Customer Reviews

Intel 80 GB X25M Mainstream SATA II Solid-State Drive (SSD) Retail Package SSDSA2MH080G2R5

5 star:		(80)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I also have a G1 version of this drive and it's literally life-changing (I use the SSD drive in my work laptop). It's amazingly fast!!! If you notice your laptop or desktop to be accessing your harddisk a lot of time then you will see tremendous speed performance with this drive. It's the best performance upgrade you can have in your laptop.

In terms of the drive's life expectancy, the main factor is the amount of writes you do to the drive. On a normal daily-laptop-work usage then the drive will last >15 years. You can actually calculate this since the number of write cycles is tracked in the drive via the S.M.A.R.T attributes. So you can calculate when the drive will gonna die. Intel did a wonderful job in write amplification and wear-levelling algorithm. Thus, it will be obsolete before it reaches the maximum rated write cycles.

If you are a techie, then check out the following links:

Detailed intel spec sheet on the drives:
http://www.intel.com/design/flash/nand/mainstream/index.htm

All you need to know about ssd drives (31-page anandtech thesis):
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=1

X25M Gen2 review:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17269/1

This review is for the product itself, not about stock or sellers!

This is a fantastic upgrade to a computer system. The Intel G2 drives support TRIM when upgraded with the latest firmware. Windows 7 automatically support TRIM. TRIM increases the drive's performance and efficiency.

Upgrading from an HD to a good SSD like an Intel SSD will result in a SIGNIFICANT performance improvement unlike make other upgrades you may make, like a bump in CPU performance, memory, or video card. An SSD is many times faster than an HD in many important ways and has a big impact on the responsiveness of a computer.

The Intel is even price competitive with other SSD offerings.

Pros:
* SPEED
* Significantly faster than a VelociRaptor 10,000 RPM hard drive
* Superior controller design vs other manufacturers
* Windows 7 scores this drive a 7.8 (highest possible is 7.9)
* Low power consumption, great for notebooks especially (but also good for desktops)
* Works just like a regular 2.5 inch drive so works great in SATA notebooks
* Retail version comes with a metal 2.5" to 3.5" adapter for desktop use
* Supports TRIM with latest firmware (G2 - second generation drives)
* Latest firmware upgrades sequential write speed to about 100MB/s from 80MB/s (160GB version only)
* Can download "Intel SSD Toolbox" to view drive information and optimize the drive

Cons:
* Expensive compared to HD's
* Slower sequential write speed than some competitors - but for many this does not significantly affect overall performance

Other:
* My suggestion: Use an SSD for OS and applications and an HD for storage (like a Western Digital green drive)
* See the photos I uploaded

UPDATE 2011-02-18: My Intel G2 SSD drive has been and is still performing GREAT.

Let's get this out of the way first - this is not about capacity. Most everyone knows a 500GB 2.5" 7200RPM notebook hard drive can be had for less than half the price of this SSD. I swapped out this very 500GB 2.5" hard drive for this Intel 80GB SSD. Make sure you buy the G2 version which has TRIM support (enabled with firmware update from Intel) with no worries in performance degradation.

With this SSD, my laptop feels more responsive than my Intel Core i7 *desktop* computer. Windows 7 cold boots in about 35 seconds (from after BIOS POST to wifi ready and web browser open, with anti-virus and firewall installed). The hard drive is the highest rated component in my laptop - 6 for the CPU (Core 2 Duo P8600 2.4GHz), *7.8* for the hard drive (7.9 is the maximum score in Windows 7). Not just in actual use, installing Windows and other programs is also much faster. I have never seen programs install so fast before - Windows 7 Ultimate x64 installed in about 10 minutes from a USB drive.

If you're shopping for a new laptop, forget the very expensive CPU upgrades for an extra few hundred MHz which you probably can't appreciate in everyday use. Stick with the base CPU (Core 2 Duo preferably), spend that money on this SSD. The speed increase with this SSD will be much more dramatic than having an extra few hundred megahertz.

