Is the Lenovo 128GB SSD worth it?

Is the Lenovo 128GB SSD worth it, or should I buy the default hard drive and buy a third party SSD?

 

If you can... Buy the cheapest or one that could suit you in the ultrabay/external enclosure and go for a 3rd party with TRIM.

 

Lenovo SSD tend to be expensive, but it has better warranty support (also i don't think it supports TRIM). So i guess you weigh up the positive against the negative and make a decision on the information presented.

 

I would get the largest mechanical drive to put in the ultrabay and an intel/ocz drive for OS.

 

Would I lose my warranty on the entire system by swapping out hard drives?

... could I pull out the mechanical drive that initially comes with the X201 (500GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm), and put it in the ultra bay? Will it fit?

 

no you won't void the warranty, as the ram, hdd, palmrest, keyboard, power adapters are all considered CUSTOMER REPLACEABLE PART.

And yes you can pull out the 500 gig hdd and shove it into the ultrbase's ultrabay, if you have the ultrabay sata hdd adapter.

 

THANKYOU!

ultra base for $100 - $99

 

where did you get an ultrabase in Australia for 100 AUD?

 

Lenovo - Customize - ThinkPad X201 laptop - Enhanced (with Core i5 processor) - Components

australian lenovo website, on the x201 i5 enhanced order page, and choose "no optical drive".

their calculator is different to the notes in the item description ..., but still works out to $100 when you choose on optical d

 

nice.......

 

Will this adapter allow me to move the standard mechanical 500GB hd into the x200 ultrabay?

ThinkPad Serial Hard Drive Bay Adapter III
Lenovo Support & downloads - ThinkPad Serial ATA Hard Drive Bay Adapter III - Overview
Lenovo Support & downloads - Notebook Hard Drives - Reference Guide

ALSO

Do I need an additional power supply for the ultrabase?

 

That is the one, no you don't need the additional power supply. The laptop will draw the power from the ultrabase.

 

Thankyou for all your help!!!

Its ordered!

 

Ouch ... that was an expensive hdd (500gb hhd + ultrabase + addaptor), instead of just putting the old hdd in a draw and going with a 3rd party ssd.

I hope the addition of the ultrabase will be worth it ... never had one before.

 

ultrabase has a dispalyport, so in my mind 100 dollars is not too much to pay for two external lcd setup.

 

I have the Lenovo SSD.
It's a Samsung PM800, but still NO TRIM!

 

2 LCDs is what I needed anyway. Now I'm even happier with the setup.

Thankyou

 

I ordered the ssd from lenovo. If it has no trim, are there manual utilities to help me achieve TRIM operations manually? I heard that there were but I couldn't find any good links. Does anyone have TRIM utilities from Intel and Samsung?

 

brutalturtle - if you have the 128GB samsung MLC then underprovision it to 100GB (leaving the rest of the drive unallocated) and forget you ever heard about TRIM.

if the drive ever slows down in real-world use and you notice it without running a synthetic benchmark then simply image it, secure erase it in your BIOS ( link), and re-image it.   this will bring it back to 99% condition.   i've tested this on four lenovo-issued samsung 1.8" MLC SSDs (two 128GB and two 64GB) and it worked every time.

i think most people notice slowdowns because they incessantly run synthetic benchmarks ten times a day looking for problems.   i only run benchmarks if i notice a problem (which is rare).

 

^Now this is new information erik, thank you for that.

edit- i did a lot of googling and answered some of my questions. But I hope you can help me with something.

With regards to partitioning it to 100GB and eliminating the need to trim. Can I achieve this by simply going into windows drive management after receiving the computer (no reformatting/reinstalling OS!) and setting aside enough UNALLOCATED space to leave the "healthy" parts at 100GB? I'm sure lenovo will set aside another 10GB for the recovery image. If my drive ends up like this (estimating)-
C: BOOT (90GB)
D: RECOVERY (10GB)
E: unallocated (28GB)

Has it achieved the requirements to forget about trim? I guess I'm asking if the number 100 is so important. I think the free amount set to do this trick is approximate, so if I wanted to make BOOT + RECOVERY a total of 99GB and leave the rest unallocated this would still work right? And you mentioned Samsung. What if I had the intel, would I do the same thing regardless?

About re-imaging. I'm assuming that your BIOS link for secure erasing the hard drive wipes out the recovery partition as well. I'm not that great with imaging software and the only idea I have is:
-use windows 7 to image the entire computer onto DVD's.
-secure erase SSD using the BIOS utility you mentioned.
-boot to USB DVD-ROM and insert the windows 7 boot discs I had created upon receiving the computer, thus reinstalling the OS.
-once windows 7 has finished installing, use windows 7 utility and restore the computer with my DVD images?

Is there an easier way to do this?


-I never run benchmarks

 

I'm so glad I didn't go with the stock SSD, but I'll move the 500gb hdd into the ultra bay when I find out a little more about SSd's and buy one.

Still waiting for my newly ordered X201. Its only been a day, and I know its going to be such a long time to wait ...

