Speeding up my T60 Thinkpad.. Is it possible to get an Solid State Drive (SSD) for my T60 Thinkpad?
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From: ~misfit~ on 8 Dec 2009 22:48 Somewhere on teh intarwebs Robert Tomsick wrote: > On Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:49:21 +1300, ~misfit~ wrote: > >> Somewhere on teh intarwebs Robert Tomsick wrote: [snip] >>> I've got an X-25M one of my laptops, and it would take something on >>> the order of 5 years of writing 20GB each and every day before I'm >>> likely to experience a failure. >> >> I'm writing this on a T60 fitted with a 320GB 7200rpm Seagate HDD >> with Hard Disk Sentinel (HDS) installed. HDS reports average reads a >> day at >> 96.4GB and average writes of 33.63GB. >> >> The machine is on about 14 hours a day and is used for newsgroups, >> email, internet and some light gaming. > > !! > > That's a lot of writing; that seems shockingly high for that > workload... > > AFAIK, reads don't affect SSD lifespan, but writes certainly do. > With an average of 30+GB a day, with some MLC SSDs you might end up > with your first failed sector after a couple years. (Although I > suspect that most of the writing done in your case is from swap and > is thus easily- avoidable.) Sorry, two thing I forgot to mention; I have swapfile turned off and I run a bittorrent client a lot of the time. However, with a 1GB/day limit from my ISP the bittorrent client isn't accounting for much of that 33GB of writes. > That said, it looks like I made a mistake in my original post. > > The X-25M can sustain 100GB/day for 5 years... not 20GB/day. Looks > like you're still well in the clear. :) > > Source: > http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=4 Nice! Maybe one day when they're cheaper.... Interestingly I've noticed that USB thumb drives can get a bit warm when they're being written to. However I got quite a shock the other day when I was using a 4GB micro-SD card in a USB adapter and filled it with data (essentially using it as a USB stick). When I unplugged it the card was too hot to hold! That surprised me. The thermal stresses with expansion/contraction can't be good for it. I wonder, do SSDs heat up as much (albeit 'locally')? -- Cheers, Shaun. "Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchet, 'Jingo'.
From: JohnSmitth on 9 Dec 2009 04:00 Sorry I am now confused - what was the conclusion of this thread? - Does anyone supply SSDs that will fit into the bay of a Thinkpad T60? (i.e. in place of my CD/DVD) (if so - any particular specific recommendations?) - If so, have all those (bloody rediculous) problems about writing too much to them been solved yet? - Has anyone written a utility to defrag SSDs yet (which would presumably solve the above problem of SSDs slowing down over time if you write to them too much)? My default plan would be to remove my CD/DVD from the (Ultrabay in my) T60 and to put a SSD in there instead. And to then re-install my key applications so that they now sit on the SSD, but leave WindowsXP (and possibly my data??) on the hard drive. Cheers Ship (OP) BillW50 wrote: > In > news:3dff2615-b901-4f22-86f0-eaba6cea932a(a)m26g2000yqb.googlegroups.com, > ship typed on Tue, 1 Dec 2009 01:04:06 -0800 (PST): > > Hi > > > > Is it possible to get an Solid State Drive (SSD) for my T60 Thinkpad? > > I am looking at ways to speed the darned thing up! > > > > I couldnt find anything from Lenovo, but maybe someone else makes > > something... But I can see that some of the new Thinkpad models come > > with SSD instead of a conventional hard disk. So surely it's only a > > matter of time before Lenovo make something that fits into the ATA > > Hard Drive Bay Adapters? (...Or someone else makes them for the > > Thinkpad community!) > > > > (Obviously there are the external memory stick devices but they are of > > course limited by the USB 2.0 interface and are thus quite slow - so I > > am not interested in them.) > > > > > > > > Ship > > Shiperton Henethe > > > > P.S. Anyone know much faster a SSD is in practice compared to a HDD? > > Yes you should be able to swap out any 2.5 inch hard drive for one of > the many 2.5 inch SSD available by third parties. Depending on the speed > of the SSD you purchase, you can typically increase your boot speed from > 10% to half of the normal boot time. Careful of purchasing one with a > slow write speed. > > SSD vs HDD (youtube) > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pf_QS3mZsyU > > -- > Bill > Gateway MX6124 ('06 era) - Windows XP SP2
From: mike on 9 Dec 2009 05:09
JohnSmitth wrote: > Sorry I am now confused - what was the conclusion of this thread? > > - Does anyone supply SSDs that will fit into the bay of a Thinkpad > T60? (i.e. in place of my CD/DVD) > (if so - any particular specific recommendations?) > - If so, have all those (bloody rediculous) problems about writing too > much to them been solved yet? > - Has anyone written a utility to defrag SSDs yet (which would > presumably solve the above problem > of SSDs slowing down over time if you write to them too much)? > > My default plan would be to remove my CD/DVD from the (Ultrabay in > my) T60 > and to put a SSD in there instead. And to then re-install my key > applications so > that they now sit on the SSD, but leave WindowsXP (and possibly my > data??) on the > hard drive. > > Cheers > > > Ship (OP) > > > BillW50 wrote: >> In >> news:3dff2615-b901-4f22-86f0-eaba6cea932a(a)m26g2000yqb.googlegroups.com, >> ship typed on Tue, 1 Dec 2009 01:04:06 -0800 (PST): >>> Hi >>> >>> Is it possible to get an Solid State Drive (SSD) for my T60 Thinkpad? >>> I am looking at ways to speed the darned thing up! >>> >>> I couldnt find anything from Lenovo, but maybe someone else makes >>> something... But I can see that some of the new Thinkpad models come >>> with SSD instead of a conventional hard disk. So surely it's only a >>> matter of time before Lenovo make something that fits into the ATA >>> Hard Drive Bay Adapters? (...Or someone else makes them for the >>> Thinkpad community!) >>> >>> (Obviously there are the external memory stick devices but they are of >>> course limited by the USB 2.0 interface and are thus quite slow - so I >>> am not interested in them.) >>> >>> >>> >>> Ship >>> Shiperton Henethe >>> >>> P.S. Anyone know much faster a SSD is in practice compared to a HDD? >> Yes you should be able to swap out any 2.5 inch hard drive for one of >> the many 2.5 inch SSD available by third parties. Depending on the speed >> of the SSD you purchase, you can typically increase your boot speed from >> 10% to half of the normal boot time. Careful of purchasing one with a >> slow write speed. >> >> SSD vs HDD (youtube) >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pf_QS3mZsyU >> >> -- >> Bill >> Gateway MX6124 ('06 era) - Windows XP SP2 The earlier parts of the thread have expired here, so I can't review the actual details of your speed complaint... If you keep the HD and just install the applications to the SSD, a well-behaved program shouldn't write much to the SSD drive...but that won't help the OS stuff. If boot time is the issue, an option might be to put a second battery in the drive bay and use sleep mode. If you have a small amount of memory, you might be able to put the hibernation file on the SSD and use that mode. If you have a lot of memory, returning from hibernation can take longer than a boot. My interpretation of this thread is... If you have more money than time, Stick with the EXPENSIVE Intel drives. Enable the embedded stuff so the system doesn't write the drive so much. I'm skeptical about the lifetime claims, but hey, we've got more money than time. It's a no-brainer. |