Is 30gb ssd enough space for t400?

I have a vlited disc of Vista Ultimate, that after a clean install only takes up 6.5ish GB of space.

What I was wondering, how much space do the installed t400 drivers take up?

How much space does an install of Microsoft Office take up?

I want to get an OCZ Vertex, and 30GB will be as high as my budget allows.

I am going to be using this T400 for electrical engineering, and probably will have an external hard drive for media backup.

I just want to be sure I'll have enough space after I get all the basics installed. I don't want to be told I need to install some software for class and end up not having enough space.

 

I had a clean install of Vista with all drivers, hibernation disabled, system restore disabled, office installed, and it only takes up about 12GB. Throw Matlab, and LabVIEW into the mix, and it only goes up to 16GB. My laptop is X200, but it's the same generation as your T400.

 

30GB is doable if it's for a vlited version of Vista (or 7), your primary apps (as long as you aren't talking Visual Studio, Solidworks, the ENTIRE Adobe CS, et. al.), and you disable hibernate and minimize swap.

An external or NAS drive is also a good solution for media storage. You can also consider an UltraBay adapter for your existing hard drive.

You may also want to consider getting an SDHC card (8GB+) for the purpose of taking media with you. These are quite inexpensive and you can leave it in the card reader all the time.

I have a 64GB SSD in my x200T. It's sitting at 31GB at the moment, but I have about 3.25GB of documents, 3.12GB of photos, 2.31GB of downloads, and 3.37GB of video files (12.05GB total). I also have Visual Studio 2008, Office 2007, and several other apps (but nothing from Adobe) installed as well. Therefore, 32GB is workable as long as you have an effective method of storing your media off the SSD.

 

It'll be cutting it quite close with a Vista install. You'll undoubtedly need to do a clean install and remove unnecessary features. But, if you use another hard drive for data storage in your UltraBay, it would be doable.

 

I have the Vertex 30gb...i have it loaded (office etc.)18gb total,tried vista but WIN7 is a lot better..the thing is going to blow you away..speed wise of course..don't forget that ssd drives can be used to almost full (mech drives are very slow when close to full) 1 hassle about SSD is that you have to use TRIM feature.(explained on OCZ forums ) once every 2 weeks or so depending on use,WIN7 & ssd makers are working on a solution..(if you don't use trim,SSD slows down a lot) hope this helps..SSD=boot 14 secs..shut down-4 secs..instant seek,(programs pop-up instantly)

 

What does "trimming" entail?