160GB Intel X25-M or 128GB Samsung (OEM)

Considering an X200s, and am weighing out SSDs (either the 128GB one that's sold with the X200s, or getting an X25-M aftermarket).

Both X25-M and the OEM Samsung are MLC drives... cost of entry is lower on the Intel, but the Intel has also had a bit of bad press recently. Intel holds more data.

Haven't seen benchmarks on the 128GB Samsung.

Any experiences or benchmarks with either SSD on an X-series Thinkpad?

 

Intel, not comparision.

Intel bad press? what are you talking about?

 

http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/19/intel-x25-m-ssds-slowing-down-with-extensive-use/

 

Don't buy based on what the press may think of it, but if it is any good for whatever it is you need it for. What bad press is this btw?

 

oh, yah I forgot about this... this is the one that has not been proven.

I don't mean to undercut you, but engadget is know for posting BS. from the artical itself "intel couldn't reproduce the results"... could be a defective unit. could be BS, could be genuine issue. I don't knw for sure, nor does anyone else that I know of.

honestly I don't think there is enought to go on to claim all Intel SSD are 'faulty'. there are a few people around here with Intel SSD and they'll tell you how great they are.

 

Agreed, to be taken with a grain of salt.

For me, mostly just interested in benchmarks for now... Intel is not shy about showing off how fast their SSD is. Never really see anything about the 128GB SSD from Samsung.

 

Performance degradation in benchmarks does occur as confirmed by myself and other posters here with the X25-M, but not to the point where the X25s still aren't the top of the class. Here is what the author of the PCPer article that discovered the degradation said:

http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=462228

I'm still very happy with the day to day real life performance of the X25-M in my x200 even after a month of fairly heavy write usage.

 

Engadget merely reposts. Other sites actually tested. As noted Intel has said they were unable to replicate the results but there were accounts before it "blew up" into a big story about some degradation.

 

I'd say both of the drives are comparable. The Intel drive achieves great performance with the possible cost of long term (and very hard to fix) fragmentation due to a very creative controller. I'm not sure exactly what the Samsung drive does with it's controller (it's neither Intel nor JMicron).

However, if you are really considered about long term performance, your only choice is an SLC drive. However, these are much more expensive on a per GB level (64GB Samsung SLC is about the same price as 160GB Intel X-25M).

 

The fragmentation on the Intel isn't very hard to fix, one run of HDDErase which takes about 30 secs to complete sets the drive back to stock. The downside is that it wipes the data on the drive, so you either have to make an image of your drive first to reimage back after the wipe, or do a clean install.

 

take a look at this new gen samsung ssd

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs

 

My older bro got the OCZ 64GB SLC SSD for his T61p and he thoroughly loves it. It was around $570 after a $100 rebate at Newegg. Reviews show this to be the fastest performing drive (at the time of that review), and SLCs are rated at twice the lifespan, and I think I read somewhere too that SLC also have closer to synchronous upload/download speeds, whereas MLS usually have really slow upload compared to download speeds. I know if I get an SSD, I think I'd rather go SLC. 64GB is plenty for your C drive anyway. You then just buy the 2nd Drive Bay SATA caddy for the UltraBay Slim slot and put your old drive in there for your bulk storage. It will power down when your not accessing it if you set your power-saving scheme to do it. I really like his setup too, and I will probably get that for mine as well, at some point

 

Today's top MLC drives outperform the previous generation's SLC drives including the OCZ 64GB SLC. If he's interested in them, the best option now would be the Samsung 64GB SLC for $200: http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=MCCOE64G5MPP-0VA&cat=HDD&cpc=JAD

 

OCZ is rebranded stuff anyways. I am not sure what you are talking about regarding upload and download speeds <.<.

But anyways ashura is right that in absolute performance the new generation of MLCs have greater performance than the earlier gen SLCs (which were faster at point in certain tasks).

I think the thing to take away from all this is that you should always back up your data so if you need to redo your drive due to degradation...or just like if you had a physical platter that might get damaged.

 

Woops, I meant to say read / write speeds, but most people should have been able to figure out what I had meant. But sorry for the confusion at any rate

You do know what synchronous means, right?

