Aftermarket SSD in T410s

[chazas]

Thanks. Given that my laptop stays mostly behind my locked doors, TRIM support was more important to me. I ordered the Crucial. We'll see how it goes.

For those interested in a 200+gb 1.8" SSD, the 240gb OCZ Vertex 2 will be another TRIM-supporting option if and when it is widely available:
http://www.amazon.com/OCZ-Technology-Ve ... B003NE5JDS

It has the respected Sandforce controller and gets great reviews. But it is, at least for now, almost half again as pricey as the Crucial.

[ThinkRob]

For those interested in a 200+gb 1.8" SSD, the 240gb OCZ Vertex 2 will be another TRIM-supporting option if and when it is widely available:
http://www.amazon.com/OCZ-Technology-Ve ... B003NE5JDS

It has the respected Sandforce controller and gets great reviews. But it is, at least for now, almost half again as pricey as the Crucial.

I'd be worried about trusting my data to an SF-1200-based drive. The controller hasn't been out for very long, and the one SF-1200-based drive that I had (OCZ Agility 2) suffered a complete controller failure after less than three months of pretty light use. There are pretty clearly some bugs left to work out.

For those looking for a fast, reliable SSD that supports TRIM, I'd direct you towards Intel's X25 line.

With regards to FDE: I wouldn't bother getting a drive that does it in hardware. Sure, there's a performance hit from doing it in software, but given the decrease in price and increase in flexibility that software FDE can provide I think it's a better choice.

[chazas]

For those looking for a fast, reliable SSD that supports TRIM, I'd direct you towards Intel's X25 line.

I looked at the X18 (Intel's 1.8" version) - highest capacity is 160GB and retail cost seems to be $450-500. If the Crucial works out (yet to be seen) I think it's a better deal.

[rokahn]

Has anyone found software encryption to be reliable/unreliable (e.g. bitlocker, etc)?

[ThinkRob]

Has anyone found software encryption to be reliable/unreliable (e.g. bitlocker, etc)?

I've been using software-based FDE for a couple years now with no ill effects. I use LUKS, mainly because I don't trust closed-source crypto.

[chazas]

Thanks. Given that my laptop stays mostly behind my locked doors, TRIM support was more important to me. I ordered the Crucial. We'll see how it goes.

So far, so good. My computer arrived a couple of days into a 2 week vacation so I just started playing with it yesterday.

I booted up with the HDD and fooled around long enough to see that everything seemed to be working. It took me a while to burn the recovery disks - for some reason the optical drive kept shutting down. (That may be an issue for later). But I eventually got it done.

I added another 4GB of aftermarket memory (total of 8 ). Then I pulled the HDD and did a clean install with the recovery disks and the Crucial SSD. I then applied all Lenovo updates, including the recent bios update.

Other than the possible issue with the optical drive, all is working well so far, including the switchable graphics. I'm coming from XP on a T41, so about 30 seconds total boot time with Windows 7 seems awesome to me. The build quality seems great and (again coming from a T41) the display seems fine - a bit narrow viewing angles but a lot brighter.

The hardest thing for me has been the transition from XP to Windows 7, trying to figure out which drivers work at all, which can be updated from the install disks, which have to be deleted with a new install downloaded from the web, or some freaking complicated undecipherable combination of those (thanks so much, Fujitsu, for taking 4 hours of my time for a stupid scanner install).