After some careful comparison shopping, I bought this solid-state disk just after New Year 2010. It took just half an hour to fit it to my PC, and another hour or so to do a clean install of 64-bit Windows 7 onto it. Within 24 hours I was up and running again with all my applications and data (although my data files are stored on a couple of conventional Velociraptor HDDs, so they didn't need to be restored). Admittedly, I fitted the X25-M as a replacement for the OCZ Solid SSD with which PCspecialist shipped my computer last year, but it would have made no difference if I had been replacing a conventional hard drive or simply adding the X25-M as an extra drive. Although it has a 2.5 inch form factor (and I was surprised by how small it looked when I had unpacked it - about the size of a state-of-the-art mobile phone), Intel thoughtfully includes a metal bracket and lots of screws in case you need to install it in a 3.5 inch slot (normal for desktop PCs). The 2.5 inch form factor is ready to fit right into a laptop or notebook, however - where its low power consumption and robustness are ideal.

Be sure to get a 34nm (nanometre) model, not last year's 50nm types which - while good - are not as fast (although, until end-of-life discounted, they may actually cost more). It's well worth nailing down the Intel part number of the specific drive you plan to order - in this case it's SSDSA2MH080G2R5 - and checking it on Intel's own Web site to make sure you are getting exactly what you want. There's no need to worry about the SATA-300 label; that's really just pure marketing (technically there is no such thing). All you need to remember is that SATA drives from reputable manufacturers are backward compatible, so if you already have any kind of SATA disks, the X25-M will work with the same controller and cables.

One of the first things I did was to download Intel's latest firmware update and the Intel SSD Toolbox - a link to which is helpfully provided in the accompanying installation booklet. The firmware comes in the shape of an ISO image, ready to burn to CD-R with whatever software you have (Windows 7 has this built in). You then reboot, having arranged to boot from the CD, which runs the firmware update under DOS. That done, you can restart the system and try out the Intel SSD Toolbox, which lets you print out a mass of detailed information about the drive - far more than you want to know, unless you need to fix a fault - run quick or in-depth tests, do a SMART health check, or schedule the Intel SSD Optimizer software to run (once a week is recommended). The Optimizer is necessary to keep getting the best out of your SSD, as it rearranges the disk space to compensate for any blocks that become unusable through repeated writing. You can think of it as the equivalent of defragmentation, which should never be done on an SSD.

When I first received my PC last year, it performed atrociously - which disappointed me, as I had specified a fast machine with an Intel Core i7 and 6GB of fast RAM. However, it often paused or even hung, and occasionally crashed - not at all what I had hoped for. It turned out this was due to a combination of two serious problems: Windows Vista and the OCZ Solid SSD I was using as partition C:. Vista is notorious for poor user responsiveness, and doesn't handle SSDs all that well either; while the OCZ Solid was a "budget" SSD whose controller got a name for "stuttering" especially when writing to disk. When I upgraded to Windows 7 even the OCZ Solid started to work better, but my Windows Performance Index remained at 5.9 - that being the rating the OCZ Solid got. After fitting the Intel X25-M I ran the Windows Performance Index again and this time the SSD rating was a more satisfactory 7.4.

Probably the main differences you will notice, if you replace a conventional HDD with the X25-M as system disk, will be faster booting and shutdown, and faster process activation. Applications that used to take a while to get out of bed and get dressed (with an occasional l-o-n-g wait while they showered and ate breakfast) seem to leap onto the screen, which gives you a nice feel of responsiveness. The key is that the SSD doesn't have any mechanical latency - no rotational delay, no heads to move in and out - so all operations take more or less the same time. That's why there is no point running a defragmenter - indeed, that's a bad idea as it can worsen performance.

You can't really justify the cost of an SSD like the X25-M on the grounds of the performance improvement you get, unless the disk is doing a great deal of read-intensive work. On a personal desktop PC, it's just a really "nice to have" cherry on the top, that makes your machine that much more responsive. On a laptop, of course, there is the consideration that if you carry it around and happen to drop it, your data is safe - unlike a conventional HDD which might be damaged by mechanical impact. And the lower power consumption is useful, too.