Just glad I used the 35% discount coupon in time

 

BT - shrinking your partitions and leaving X amount unallocated would achieve the same thing.   the drive would still have to be imaged, secure erased, and re-imaged though to flag the previously-used blocks as open.

anand has a good writeup on this theory (or perhaps hypothesis) in this article.   this concept has been around for a while and drives are starting to come over-provisioned from the factory.   most 100GB MLC drives are actually 128GB with 28% over-provisioning.

imaging is taking a snapshot of the drive and restoring it.   acronis true image is one example of such software.   i use windows server 2008 R2 on all my systems and it has this capability built into windows server backup.   for your situation i would look into acronis.

because drive imaging replaces the data in one large block, a secure-erased SSD will fill from the bottom to the top like a bucket rather than data being fragmented all over the place like on an HDD.   it would be like having a neat pile of legos on the table versus them being scattered all over.

the 28% over-provisioning is more or less just a safe, round number.   it takes a 64GB drive down to 50GB, a 128GB drive down to 100GB, and so forth.   28% is more than enough to allow the average user plenty of room to write/erase blocks without "fragmenting" their SSD for a long time.

any SSD can be written/erased to the point of being slow, even with TRIM or GC (garbage collection).   but, for those of us using MLC drives without internal provisioning, the manual method is proving to be a great workaround.

i've been testing this for a few months on two thinkpads and it appears to be working.   benchmarks run in ATTO and crystal disk mark have been coming out almost identically every time.   i've actually found that changing power management affects benchmarks more than anything since a slower processor core speed can lower numbers by around 25%.   the lesson here is in not running benches on battery power and expecting full performance.

keep in mind that i'm by no means an expert on SSDs.   i've been using them since buying an X300 in march of 2008 and am learning new things every day.

 

^then I'm all set erik. I have a new copy of acronis 2010 which I'll use to image the ssd. Care to play helper person one last time?

-If the BIOS secure erase utility installs as an add-on, won't that require flashing the BIOS itself? (just out of curiosity)

-If I read your post correctly, I MUST secure erase and re-image the drive in order for this workaround to work? (Even if I simply take it out of the box brand new and set aside 28% unallocated, it will not do? I assumed that if the free memory had NEVER been written on, you can simply partition it aside and there's no need to secure erase it.)

-We are to set aside 28% free, but I thought drives never come with the actual advertised amount of space. 128gb is actually 123gb usable, etc. Should I just partition it to 100GB usable and leave the rest unallocated regardless?

That's about it. Thanks so much for your explanations - I think you prolonged the life of my hard drive.

 

the secure erase function is an add-on to the BIOS.   running the DOS-based installer simply enables a submenu under 'security' that allows an SSD to be erased.   so, no, the entire BIOS isn't reflashed.

you are correct in that you have to secure erase a drive in between imaging.   think of it like taking a fragmented installation and replacing everything block-by-block in the correct order with no wasted space.   the non-wasted space is what makes an SSD fast -- even drives like the 2nd gen samsung MLC.

a brand new SSD doesn't need to be secure erased but installing an OS tends to fragment it.   my practice is to install an OS and apps, image the drive, erase it, and re-image it.   i've regained faster 4k IOPS in benchmarks doing this so it must work.

128GB is 123GB usable because of the conversion from binary (gibibytes) to base-10 (gigibytes).   everyone misinterprets this as losing space to formatting but it's actually due to converting the numbers.   the equation is roughly 1:1.074, making your 128,000,000,000 byte drive 119.2GB in windows.   don't get too caught up in the conversion though.   you'll be fine if you set the drive to 102,400MB in windows so it reports as being exactly 100GB.   that's what i use simply because i like to see round numbers in my partitions.

 

you're going to kill me for asking you another question.

I fully understand your example of building legos up neatly instead of having them scattered all over the place on the ssd. But dont you repeat the same cycle of fragmenting the OS if secure erase wipes out your 28% unallocated partition? Let me explain my stupidity and not understanding you fully:

-open the shipment box, take the laptop out and turn the computer on (OS already installed from factory). Provision 28% as unallocated space using windows. Image it and secure erase it in bios.

***this wipes out all partitions, everything***

Then you boot into an external usb drive/usb dvd and re-install the OS using an image you created from acronis. But I've just fragmented the SSD once again because now there are no partitions on the drive and I installed the image on 100% of the SSD.

Unless:

acronis (or whatever imaging software) automatically RE-PARTITIONS EVERYTHING as it is installing. Once the image is reinstalled you still have 100GB used, 28GB unallocated just like before and thus mission successful? But what if it doesn't? What if re-imaging installs the OS on a 100% allocated SSD (1 partition only) and leaves you to re-partition empty space (the unallocated 28% we want). Aren't I back to where I started from? This cycle would never end. Lastly I dont even know how imaging software would deal with OEM recovery partitions as they are usually locked?

I profusely apologize. It's been a long week and my head is spinning from work related material.

