I took a quick benchmark test and some pictures when upgrading from the default 7200RPM harddrive to a brand new Intel X25-M 160GB SSN drive. The conclusion is - worth it (not surprising i guess) 
Seagate Momentus 320GB 7200RPM vs. Intel X25-M 160GB
I have had the pleasure to get hold of a brand new Lenovo Thinkpad T410 laptop. This laptop will offer a sleeker design than the former Thinkpads (T400, T61P and so on), but is equipped with the latest technology which makes this laptop a powerful mobile workstation!
This T410 is equipped with the following specs :
This is the newest technology for the business-user available. Lenovo released this machine just in front of CES 2010, about one month ago. I will not get in details of how much the new chipset makes a differense, or how fast the i7 CPU is in comparison to the CPUs being used in the “old” T400 series. But the one thing we are going to try finding av answer to is how much difference a new SSD from Intel will make in comparison to the default 7200 RPM disk.
First of all I ran some tests on the default Seagate Momentus, running on 7200RPM. I was impressed by the noise level with an 7200RPM disk installed. It was about dead quiet at idle. The operating system was also very responsive. Programs started up quick and the boot-time was about 34 secounds.
HDTach test :
Burst Speed – 159.1 MB/s.
As the HDTach Test shows it is quite fast for a internal 2,5″ laptop harddrive. As a comparison, this is the test I ran on my Lenovo ThinkPad T61 – with a Western Digital Scorpio Blue 5400 RPM 500 GB drive :
Burst Speed : 116.6 MB/s
I also ran a quick PCWizard test to see what score i got from the system overall.
PCWizard benchmark :
Now for the upgrade. I installed the new Intel SSD X25-M 160GB and transfered the system over using Norton Ghost. By doing this I could test the new disc in the exact same enviroment as the 7200RPM. The upgrade went smoothly, no surprises here if you have upgraded a ThinkPad before (or if you have ever upgraded a laptop before in general i suppose).
First of all. The noise level is now about none. You can (if you consentrate in a quiet room, located in a quiet house, located in a quiet town) possibly hear the whisper from the fan, but this is really not worth mentioning. The programs now starts in a fraction of a secound, and the boot-time has gone down to about 24 sek – from pressing the on-button via the logon-screen (fingerprint) and onto the desktop!! That is 10 sec boot improvement. Nice!
HDTach test :
Burst speed : 202.9 MB/s (!!)
PCWizard Benchmark :
Why the processor score went up, allthough i only upgraded the harddrive i don’t know. Probably the computer just feels nice, and is motivated to bench more? 
Summary :
As we can see on the results. Upgrading the harddrive on a brand spanking new Lenovo Thinkpad T410 is worth the money. The harddrives today is in my oppinion the biggest bottlenecks on modern computers. I haven’t tested the temperatures and battery life of the computer after the upgrade, but i would think that this has also been improved. Now with better support for SSD-drives in Windows 7 and new Linux distributions, new machines (as well as old ones) would have a great improvement after installing a SSD-drive.
Thanks to DrSeafood for lending me the new hardware!
The end!
Seagate Momentus 320GB 7200RPM vs. Intel X25-M 160GB
I have had the pleasure to get hold of a brand new Lenovo Thinkpad T410 laptop. This laptop will offer a sleeker design than the former Thinkpads (T400, T61P and so on), but is equipped with the latest technology which makes this laptop a powerful mobile workstation!
This T410 is equipped with the following specs :
- Platform : Intel Calpella
- CPU : I7-620M@2666 MHz
- Chipset : Intel QM57
- Videocard : Nvidia NVS 3100M
- RAM : 4096 MB (2 x 2048 DDR3-SDRAM
- Harddrive : Seagate Momentus 320GB 7200RPM vs. Intel X25-M 160GB
- Operating System : Windows 7 Professional
This is the newest technology for the business-user available. Lenovo released this machine just in front of CES 2010, about one month ago. I will not get in details of how much the new chipset makes a differense, or how fast the i7 CPU is in comparison to the CPUs being used in the “old” T400 series. But the one thing we are going to try finding av answer to is how much difference a new SSD from Intel will make in comparison to the default 7200 RPM disk.First of all I ran some tests on the default Seagate Momentus, running on 7200RPM. I was impressed by the noise level with an 7200RPM disk installed. It was about dead quiet at idle. The operating system was also very responsive. Programs started up quick and the boot-time was about 34 secounds.
HDTach test :
Burst Speed – 159.1 MB/s.
As the HDTach Test shows it is quite fast for a internal 2,5″ laptop harddrive. As a comparison, this is the test I ran on my Lenovo ThinkPad T61 – with a Western Digital Scorpio Blue 5400 RPM 500 GB drive :
Burst Speed : 116.6 MB/s
I also ran a quick PCWizard test to see what score i got from the system overall.
PCWizard benchmark :
Now for the upgrade. I installed the new Intel SSD X25-M 160GB and transfered the system over using Norton Ghost. By doing this I could test the new disc in the exact same enviroment as the 7200RPM. The upgrade went smoothly, no surprises here if you have upgraded a ThinkPad before (or if you have ever upgraded a laptop before in general i suppose). First of all. The noise level is now about none. You can (if you consentrate in a quiet room, located in a quiet house, located in a quiet town) possibly hear the whisper from the fan, but this is really not worth mentioning. The programs now starts in a fraction of a secound, and the boot-time has gone down to about 24 sek – from pressing the on-button via the logon-screen (fingerprint) and onto the desktop!! That is 10 sec boot improvement. Nice!HDTach test :
Burst speed : 202.9 MB/s (!!)
PCWizard Benchmark :
Why the processor score went up, allthough i only upgraded the harddrive i don’t know. Probably the computer just feels nice, and is motivated to bench more? Summary :
As we can see on the results. Upgrading the harddrive on a brand spanking new Lenovo Thinkpad T410 is worth the money. The harddrives today is in my oppinion the biggest bottlenecks on modern computers. I haven’t tested the temperatures and battery life of the computer after the upgrade, but i would think that this has also been improved. Now with better support for SSD-drives in Windows 7 and new Linux distributions, new machines (as well as old ones) would have a great improvement after installing a SSD-drive.
Thanks to DrSeafood for lending me the new hardware!
The end!
