Upgraded to 3Gb and a SSD and my T61 is running slower

[cubensis]

I let the computer store pick my SSD, they got me a Crucial v4 128GB SSD, I had a Crucial 2GB memory stick. Now my system is running at the same speed as my old HDD or slower. Some checking tells me the SSD is a POS, and someone told me that I should purchase a SATA600 drive even though my motherboard only supports sata150, because the connection will be full. Anyone have any input? I am running XP Pro.

[Tasurinchi]

The combination Win XP/SSD is not the optimal one in my opinion. Was XP installed from scratch (clean install) or cloned from the old HDD?

If your XP is a 32bits version you are fine with 3GB.

Crucial SSDs have a very good reputation and I wouldn't buy another one (provided yours is not defective). But you should install Middleton BIOS (click me) on your T61 to allow full SATA-II speeds, that's the maximum speed for your TP.

[Johan]

Questions:

1) Are we discussing a T60 (as mentioned in your signature) or a T61 as mentioned in the thread title?

2) Have you checked your BIOS-settings to see if it has been set to "Compatibility" or "AHCI"?

3) While T60's have an inherent SATA-I speed/bus-speed limitatation, T61's can be upgraded to support SATA-II speeds through flashing with the Middleton BIOS (search this forum for more information about that).

4) Have you checked to see af any SW may be the cause of the reported slow speed? (hint: Try download the free "Process Explorer" and check the CPU usage of the various processes running. Use the free "Autoruns for Windows" to try disable suspicious programs for automatically starting).

5) What amount of free RAM do you have after XP is started all up?

No need to purchase a SATA-III drive if it is only intended for use in a T60 or T61.

I am using several SSD's (under XP as well as under Windows 7) in T60's, and they are surely all flying in terms of speed compared to the same ThinkPad's with old, 7200 rpm mechanical HDD's, so your T61 (or T60) surely has the same capability.

Johan

[ZaZ]

I've run XP on SSDs and it's very fast due to the lower overhead compared to Vista and Windows 7, but keep in mind a XP disc, the recovery discs or a cloned partition will not align the partition properly for best performance. To do that you'll need to make a partition with a Vista or Windows 7 installation disc. It shouldn't be the hardware. I run Linux on my older R60e and it flies.

SATA I, II or III won't matter much because the real benefit of a SSD is the latency. That won't change regardless of the throughput. SATA III are often less expensive and are backwards compatible so it shouldn't make any difference which you have.

[cubensis]

The combination Win XP/SSD is not the optimal one in my opinion. Was XP installed from scratch (clean install) or cloned from the old HDD?

If your XP is a 32bits version you are fine with 3GB.

Crucial SSDs have a very good reputation and I wouldn't buy another one (provided yours is not defective). But you should install Middleton BIOS (click me) on your T61 to allow full SATA-II speeds, that's the maximum speed for your TP.

it's a clean install (I originally wanted a cloned because I could keep the hidden partition).
it is XP32bit. ON Amazon this drive gets 2.5 out of 5 staes, and on newegg it's 1/4 stars.
quote from another forum I frequent.
"Alereon posted:
I hate to break it to you, but that SSD is absolute garbage, in that it's slower than a harddrive and incredibly unreliable. If you Google you'll note that it's never been reviewed by a reputable site and all the web stores are full of people saying they're dog slow, buggy, and fail quickly. It's based on a controller by Phison, who have previously only made controllers for USB flash drives, which is why it performs like one. Unfortunately your only real option is to go back to the [censored] who sold it to you and convince them to give you a drive that works.

Do not accept anything from OCZ, and if you want a trouble-free experience you probably want to avoid obsolete SATA300 drives. Your laptop only has SATA150 so the bus speed doesn't matter, but with some complicated exceptions* a drive with only the SATA300 bus is old, from before SSDs became stable and reliable. Or, like your drive, is meant to be dirt cheap and crappy.

