version of Windows to go with yet.

One question comes to mind though:

If I use my friend's work laptop running Windows 7 to partition the Samsung 830 drive, and then use the T60/p Windows XP setup discs (that came with computer), won't the Thinkpad discs just redo the partition(s) incorrectly? Do I need to manually set up the two Thinkpad partitions via Windows 7 and then somehow get that step skipped when I run the Thinkpad install discs? I don't remember the options you have when doing these steps.

[TuuS]

You are correct that the lenovo setup discs will not work properly with an SSD, I'd recommend using a window setup disc instead, you'll also avoid redundant copies of outdated apps and drivers that will waste a lot of valuable space.

If you want a good affordable OS, consider Vista, it supports SSD and if you'd be interested in a used copy, I have them starting at $15. I also have XP discs that have SATA support integrated, but you'd definitely need to sort out the partitions before the install with XP. My advice would be vista business 64bit (same as professional), or Ultimate 64, as they will support SSD and any amount of ram you install, the 32bit OS versions commonly sold to end users will limit you to about 3gb of ram. Windows Seven would definitely be a nice option too, but there are more cost effective ways to spend your money and making microsoft even richer then they already are would be way down the bottom of my list, somewhere between walking on glass and telling my ex-wife she looks pretty today

Enjoy your upgrades and if there is anything I can do to help, feel free to ask.

[miro_gt]

or download the free AOMEI Partition Assistant and use the "Migrate OS to SSD" option to clone your current XP installation onto your SSD. It is said that this automatically aligns the partition as well.

http://www.disk-partition.com/download-home.html

[cacophony]

AOMEI Partition Assistant looks interesting and certainly seems like an easy approach.

Here's another question:

Assuming I get the drive setup correctly in my T60, can I move it to my higher spec'ed T60p (better graphics card, better CPU) in the future without changing anything on the drive? Or would the hardware differences between those two machines make the swap a bad idea? I read somewhere that sysprep might be useful for this kind of thing but don't really understand the details.

[miro_gt]

yes you should be able to, but windows may not start fine the first time. When you get it running the second time probably in safe mode, install the correct video drivers and any other missing drivers. All should be OK upon the third reboot.

at least that's what I did when I cloned the OS from my intel T61 to my nVidia T61.

[aoitenshi]

Hi,
I'm a T61 user running XP Pro SP2 x64 on Samsung 830 SSD

If you're planning to use WinXP Pro (x86 or x64 ) on your SSD, here are my steps :
1. set the bios to use SATA MODE : Compatibility
2. install from windows setup cd
3. after finished OS installation, put in GPARTED LiveCD in your DVD drive to align your partition (use google how to work with GParted )
4. download the latest intel storage matrix manager for your laptop
5. you can use my guide (click here ) to install ahci driver
6. install .NET framework 2.0, download ThinkVantage System Update 3 and update your driver

voila, you are running winXP on ssd with ahci mode

[Muse]

Hi,
I'm a T61 user running XP Pro SP2 x64 on Samsung 830 SSD

If you're planning to use WinXP Pro (x86 or x64 ) on your SSD, here are my steps :
1. set the bios to use SATA MODE : Compatibility
2. install from windows setup cd
3. after finished OS installation, put in GPARTED LiveCD in your DVD drive to align your partition (use google how to work with GParted )
4. download the latest intel storage matrix manager for your laptop
5. you can use my guide (click here ) to install ahci driver
6. install .NET framework 2.0, download ThinkVantage System Update 3 and update your driver

voila, you are running winXP on ssd with ahci mode

Will this work on my T60 Core 2 duo T5500? I have the recovery set and also an XP install CD. My Intel 330 180GB SSD will arrive in a few days, my first experience with SSD. By "x86 or x64" I assume you mean 32 bit or 64 bit. To install from the XP CD, I would do what? Enter the key on the bottom of the T60 when prompted during the OS install?