 

Also, from what I understand, SLC drives don't suffer from 'degradation' and also do not require (nor do they recommend you defragment them ever). From what I had read about them, the controller can read / write to ANY individual cell anywhere on the drive at the same or similar speed, so defragmenting is not necessary, nor is it recommended because it just takes unnecessary life out of the cells to move the bits around if read / write access times are the same for each cell. Now I'm not sure how MLCs work in this regard, but the idea of SLC to me, just makes better sense all around. Even if the new-gen of MLCs are a little faster (whether true or not), I'd not sacrifice reliability or MTBF ratings to suffer for a little speed. I've seen my bro's SLC OCZ drive work, and it hauls rear. He runs W2K3 server on his T61p w/ 4GB RAM (supports 36-bit PAE extensions) and did all the tweaks that OCZ recommended (on their forum) for using SSD, and I've seen his full loaded Eclipse load in less than 20 seconds, and it used to take about 1.5 minutes to load before. His write times are also very fast (this is where many MLCs suffer). If that aint fast enough, then I don't know what is.


.

 

The best drive for performance/cost is the Samsung SLC 64GB drive as posted above for $200. Companies advertise high sequential read/writes for MLC, but SLC drives almost always beat them in random read/writes - which is more important. SLC drives typically also have better latency and lower power consumption. Also, Samsung is known for having the best controller for SSDs. If you search the SSD forum, they have the fewest problems (other good ones are Mtron, Memoright, and Intel - but they cost a lot more). The difference in cost between what you were thinking of spending on the Intel or Samsung (from Lenovo), you can get an external 500GB drive for space and this will be a better, more cost effective solution.

 

I've been looking for a faster hard drive for my T61 also. I would love to find an inexpensive SSD. That Samsung Enterprise SSD MCCOE64G5MPP-0VA 64GB looks good but according to Tom's Hardware the maximum transfer rate is 90 MB/sec which is a bit lower than the new 500 GB 7200.4 from Seagate.

It looks like the trade-off is 500 GB for $140 or 64 GB for $200 and somewhat better power consumption.

 

And much better random access...which is sort of the main pluses of an SSD.

 

Specs really don't mean too much in terms of real life performance. The SSD is much faster than the Seagate. First of all, the sequential speeds are 100/80 MB/s read and write. Secondly, SLC SSDs have a constant rate, while HDs drop. Random read/writes are faster as well (these speeds aren't published), you have to look on the NBR for people's ATTO scores. As said above, the SSD completely destroys the HD in latency. The best features about SSDs is that they have no moving parts. This translates to higher shock absorption, lower power consumption, lower noise, and less heat. I guarantee that you will notice the speed difference going from the faster 2.5" (Seagate's 500GB 7200RPM) HD to Samsung's SLC drive.

 

Wow thats a great deal on that drive, is there a special caddy that needs to be purchased so that it will work in a X61? I notice its a 1.8" drive and thinkpads usually take 2.5" drives?

 

That particular link is for a 2.5" drive.

However, if you find a 1.8" drive you will need THIS ADAPTER.

 

The deal from Geeks is actually way too good to pass up, I ordered two of them on an impulse buy. I've actually got an Intel X25-M in my x200s, which is awesome and intend to keep right where it is. I figured I'd find a good use for the Samsung drives in one of my other laptops or desktop.

• Samsung SLC: Consistent read/write performance, longer lifetime (though I doubt it's a problem with even an MLC), $3.1/GB
  
• Intel X25-M = Extremely fast read performance, write performance close to the Samsung (I suspect it will be less consistent but cannot confirm), $4.70/GB.

If the price/GB were equal I'd have bought another Intel drive or two. As it stands, you can pick up 2 Samsung drives for about the same price as a single Intel drive and have an additional 40GB of space.

The choice is yours, I made mine.

 

if you used the code you could get it down to 2.79/gb

 

I did -- shipping and tax.

 

No stuttering or pregnant pauses when using the X25-M on the X200s?

 

This isn't true for the X25-M. It's as good or better when it comes to random writes compared to most SLC drives (which is why the PCPer guy still uses it as his OS drive even though he has SLC drives at his disposal).

 

None at all. In fact, I'm running Outlook on it with a 2GB .pst file and have not had it stutter. If anything was going to stress an SSD and make it keel over, it's Outlook, which is running better on my x200s with Intel SSD than any other system I've used.

