Intel 510 or 320 series SSD?

My T420 shipped today (yay!) so now it's time for me to select a new SSD drive.
I'm torn between the Intel 510 and 320 series.
Not sure if I will make a difference between the 2 in real world situation.

What do you guys think?
The 510 is faster but has less capacity...similar pricing though

 

I'd personally go with the 320 series... Both are a significant improvement over any HDD, so you'll probably be happy with either.

The 320 also can be changed into a 7mm drive if you take off the plastic, which is nice.

I'm not sure exactly how much faster the 510 is... what are you going to be using it for?

 

At the moment there are some minor problems with the Intel 510 on certain ThinkPad models, this occurs during the warm reboot phase. This is yet to be rectified at the time of writing. I haven't heard anything similar with the Intel 320 lately, then again the Intel 320 is based on the Intel X25-M which had a good track record for reliability using Intel's own controller.

The Intel 510 on the other hand uses a third party controller (Marvell) and its too early to say whether its a proven combination in terms of reliability. Performance wise the Sequential Read/Writes are better than my previous X25-M SSD on my T61, but the Random 4k's are quite dissapointing under my experience, it actually fared up worse than my X25-M.

 

Depends on what you do with your laptop.

 

I support the X25/320 idea. They work and don't currently have problems.

Perry

 

Go with the X25-M or 320 series. The X25-M/320 are known for high IOPS and low power consumption which is great.
The Intel 510 uses Marvell controller which is good for read and write speed but not good for operation system use.
Another drive that have great performance is the Crucial M4 series, faster than the Intel 320 for read and write speed and pretty close in terms of IOPS, but not sure about the power consumption.

 

How do I put the 320 on where the DVD drive is?

 

You need an Ultrabay Hard Drive caddy to place a HDD/SSD inside the DVD drive bay area. You can purchase the official product from Lenovo but depending on some models such as the T420, the bezel is too shallow and will leave a gap.

Unofficial Ultrabay caddies are generally much cheaper and can offer a matching fit bezel. I'm using one at the moment and its working great on my system ( link), though be aware not all unofficial Ultrabay caddies may work so you need to check carefully before buying.

 

I went 320 because more space 300 vs 240. And given the speed difference isn't going to be very noticeable to me, I didn't care as much about that vs space.

 

I bought the 320 with 300Gb too finally.
Reliability is important to me while I won't make a difference in real world with the 510 (although knowing the fact that I use SATA 3 would be nice )

I added a mini dock and 8Gg RAM to the caddy.

 

I finally canceled my order and went with the 510 series.
I know about the issue but when I looked at the performances and reviews I couldn't help it and went for SATA 3

 

That's what I ended up doing although I do have a back order for the 310 m-sata card for my W520 and I might move the OS from the 510 to that (it will be interesting to compare the two).

I went with the 510 because it is SATA 3 and it uses 34nm cells which is a known and reliable quantity. I haven't scrutinised the finer details between the 510 and 320 but all I know is the 510 is blindingly fast and you won't really be wanting of anything by using it.

The warm boot issue is a non-issue as far as I am concerned. If it never gets fixed I won't be bothered because everything else is fine with the 510 drive.

 

I bought the 320 and it's working great in my X220. Boot time from button press to desktop is about 23 seconds. Apps load really quickly.