Basic spec on the machine:

Intel Core 2 Duo processor T5500
Genuine Windows® XP Professional
14.1 SXGA+ TFT (I'm using a 23" external display via VGA)
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 w/o WWAN
2 GB RAM

[cacophony]

Hi,
I'm a T61 user running XP Pro SP2 x64 on Samsung 830 SSD

If you're planning to use WinXP Pro (x86 or x64 ) on your SSD, here are my steps :
1. set the bios to use SATA MODE : Compatibility
2. install from windows setup cd
3. after finished OS installation, put in GPARTED LiveCD in your DVD drive to align your partition (use google how to work with GParted )
4. download the latest intel storage matrix manager for your laptop
5. you can use my guide (click here ) to install ahci driver
6. install .NET framework 2.0, download ThinkVantage System Update 3 and update your driver

voila, you are running winXP on ssd with ahci mode

What are the advantages of this approach over using something like AOMEI Partition Assistant to clone my existing drive aligned for an SSD (and then maybe follow it with your steps 1, 4, 5, 6?) ?

Your AHCI guide looks great, but why is it important to enable AHCI?

[ajkula66]

Your AHCI guide looks great, but why is it important to enable AHCI?

To get the maximum out of your SSD...

[aoitenshi]

Will this work on my T60 Core 2 duo T5500? I have the recovery set and also an XP install CD. My Intel 330 180GB SSD will arrive in a few days, my first experience with SSD. By "x86 or x64" I assume you mean 32 bit or 64 bit. To install from the XP CD, I would do what? Enter the key on the bottom of the T60 when prompted during the OS install?

Basic spec on the machine:

Intel Core 2 Duo processor T5500
Genuine Windows® XP Professional
14.1 SXGA+ TFT (I'm using a 23" external display via VGA)
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 w/o WWAN
2 GB RAM

your intel ssd definitely will work on your T60
yes, x86 and x64 refers to 32 and 64bit (but stay away from winxp pro x64, driver supports are extremely bad for my T61 )

to install XP from scratch, you'll need another license key beside the key under your ThinkPad
The license key under your ThinkPad only work with ThinkPad recovery CD

but a friend of mine installed winXP using ThinkPad recovery CD on his ssd and then re-align the partition using GParted ... so far no problem with his T60 (except he had to manually install the rest of the softwares )

What are the advantages of this approach over using something like AOMEI Partition Assistant to clone my existing drive aligned for an SSD (and then maybe follow it with your steps 1, 4, 5, 6?) ?

cloning your existing hdd to ssd is not a good idea, since usually you'll have problems with your OS (especially WinXP )
the partition table needs to be align if you're using ssd, since there's no seek time and different architecture between hdd and ssd
NTFS partition using WinXP is _never_ aligned, so your ssd will have extra time in seeking your file and will suffer because of this

Your AHCI guide looks great, but why is it important to enable AHCI?

thank you
AHCI is the next generation of hard drive controller, since you are using ssd
AHCI will boost your ssd's speed a lot, rather than using normal controller

even on my old hdd, AHCI improve at least 20% speed (since I always switch between 32 bit OS and 64 bit OS, hdd and ssd )

---

correct me if I have wrong opinion

[91011]

to install XP from scratch, you'll need another license key beside the key under your ThinkPad
The license key under your ThinkPad only work with ThinkPad recovery CD

Actually this is not true. The Recovery Discs have the Lenovo/IBM OEM key and OEMBIOS files embedded in the setup program and, with the SLP marker in the BIOS, do a legal offline activation. All Lenovo XP Pro machines have the same key.

The easiest way I've found to use the key on the machine is to find a Dell XP OEM install disc (it goes a very clean install).
Then use the Microsoft Key Update Tool to change the Dell key to your key from the T60.
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId= ... lcid=0x409

[miro_gt]

to install XP from scratch, you'll need another license key beside the key under your ThinkPad
The license key under your ThinkPad only work with ThinkPad recovery CD

....

cloning your existing hdd to ssd is not a good idea, since usually you'll have problems with your OS (especially WinXP )
the partition table needs to be align if you're using ssd, since there's no seek time and different architecture between hdd and ssd
NTFS partition using WinXP is _never_ aligned, so your ssd will have extra time in seeking your file and will suffer because of this

if you have running XP installation you can make your own XP installation CD from it, and then use the same license key that is on the sticker on the bottom of the computer. That's what I did, since after many calls to Lenovo it went clear that they will not send me XP installation CD. Mehh .. I made my own.