There is absolutely no upgrade I've ever done that even comes close to what this drive did to the speed of my PC.

My PC spent a looooong time booting. Even when it was "up", opening IE browser was always sluggish at the start while all the virus and checks kept running in the background.

Now it takes 6 seconds for WinXP to come up. Heck, my beef now is with the PC BIOS screens...what's up with 16 secs of BIOS screens? :)

Applications snaps open as if they were just minimized, not closed. I swear this drive is so fast I can hardly see the HDD LED flashing anymore. It's just a faint flicker. The data moves so fast that the LED doesn't even have time to shine bright!

Pros: BLAZING FAST and SILENT

Cons: ...cons? Hmmm let me think...well, after picking up my jaw from the floor, I couldn't help it and started kissing the drive, the aluminium back plate did feel quite cold.

I cannot believe folks complaining about the expense. This Xmas, I was ready to give up on my very very old PC and build me a new i7 quad-core. This SSD drive came first since there was no question it had the best review of all SSD's. I was researching for the rest of components when I got curious and decided to install it on my current single-core CPU PC for a boot test.
AAAAAAAA!!! Felt like a rocket trip. My "i7 PC" list already had >$900 of additional spend, plus was budgeting 3-4 days to build it during Christmas. That is all history now.

For me, this drive was a money-saving investment, I can claim 4 extra days to enjoy vacation instead of re-installing applications, backing up drives, or patching software.

Here's my system (think upgraded Model T Ford):
Dell Dimension 8100
Intel 850 400MHz bus MoBo (vintage year 2000)
Pentium4 Single Core CPU 2.8GHz w/423pin socket adapter (vintage 2004)
1.25 GB RAM (vintage 2005)
nVidia GeForce 6200 AGP (vintage 2007)
Rosewill PCI Raid Controller (2xSATA/2xPATA)
320GB RAID0 2xPATA133 drive (old drives, new RAID config)
80GB Intel X25-M G2 SSD boot drive (latest upgrade!)
Windows XP Home

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.

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!

I just built a new computer and decided to stay with Windows XP so I wasn't sure if this drive would be as compatible as it seems to be with Windows 7. I was pleasantly surprised when everything installed without a problem. I did update the firmware before installation as one should but other than that it was no more difficult than installing a standard drive. Be sure and download the Intel Toolbox app for keeping the drive in good shape. I can't say enough about the performance improvement with this drive - everything just snaps!

BTW: You can clone your existing drive with a freeware app called XX Clone. I cloned my old drive to the ssd in a matter of minutes, changed the bootup in the bios and the ssd came right up. XX Clone is a fantastic app and it saves you from having to reinstall everything from scratch.

I have the G1 version of this drive. It made an amazing performance boost to my Lenovo Thinkpad. Boot times are amazing and recover from hibernation is instant! Photoshop cs4 loads in about 4 seconds! It was super fast under Vista Ultimate, but when I moved to Win 7 Ultimate (now RTM) it is crazy!

Intel took some flack due to some potential flash fragmentation impacting performance in some cases. I never saw it, but I upgraded my drive firmware just in case. It took about 1 min.

This G2 drive listed by Amazon should be even faster, especially on writes. NOTE, be sure to check for firmware versions when you get this drive as Intel might have updated. There was an issue with the G2 drives if you use a boot password - BE VERY CAREFUL TO CHECK THE FIRMWARE IF YOU HAVE A BOOT PASSWORD.

If you like speed, buy this thing. Beats buying a hot, noisy, slow 7200rpm drive!

My wife went off the deep end last night. She has a slight anger problem and likes to hit where it hurts, my toys. Needless to say my notebook became one with the tile floor. I pulled the SSD out then plugged it into a desktop PC and it worked like new! Id like to see a HDD handle that!

Thanks Intel!

My next computer purchase will be a Toshiba Toughbook.