 

re-imaging restores partitions.   if you set a 100MB + 100GB + ~28% unallocated partition structure before creating the image then this same structure will be replaced when re-imaging.   the difference is that now everything is being written in large blocks rather than fragmenting the tables.

 

coffee's on me next time erik. thank you.

 

Hello! (i dont think private messaging anyone is polite so I'll ask it here, it's a follow up anyway)

I've partitioned everything to the correct sizes, used acronis to properly image the drive and tested the image successfully on a blank hard disk!! But now I try to run this program:

And I get this. "DRVMenu.exe The version of this file is not compatible with the version of Windows your running. Check your computer's system information to see whether you need an x86 (32bit) or x64 (64bit) version of the program."

so i know for sure its dos only haha. but Does anyone know how to run this BIOS setup menu extension utility? it doesnt work in command prompt normally or safe mode. how do i create a bootable dos floppy disk? the only search results i find for this tells me to create an entire windows 32 bit OS installation onto the USB stick. erik, how did you boot into dos when using Windows 7 64 bit? I can't run the thing at all and I even tried compatibility mode. I don't know what to do.. googled everywhere for it.

 

The review here showing that Toshiba HG2 256G SSD has TRIM support,
I'm thinking that THNS128GG4BA is also a HG2 SSD.



Toshiba HG2 43nm 256GB Solid State Drive Review - The Test System - Legit Reviews

 

brutal - there's no way to run drvmenu.exe in any environment other than DOS.

i have a USB floppy drive for stuff like this.   i created a DOS bootable floppy in windows and copied drvmenu.exe to the disk, then booted the system using the floppy.   a bootable USB flash memory drive would work, too.

 

done, thank you. I believe this would work?

DOS USB boot drive - Vista Forums

it's telling me to use windows 98 boot data though. this is why I am posting to ask, as you have secure erased numerous times and carry experience. does this solution comply with what i am attempting to do? (create bootable dos USB stick to run drvmenu on)

I saw someone try to do this with a x201/ mushkin ssd and the process corrupted his S.M.A.R.T during secure erase. thats why I'm being so careful and asking a hundred things. sorry guys.

 

drvmenu.exe patches the BIOS to enable or disable the SSD submenu under the security menu.   once enabled, you won't need your bootable USB stick anymore.

win98 DOS isn't important.   my bootable floppy was created in server 2008 R2 and uses a non-standard flavor of DOS.   as long as you can boot into DOS to run drvmenu.exe you'll be fine.

unless you're using a lenovo-issued SSD, i can't guarantee compatibility with this BIOS feature.   i do know this feature will work with any 128GB SSDs offered by lenovo (since this thread is originally about the 128GB SSD specifically).

 

I've always run the Secure Erase program created by the UC of San Diego. Link here:
CMRR - Secure Erase

Relevant info here:
How to REALLY erase a hard drive | ZDNet

If you need an alternative, maybe this is it. But do try erik's method first.

 

100% success. drive securely erased through new BIOS menu, image reinstalled, rebooted with 28% over-provision. Erik I owe you, and Zephir thanks for providing an alternative solution! I actually saved those links you gave me because I heard bad things about erasing a NON-OEM ssd through BIOS. I bought this one with my computer so it's fine but in the future I will probably have to use your method if I get a new drive instead.

Thanks everyone!

 

bt - glad that worked for you.   which model SSD do you have?

 

wrong post sorry please delete.

 

mlc samsung MMCRE28G8MXP. I was wondering if I would get a toshiba or this. No trim on mine right? that's what I've gathered from searching so far. Oddly enough this guy on the lenovo forum:

x201 - Initial Thoughts - lenovo community

checked and his samsung (same model ssd and laptop as me) was reporting TRIM as enabled. Not sure if it's a mistake but doesn't matter, I've made all the precautions possible!

actually, did you use SSDtweak or some kind of program to disable certain functions in windows 7? Or did you manually do it yourself (pagefile, defrag, etc.) I haven't gotten around to optimizing anything yet.

 

i'm using the same drive to run my ThinkStation plus the 64GB version as a swap drive.   so far, performance has been much better than expected.

fwiw, running "fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify" in a command prompt reports TRIM is enabled and i have the drives plugged into the D10's SAS ports.   this isn't a reliable way to know if TRIM is working on these drives.   it may be enabled in the OS but that doesn't mean the drive is accepting the command.   besides, crystaldiskinfo doesn't show these drives have TRIM enabled.

what's odd about these drives is that read speeds in benchmarks seem to get slightly faster with use.   writes slow down a tiny bit in benchmarks but nothing noticeable in real life.   they may not report having TRIM but i am starting to think they have internal garbage collection or some sort of internal optimization.   when both my D10 and X301 sit idle, the drive light will flicker for a while and eventually stop.   i never saw this with my SLC SSD or any HDDs.

i use server 2008 R2 enterprise on my systems and don't have many tweaks to go through like one does with win 7.   by default most of the services are disabled including defrag, indexing, prefetch/superfecth, and so on.   this guide seems like a good resource on win 7 tweaks for SSDs.