Intel or Samsung SSD

I am thinking about putting in a new SSD in my old T60p, do not want to give up on the IPS screen.

Intel has the new 160gb SSD already out, and Samsung I read is readying a 250gb SSD by year's end. What do you guys think, should I wait for the Samsung? I kind of like the idea of having a bigger hard drive.

And what installing the SSD, do I just take out the old hard drive and putting in the new SSD, and use the recovery DVD's I created myself to install everything?

Thanks

 

And what about those lesser known SSD brands like OCZ, Corsair, etc. I know the older generations use the Micron controller which is known to have problems. What about the newer generations of SSD's from those manufacturers. Are they more reliable? They do cost less than cmoparable Intel or Samsung SSD's.

 

AnandTech just did a *long* review that will answer this question I think:

http://anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631

 

Ya, anyone interested in SSDs should really try and keep up with the articles. They are an ever changing tech. Jmicron is a thing of the past at this point. OCZ, Corsair and others just resell. Intel is still the top name in town, but when TRIM hits, the Indilinix and samsung based drives (controllers) will be pretty darn good too.

 

256GB Samsung SSD is already out. You need to keep up with the technology man
I don't recommend getting a modern SSD with your laptop, simply because it won't support full SATA-II speed. Yes, I know others have said that only the sequential speeds are limited, but I have used a new generation Samsung drive in a laptop that only supports SATA-I speed, and even the random speeds are limited (to about 50% of the full potential).
Get the Samsung SLC would be your best bet. I'm running one in my X61s right now and couldn't be happier.

 

Moi aussi. I plan on keeping my R60 until something better or close to what I got now comes along, or until it can no longer meet my needs performance wise. I don't need a ton of performance.

Whatever drive you buy will be capped at SATA I speeds by the SATA controller. I had a 32GB Samsung SLC earlier this year. While I'd say it booted a bit faster and a few apps like Photoshop or iTunes did seem to open a little faster, I couldn't really tell much of a difference between it and my Seagate drive for general usage stuff.

 

Thanks for all the replies guys!

Appreciate all the help.

ZaZ, how is the Seagate 500GB 7200RPM laptop drive? I was thinking about this Seagate vs. SSD.

 

I haven't had a problem with it. They like to benchmark over in the hardware forum to say this or that drive is better, but my own experience is they're all about the same in real world usage.

I like Seagate drives because it gets you a download of DiscWizard from Seagate's website. It's a limited version of True Image, but does what I need it to do. I liked to do a clean install and make an image, which I can put back at any time if need be. I use it in place of Rescue and Recovery, which can be farty and bloated in my opinion.

 

this is not true.

- random reads/writes are well below the capabilities of the SATA 1;

- that you can get 140MB/s max and not 200MB/s max speeds does not matter that much, trust me. The difference would be so small .. unless your job is dealing with movie storing all the time, like dealing with a movie back up server or something. Most of the things that the SSD will work with requires reandom access and little sequential.

- todays MLC SSDs are faster than last years SLC drives, so that Samsung SLC that you're reffering to starts fading behind with todays speeds. The benefit is taht it's supposed to last longer though, but who realy knows. For instance, the Intels MLC ssd is faster than the Samsungs SLC drive The fact that this particular SSD (say the 64GB version) is showing about the same real word speeds is due to its reandom speeds being not so different than other MLC drives with 2x higher sequential speeds though.

anyways, to the OPs question: it realy depends on what you want. The intel ssd is somewhat faster, but the Samsung one has more space and shows better compatibility (long story). Intel is faster in the random stuff, while Samsung is faster in the sequential stuff (mostly the writes are affected). The samsung is supposed to do the so called garbage collection when the drive idles - this will restore the drive maximum speeds due to all pages being used with the time. Intel is supposed to support the TRIM command that will make the drive take more time when erasing stuff but not when writing, thus the performance should increase, but this is OS dependant and is coming with Windows 7. Yet some say it may be a firmwere update that may not require win 7.

so yey, for the time being I'd go for the more space with the Samsung one, but if 160GB is more than what you need, then go with Intel.

 

Do you have a laptop with SATA-I speed? I do.
Do you have a Samsung gen 2 SSD? I do.
And when I did a comparative benchmark, even random read and write speed is reduced. Unless you can show me otherwise, I believe in what I experience. I haven't tested it with the Intel SSD, but with Samsung SSD, random read and write speed is affected by the SATA-I limitation. And don't quote the guys from the SSD threads. Most of them just deduce this, but none has actually tested it. I have.

 

^ I'm waiting on your explanation about why do you think the random speeds of what - 10 to 30 MB/s at 4Kb sizes are affected by using 150MB/s link, rather than 300MB/s link.

or maybe show me how you tested that.

also I havent quoted anybody, what I posted is what I think about the subject, after my extensive research on the subject.

 

While I don't know of why it happens, I have seen benchmarks on NBR showing how all speeds, not just those above SATA/150 spec, being capped.

 

I'm not saying that you quoted anybody, but telling you not to quote anybody. There's a difference.
I'll try to see if I can get some benchmark up this weekend. I don't have time to swap the drive around right now.

 

I am sorry but this is just plain wrong - how can random read/write speeds of WAY below SATA-1 speed be limited by using a SATA-1 interface?

Until I see CONVINCING evidence to the contrary (eg, using the exact same drive in 2 different computers with SATA-1 and SATA-2 interfaces) I will be very skeptical on claims such as the above.

 

I never believe it before, until I tested it myself. If you don't believe me, that's fine, but my theory is that the drive switches itself to SATA-I mode, and that results in a performance retardation in all aspect. Also, how can you say it's wrong until you actually test it.

Edit: Finally found a post about it:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4701803&highlight=sata150#post4701803

Read the post made by IntelUser. Just to clarify, it's a SATA150 laptop (T60) vs. SATA300 desktop.

Original benchmark from jlingo in T60:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4341434&postcount=1965

 

^ as far as I know, desktop sata controller differs from laptop sata controller, so that 's not a real comparision. IMO the drivers are also different, eventhough those may come in the same package. A real test would be when on one and the same laptop one SSD is tested in SATA2 and SATA1 modes, perhaps the second one set by the BIOS if possible.

the second link just shows that the intel SSD speed recovery due to time/usage is not good (if it exists at all)

I have seen a graph somewhere that shows how a samsung SSD recovers its max speeds after idling for couple of hours, I'll see if I can find it.

 

how about this one? -
http://pcper.com/article.php?aid=766&type=expert&pid=11:)

 

^ yeah, that's the one that I'm talking about

 

And where do you suggest to get a laptop with an actual BIOS option for SATA-I and SATA-II? I'm sure as hell not going to that kind of length just to prove my point to some random guy on the forum. If you don't believe my statement, suit yourself. Would you prefer that I stay silent and let people find out the hard way?
To everybody else, I benchmarked the Intel drive in my X200 and the random speeds are 14MB/sec and 35MB/sec read and write respectively, which is very close to what IntelUser gets on his desktop.