 

That's great. Sounds like I'll go with the X25-M!

 

I did say "almost always". Intel has great performance for MLC, I'm not denying that. But I still question the reliability since its MLC drive is still fairly new.

 

Yes, I've just done some research and it appears that this Samsung one that Geeks is selling is the same exact part number as the OCZ one that my brother paid almost $600 for (only re-branded)! So I just ordered that Samsung one from Geeks too, since I've seen it in action on my bro's Thinkpad and I know I like the performance of it. I DO agree that this Samsung would be the best bang for the buck. Just Google the p/n and you see the OCZ one and the Samsung with just different labels on the case.

 

Geeks.com is sold out of the 2.5" SLC drive .

However, Newegg is selling the identical Samsung SLC drive in a 1.8" format (this is what originally shipped with the x300) for $175. The only downside is you will need a 1.8" to 2.5" adapter (FRU 42W8019 through the IBM maintenance parts site) to use it. I just ordered one of these myself (as well as a 2GB DDR3 module for <$30) for my x200T.

 

Yeah I DID see that one too, and it looked tempting since it was only $175, but I wound up getting the one at Geeks instead. I must've just got in on one of the last ones, because I ordered it at about 5:00am this morning before the rush. Word gets around the world quick on this forum. Once everyone started finding out how cheap that was... bang, they were gone like that.

I AM trying to find me an SSD 64GB Samsung PATA 1.8" drive though, with the ZIF type ribbon connector on it (kinda like some MACs and Dells come with), to replace in my GZ-HD6 camcorder, if anybody knows where there is a good deal on those. P/N is MCCOE64GEMPP-01A

They seem hard to come by. Some forums say you can get them for around $250, but when I try to find them they seem either discontinued from many stores or the price is through the roof.

Anyway, I just got an email from GEEKS saying they shipped my new Samsung SSD drive this afternoon. Glad I found this string, because I was going to wait til I had mo money to get it, but when I heard about the $199 deal, it allowed me to jump onboard to SSD a LOT sooner Thanks guys

 

1. Has anyone seen real world testing on the power consumption of the 2.5 Samsung? Or, for those who purchased them please tell us what you were using before and how much of a difference you've noticed.

2. 64MB is a little small for my uses. Does Samsung make a 128 that is equivalent in spec? Sorry to ask such a basic question but I can't tell if these larger disks perform like the smaller ones of the same line. Regular HD are so predictable, these are black magic.

3. Someone mentioned the 1.8" Samsung. Is it identical inside? Has anyone tested the performance?

Thanks to everyone in advance.

 

I have attached the datasheet for the 2.5" Samsung SLC drive.

The Samsung SLC drive is supposed to be one of the most power efficient drives (if not the absolute best). According to the spec sheet it consumes 0.2/0.2/0.2 watts for sleep/standby/idle (vs. 0.1/0.2/0.8 for my Hitachi 5k320 HDD) and 0.47 watts for R/W (vs. 1.8 watts for my 5k320). Additionally, it has no "spin up power" (5 watts on my 5k320).

I will post some very detailed benchmarks for both performance (synthetic and real world) and efficiency in a week or two after I've had time to get used to the SSD.

To my knowledge there is no 128GB SLC drive at present. There are plenty of MLC drives (including a pretty good one from Samsung), but 64GB seems to be the current SLC cap (at least at a price point that's even close to reasonable).

The 1.8" and 2.5" Samsung SLC drive are internally identical. However, the 1.8" drive uses a Micro-SATA connector and is 3.3V (2.5" is SATA and 5V). As a result, you need an adapter to use it in a 2.5" notebook.


One other note. I am assuming from your name that you have a T61. This is a two spindle design and you can use BOTH a small fast SSD (e.g. the 64GB Samsung SLC) AND a large/cheap HDD in the SATA Ultrabay adapter. You will lose the optical drive in this config, but you get large, and fast, internal storage from two spindles. You should use the SSD for your OS and APPs, and the HDD for media files, CD/DVD Images (try IMGBurn and Daemon Tools for a virtual drive), and other data files that are large but don't need speed.

