Intel X25M 80GB Mainstream Solid State Drive Retail Boxed SSDSA2MH080G2R5
Intel X25M 80GB Mainstream Solid State Drive Retail Boxed SSDSA2MH080G2R5 see short title
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Intel X25M 80GB Mainstream Solid State Drive - Gen2, MLC flash technology, 2.5-Inch form factor, SATA (3.0Gb/s), 9.5mm Retail Box. Postville.
Intel X25M 80GB Mainstream Solid State Drive - Gen2, MLC flash technology, 2.5-Inch form factor, SATA (3.0Gb/s), 9.5mm Retail Box. Postville. « short desciption
User Reviews
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Review Date: 2009-11-18
I bought this for my work laptop (Lenovo X200) and after a month of usage the results are better than expected. After using Norton Ghost to migrate my current XP OS (corporate standard) to the new drive, I was amazed how fast applications launch. Outlook (with 4500 items in my inbox) takes a 2-3 seconds first time and less than a second for subsequent starts.
Probably the most noticeable improvement for me is starting and running virtual machines. One VM that we clone/share for developers took forever to start and was flaky before I installed the SSD. I've been running it for weeks on the SSD and it's very responsive and stable. The startup time went from >20 minutes on the mechanical 7200 RPM drive to well under 5 min on the SSD. This is a Windows 2003 Server R2 OS with a large enterprise application (15 services) running under VMWare Player on a laptop. Eclipse, Perforce and the rest of the dev tools run like a champ.
The laptop was already very quite, but now it's completely silent. Almost errie, but something I'm happy to get used to. I don't reboot my laptop too often, so I'm not noticing any big gain on that side of things; but it does seem quite a bit faster. The corporate virus scanner and other services installed by IT still make it too painful, but that's another story.
All in all, it's the best $260 I've ever spent on computer equipment.
User: Margie Mcbride
Rating:
Summary: Laptop is amazingly fast now
Helpful Votes: 0
Total Votes: 0
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Review Date: 2009-11-17
For some users, this drive represents a huge upgrade to their system. For others, it's simply a great drive. I view this drive in the latter category. It's very fast, both in terms of bytes per second (about 75 MB/sec)as well as in access time (0.1 seconds). (HD Tach) These numbers are very, very good. For folks who already use a great drive like the WD Velociraptor 2.5" drive, though, this drive isn't life-changing. It's good but not terrific. The Velociraptor is so fast (7.2 ms access time and 125 MB/sec) that the Intel X25M is simply very good.
In real life, I couldn't seem to take advantage of the X25M's incredible access time. On Win7 start-up, the Intel shaved 7 seconds off the Velociraptor's 27-second boot time. Good but not fantastic. On video rendering with Sony Vegas, the Intel cut 7 seconds off the Velociraptor's 7 min 30 sec rendering of a 125 MB video file. A slim improvement.
The Intel drive is very good, but what it gains in access time (stupendous) is gives partly back in "disk" write time. Or, there's another factor at work that I couldn't identify. It seemed that the relatively slow write time of approx. 70-75 MB/sec was just enough slower than the Velociraptor's 125-90 MB/sec rate (outer sectors to inner) that the two drives were more evenly matched than their specifications indicate.
I'm sure all these numbers are just so much mumbo-jumbo for folks who want to cut to the chase. But after spending a fair bit of time characterizing the drive's performance, I concluded that the match was nearly a draw. Once Intel brings the cost of single-level cell technology down so that we of the masses can enjoy high transfer rates of 150 MB/sec at an affordable price, then SSD will be the clear winner. Until then IMO, the X25M is good but not fantastic, despite the specs.
Opinions differ, but the key question is - It's great, but compared to what? Which conventional drive you already use will strongly impact your assessment.
I returned my purchase on the 30th day, reluctantly.
User: J. Boyd
Rating:
Summary: A very good "hard" drive
Helpful Votes: 0
Total Votes: 0
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Review Date: 2009-11-16
This drive is very fast -- my Macbook feels like an entirely new machine. I'm also getting better battery life. Only complaint would be there doesn't seem to be any of the drive tools for OS X. I am not sure what I will do when I need to do maintenance on the drive.
User: Trevor Goodchild
Rating:
Summary: Fast, no OSX tools
Helpful Votes: 0
Total Votes: 0
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Review Date: 2009-11-03
i'm sure it's a good drive but i think there's some price gouging going on here as it was over $100 less just a couple of days ago.
User: C. N.
Rating:
Summary: why did the cost of this drive jump from $257 to $359 in 2 days?
Helpful Votes: 3
Total Votes: 28
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Review Date: 2009-10-28
I replaced my old hard drive on a first generation MacBook with this Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD with rip-roaring success. Upgrading to one of these drives is THE biggest performance improvement for your laptop simple as that! Boot up is less than half the time of your original HDD, applications open up very quickly, some so quickly I couldn't time them accurately as they took less than 1 second to launch. No installation problems with the Mac and definitely no freezing or stuttering problems reported with other SSD manufacturers. Get some rocket fuel for your machine today you won't regret it!
User: Stephen Allan
Rating:
Summary: Fasten your seat belts
Helpful Votes: 1
Total Votes: 1
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Product Details
- With no moving parts, Intel SSDs offer a quiet storage solution that responds quickly and uses less power
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