seek time is not why partition needs to be aligned, and in fact has nothing to do with it. You need to align the partition when using an SSD because of the way nand cells are erased and then written to. What happens with not aligned partition is that the SSD controller will need to erase two blocks (vs. one) if it has to write even the smallest 4k element onto partially filled block of the SSD. This shortens the SSD life in half and drops speed significantly. Search it up how NAND cells operate on Wikipedia, they have nice pictures on there.

since different SSDs have different erase block sizes, the safe bet is to align at 1024kb offset since this will be multiple of the most used erase block sizes, i.e. 8x128kb, or 4x256kb, or 2x512kb. So in each case the partition will be aligned. I haven't seen SSD with 1MB erase block size yet, but with increasing SSD capacity this will happen at some time too.

and nothing wrong with cloning your current OS onto SSD, just make sure its aligned.

[cacophony]

Success!

I ended up getting Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit upgrade at a local university due to a low price ($68). I decided my T7600 based T60p would become my new primary machine, so last night I put the new Samsung 830 SSD in and ran the Windows installer.

Everything went very smoothly with a couple exceptions:

1. Because I was doing a clean install with upgrade media it didn't accept the product key. I had found a number of solutions online (double install, editing registry, etc), but I just called Microsoft to complain and within a couple minutes they took care of the activation. There was no hold time either, so I would definitely recommend this approach to others.

2. The laptop initially had no way to go to sleep. Sleep options were greyed out, and closing the lid would cause hibernation instead of sleep. This ended up being fixed after doing a number of rounds of windows update (I think it needed to grab a more appropriate video card driver or something).

3. Where is my volume level indicator? I fixed this my installing the "Hotkey Features Integration for Windows 7 (32-bit, 64-bit), Vista (32-bit, 64-bit), XP (32-bit, 64-bit) and 2000 - ThinkPad" that was available under the drivers section for the T60p.

I also confirmed that the SSD offset is in fact a multiple of 4096 so it looks like the alignment happened automatically. I also disabled automatic defragmentation because I read it was not recommended for an SSD. Lastly, I installed the software that came with the Samsung drive and verified that the firmware was up to date.

A few questions:

Which of the 100's of potential drivers and software does it make sense to install from the Lenovo driver page? I'm inclined to skip most/all of it but if there's anything particularly recommended or useful, let me know!

The Samsung software recommends disabling Super Fetch and Indexing. Good idea? They both seem like useful features.

Any other configuration suggestions?

Thanks for all the help! I love the new setup so far.

[miro_gt]

AS SSD (freeware) provides easy way to figure out if your partition is aligned.

[cacophony]

AS SSD (freeware) provides easy way to figure out if your partition is aligned.

I used msinfo32 as well as the Samsung software to view the starting offset for the two partitions that Windows created. The first one is at exactly 1 MB offset (1048576) and the second is at exactly 101 MB offset (105906176). Both of these are divisible by 1024 so it looks good.

[jbcdidgosir]

Sorry to tell you that SATA II is not supported by T60. You can only use SATA I.

[Muse]

Sorry to tell you that SATA II is not supported by T60. You can only use SATA I.

Aren't the SATA II and SATA III drives backward compatible? I just bought an Intel 520 120GB SATA III SSD and hope to put it in my T60 T5500 running XP.

[ajkula66]

Aren't the SATA II and SATA III drives backward compatible? I just bought an Intel 520 120GB SATA III SSD and hope to put it in my T60 T5500 running XP.

Of course they are...

[cacophony]

Sorry to tell you that SATA II is not supported by T60. You can only use SATA I.

The SATA II drive works great. It's operating at SATA I speeds, but it's still much faster than my old 7200 RPM drive.

[TarzanBoy]

I performed a T60 upgrade last week to prolong the usability of my T60-2007.

I installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit on a new SSD (OCZ Vertex 4), and then a few days later new memory arrived so I put in an additional 2GB RAM (for a total of 3GB).

The only thing currently disappointing me is the lack of OpenGL support for the ATI video chip.