*Some manufacturers make lower-cost versions of their current-gen SATA600 drives where the only major difference is that they are artificially limited to SATA300 speeds. These are mostly fine, but rather than go to a lot of effort trying to tell if a SATA300 drive is safe it's smarter just to get a current-gen SATA600 model"

[Tasurinchi]

Now I'm confused... It's a Crucial or an OCZ? The latter is known for having non stellar reviews...

[cubensis]

Questions:

1) Are we discussing a T60 (as mentioned in your signature) or a T61 as mentioned in the thread title?

2) Have you checked your BIOS-settings to see if it has been set to "Compatibility" or "AHCI"?

3) While T60's have an inherent SATA-I speed/bus-speed limitatation, T61's can be upgraded to support SATA-II speeds through flashing with the Middleton BIOS (search this forum for more information about that).

4) Have you checked to see af any SW may be the cause of the reported slow speed? (hint: Try download the free "Process Explorer" and check the CPU usage of the various processes running. Use the free "Autoruns for Windows" to try disable suspicious programs for automatically starting).

5) What amount of free RAM do you have after XP is started all up?

No need to purchase a SATA-III drive if it is only intended for use in a T60 or T61.

I am using several SSD's (under XP as well as under Windows 7) in T60's, and they are surely all flying in terms of speed compared to the same ThinkPad's with old, 7200 rpm mechanical HDD's, so your T61 (or T60) surely has the same capability.

Johan

1. it's a T61, the T60 is long gone.

2. I have no idea what that means. I'll google it.

3. I'll need to order a replacement battery the one in right now is dead and i can't update the BIOS with a dead battery. Do you know who makes good replacement batteries? I don't plan to spend $80+ on a genuine lenovo battery right now.

4.

5. about 2GB.

[cubensis]

Now I'm confused... It's a Crucial or an OCZ? The latter is known for having non stellar reviews...

How are you confused. It's Crucial v4 like in the OP.They had a list of drives to stay away from, OCZ was the main culprit. They did an extensive breakdown on why to stay away from OCZ and I thought I was safe because Crucial has a good reputation. My memory is Crucial.

[Cigarguy]

Got 2 Crucial M4 128 GB SSDs, 4 OCZ SSDs, 1 Corsair, 3 Sandisk. Never had any problem with any of them. OCZ was one of the first (if not the first) manufacturer to release drives based on Sandforce's 22xx controllers. Which initially were prone to random BSOD. All of my drives except for the Crucial uses Sandforce controller. Of those only the Corsair suffered from random BSOD while operating at SATA III speed. It was fine at SATA II. Sandforce finally, mercifully, fixed the problem with a firmware update. OCZ and the other manufacturers that used Sandforce's controller deservedly got hammer for this. Crucial M4, based on Marvell's controller, gained a good reputation because of this. Good for them.

The other major cause of SSD problem is the operator. In BIOS, under the SATA setting make sure the mode is set to AHCI and not Compatibility mode. Flashing Middleton's BIOS will get you SATA II speed and other benefits which, IMO is a huge benefit. XP is a fantastic OS but it was released before the days of SSD so it's not as SSD friendly as Win 7. Ensure the partition is properly aligned. Ensure you have the latest chipset and SATA drivers. Double check that SSD firmware is the latest. Do not defrag and not using hibernation will help with wear and tear on the drive. Every so often let the machine idle overnight to allow garbage collection to do it's thing.

Finally, that's a good SSD you got there. Once properly set up you should be getting r/w speeds close to 250 MB/s benchmarked using ATTO. 7200 rpm HDD max out at 140ish MB/s r/w at best. Then there's the seek time, temperature and noise advantage that SSD have over HDD.....it's not even close. My unscientific wake from sleep time is approximately 10 seconds and about 30 seconds for cold boot. My 3 desktops and T420 with SATA III SSD and SATA III chipsets are slightly faster but not by much.