 

I got my 64gb SSD from Geeks.com today, it came packaged in bubble wrap with no warranty documentation. If this drive craps out, does it have a full warranty? I am installing Vista X64 on it as we speak, I just want to make sure that this drive is not a as-is no warranty product...

 

Call Samsung and ask (know your serial number). It's the only way to be sure.

It should carry at least a 1 year warranty.

I should get my 1.8" version from Newegg on Monday or Tuesday.

 

Best Upgrade Ever, my computer is dead silent. The fan never comes on, and its lightning quick...My only regret is ordering only one instead of several. 64gb is not too much space, but it forces you to optimize the operating system and only install what is absolutely necessary.

On my T61p, it runs so cool its unbelievable. No noise whats so ever, its eerily quiet. I just wish I had done this sooner.

These SSD's really make a difference with regards to heat on the smaller machines!

 

If you're hurting for space on your T61P you can always swap the optical drive for a large 5400RPM drive and use it for bulk data storage. The drive should be able to spin down when not in use so the heat/noise penalty will be minimal.

Also, be sure to update your signature

 

I am definitely going to use this in my X61t, for the t61p I need to get a 500gb 7200 Rpm Drive to put in the ultrabay. I need to consolidate both my drives into one....

I guess this is a good time to get rid of all the programs/data that I never use!

 

I like this idea. Is there a way to have a HD in the multibay and turn it off and on whenever we need it? I realize the drive might spin down but Windows doesn't seem to be optimized for this. I would expect the drive to spin up at mysterious times.

 

I think as long as your operating system is on the SSD, the HDD should spin down without trouble. The reason your primary HDD never spins down in Vista is due to the persistent caching/indexing. As long as you disable indexing on the auxiliary HDD, and don't set up a PageFile on it, Windows should spin it down just fine.

 

Well, I got my Samsung SSD from Geeks on Saturday, and copied my image to it by Sat night, and all I can say is WoW! This thing flies!

Make sure you go here: http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=47212 if you have Vista, or here: http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43460 if you have XP and do the tweaks that further optimize SSD for Windows. I did most of the tweaks. I didn't do the tweak to delete paging file at shutdown because it slowed shutdown for me.

And I couldn't get Readyboost to work right with RAMdrive as they did (to use the unused RAM - Vista was using only 3069MB of my 4GB since it is 32-bit), since every time I would reboot, it would loose the Readyboost settings I had made. But I DID however, have good luck setting my paging file to point to my RAMdrive and set it to 950MB which is what my system can't address and therefore can't see, and this works fabulous, except it does add maybe 30 seconds to boot and 20 seconds to shutdown times, since it has to save an image of that RAMdrive to a file on the hard drive, and load that image at startup, but using the physical unused RAM for paging IS faster than using the SSD for paging, plus it keeps any excess hard drive chatter off the SSD and in physical RAM if and when I do go beyond my 3069MB of normal physical RAM.

But this new setup rocks. My Eclipse dev environment opens in 15-20 secs instead of 1.5 mins, and Firefoxs opens the first time in about 1-2 seconds. All programs seem to shed off around 75% of the time to load. Since the browsers cache is now SSD cached, going to previously visited webpages is lightning fast now.

This SSD brings a whole new personality to this computer. The tweaks from OCZ forum did help a lot too.

 

Also, if you do those tweaks on the OCZ forum, just do them one at a time, and test them in steps before moving on to the next tweak, so that you can accurately gauge whether you like the way the tweak worked. Like I said, I liked them all, except the del paging file at shutdown one, and the RAMdrive one I'm still not sure if I like because booting/shutdown went from lightning fast after SSD install, to slow like it used to be after doing that one. But I DO feel better knowing that I can potentially use up the last 950MB of physical RAM (for paging) that Vista can't address is the good point. Speed is good while in OS, just booting/shutdown is slower using RAMdrive. Standby works fast, and hibernate still works fairly fast, as alternatives to frequent shutdowns/startups, so this is NOT a huge issue, other than a small annoyance.

I might just do what my big bro did, and install Win2003 Server 32-bit since it natively supports 36-bit PAE extensions and can address all 4GB of your physical RAM. Or, I could just install a 64bit OS if it really bugs me that much.


.

 

Also, here is a good string to read on OCZ forum before deciding if you want to buy MLC or SLC: http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=52329