[cubensis]

Got 2 Crucial M4 128 GB SSDs, 4 OCZ SSDs, 1 Corsair, 3 Sandisk. Never had any problem with any of them. OCZ was one of the first (if not the first) manufacturer to release drives based on Sandforce's 22xx controllers. Which initially were prone to random BSOD. All of my drives except for the Crucial uses Sandforce controller. Of those only the Corsair suffered from random BSOD while operating at SATA III speed. It was fine at SATA II. Sandforce finally, mercifully, fixed the problem with a firmware update. OCZ and the other manufacturers that used Sandforce's controller deservedly got hammer for this. Crucial M4, based on Marvell's controller, gained a good reputation because of this. Good for them.

The other major cause of SSD problem is the operator. In BIOS, under the SATA setting make sure the mode is set to AHCI and not Compatibility mode. Flashing Middleton's BIOS will get you SATA II speed and other benefits which, IMO is a huge benefit. XP is a fantastic OS but it was released before the days of SSD so it's not as SSD friendly as Win 7. Ensure the partition is properly aligned. Ensure you have the latest chipset and SATA drivers. Double check that SSD firmware is the latest. Do not defrag and not using hibernation will help with wear and tear on the drive. Every so often let the machine idle overnight to allow garbage collection to do it's thing.

Finally, that's a good SSD you got there. Once properly set up you should be getting r/w speeds close to 250 MB/s benchmarked using ATTO. 7200 rpm HDD max out at 140ish MB/s r/w at best. Then there's the seek time, temperature and noise advantage that SSD have over HDD.....it's not even close. My unscientific wake from sleep time is approximately 10 seconds and about 30 seconds for cold boot. My 3 desktops and T420 with SATA III SSD and SATA III chipsets are slightly faster but not by much.

Go read Anandtech's review of the Crucial v4 and tell me it isn't a crappy drive. I went back and ordered a Samsung 830 256GB, and I will flash the BIOS once I get a new battery. I will also explore your suggestions. But I think the main root cause is a crappy drive, the benchmarks confirm that.

[Muse]

I've run XP on SSDs and it's very fast due to the lower overhead compared to Vista and Windows 7, but keep in mind a XP disc, the recovery discs or a cloned partition will not align the partition properly for best performance. To do that you'll need to make a partition with a Vista or Windows 7 installation disc. It shouldn't be the hardware. I run Linux on my older R60e and it flies.

SATA I, II or III won't matter much because the real benefit of a SSD is the latency. That won't change regardless of the throughput. SATA III are often less expensive and are backwards compatible so it shouldn't make any difference which you have.

I hope the OP doesn't mind a slight thread hijack, but I feel I just have to respond to the above quoted post:

I just bought an Intel 830 180GB SSD (should receive it in a few days), and hope to install it in my T5500 Core 2 duo T60 that's running XP Pro (COA) with 2GB RAM, for which I have made recovery disks.

1. If I format or partition the SSD with my T61 Windows 7 64 bit machine (using the optical drive HD caddy I have), can I put the SSD in the T60 and install XP from the recovery disks and have the optimal alignment?

2. I saw info online suggesting that using XP with an SSD might shorten the life of the SSD due to TRIM considerations (looked up TRIM, and read some of Wikipedia's page on it). Is this something I should be concerned about and run a more advanced OS than XP on the machine with the SSD?

[cubensis]

What do you mean about "alignment"? The tech is installing OEM version of XP from scratch then downloading the drivers. I have the CD key on the bottom of my machine. Do I need to reinstall XP with recovery discs? I thinkI have some for a previous machine,a T60. Will that work?

[miro_gt]

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=107229

little bit of search does wonders, could have saved you the trouble of having somebody else picking up the "right" SSD for you as well.

[cubensis]

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=107229

little bit of search does wonders, could have saved you the trouble of having somebody else picking up the "right" SSD for you as well.

Common sense would dictate that if you run a computer repair shop, you pick the best drive or do research on it before you buy. I didn't get to pick my drive, they just bought it for me.

[Neil]

Funny thing about most computer repair shops...they tend to install the components that yield them the highest profit, whether they are any good or not. Not good is probably more profitable for them, because you will be back in a short time, and they can sell you more low quality stuff. Kind of like medical doctors, they don't want to cure you, because then they would be loosing business.

[miro_gt]

Common sense would dictate that if you run a computer repair shop, you pick the best drive or do research on it before you buy. I didn't get to pick my drive, they just bought it for me.

you have so many things wrong in what you just said that I can write an essay on: how the "common sense" is so uncommon, to the "why to trust or not the a repair shop" or how anybody with simple computer skills could open a computer shop, to "why would a shop pick what is best for you vs. what is more profitable for them", etc.

either way, I hope that thread that I made will help you out.

[ajkula66]

What do you mean about "alignment"? The tech is installing OEM version of XP from scratch then downloading the drivers. I have the CD key on the bottom of my machine. Do I need to reinstall XP with recovery discs? I thinkI have some for a previous machine,a T60. Will that work?

Installing XP on SSD without ensuring proper alignment (which will NOT be created by XP install disk of any kind) will result in a slow-running, freezing-prone machine, as well as shorten the life of the SSD itself. Performance will suffer as well.

Most of the people who run computer repair shops shouldn't be allowed to touch a ThinkPad with a thirty-foot pole to begin with IMO.

Good luck, it seems to me you'll need plenty of it.

[TuuS]

Windows XP was released in about 2001, and based on Windows NT that is much older. It has no idea what an SSD is and will tread it like an HDD. This will cause problems as your HDD has discs and sectors, the SSD has chips, so your OS has to setup your partitions not based on cylinders, heads and sectors, but on non-volatile memory chips and XP cannot do that. In laymans terms it will just try to take a guess at what kind of harddrive it is and operate it that way. If you want to use XP on an SSD you should do some research, or just upgrade to vista or newer, which has native SSD support.

[Muse]

Windows XP was released in about 2001, and based on Windows NT that is much older. It has no idea what an SSD is and will tread it like an HDD. This will cause problems as your HDD has discs and sectors, the SSD has chips, so your OS has to setup your partitions not based on cylinders, heads and sectors, but on non-volatile memory chips and XP cannot do that. In laymans terms it will just try to take a guess at what kind of harddrive it is and operate it that way. If you want to use XP on an SSD you should do some research, or just upgrade to vista or newer, which has native SSD support.

I'm trying to determine if I should run XP on this machine with the Intel 830 180GB SSD that's coming in a few days:

Intel Core 2 Duo processor T5500[1]
Genuine Windows® XP Professional[12]
14.1 SXGA+ TFT[]
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 w/o WWAN[]
2GB RAM

The machine is running now on XP with a HD. If I do the research you suggest and act accordingly will things be OK? I've been poking around some (did some searches in this forum yesterday) but haven't found out a lot.

[miro_gt]

Windows XP was released in about 2001, and based on Windows NT that is much older. It has no idea what an SSD is and will tread it like an HDD. This will cause problems as your HDD has discs and sectors, the SSD has chips, so your OS has to setup your partitions not based on cylinders, heads and sectors, but on non-volatile memory chips and XP cannot do that. In laymans terms it will just try to take a guess at what kind of harddrive it is and operate it that way. If you want to use XP on an SSD you should do some research, or just upgrade to vista or newer, which has native SSD support.

for your info Windows 7, just like Windows Vista, just like Windows XP all use NTFS file system, which actually came from Windows NT - that's why it's called NT File System (NTFS)

also SATA commands are standardized so the OS doesnt have to know if it uses SSD or HDD or tape or whatever else media connected to such interface. The device itself is what is aware of how it stores the information - by chips, by heads/discs, by tape, by lasers, and so on. TRIM is just Microsofts way to help SSDs a bit, that's all.

finally, XP runs very nice on SSD, and I can confirm it on both my computers. What it cant do is it cant align its own partition by default (the user can do it manually), and it doesnt support TRIM (Microsoft way to push the user to newer OS even though they can implement TRIM such as they did with multi-core CPU support, but they wont do it). Now the first issue can be taken care of pretty easy, and the second is implemented by support programs that often come with the SSD.

cheers