Customer Reviews

Intel X25-M 160 GB Mainstream SATA II MLC 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive OEM

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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

Intel 160 GB X25M Mainstream SATA II MLC Solid State Drive (SSD) Bare/OEM Package SSDSA2MH160G2C1

My experience is generally consistent with other very positive reviews on this site. Installed my new drive (Intel X25M 160GB Mainstream Solid State Drive SSDSA2MH160G2C1) on my Sony VAIO (VGN SR430J, Intel Core 2 Duo, P8700 @ 2.53GHz, 4.00 GB Ram, Win 7 64 Bit).

Because I was having some issues with the previous drive I don't have a direct side by side comparison of before and after performance. Turns out measuring side by side performance wasn't necessary to evaluate the difference, the performance improvement is easily discernible.

The installation & set-up process was as follows:

- Install physical drive (A direct placement for the old Hitachi 320GB drive). Physically a perfect fit, no issues. 5 - 10 minute job max. No different that replacing a regular hard drive in this respect.

- Recover the laptop to it's original state using the recovery disks (Vista 64 bit). Straightforward, no issues

- Ran the vista experience tool. Noticed a hard drive score of 5.9 (much lower than the 7.7 to 7.8 reported in the other Amazon reviews), but the machine was obviously quicker in the start-up than with the conventional drive.

- Installed the windows 7 upgrade

- Ran the windows 7 experience tool, hard drive score still 5.9

- Installed the Intel SSD Toolbox and ran the optimizer located in the Intel SSD Management Tools menu. Took about 15 minutes... Intel recommends the optimizer be run weekly. (You'll need to download the toolbox from the Intel web site. I tried to post the link here but the Amazon editors removed it, guess you're only allowed to be a "little bit" helpful in these reviews?)

- Ran the windows 7 experience tool, score increase from 5.9 - 7.7. Subjectively the machine felt slightly faster after doing so.

I have the following comments:

1. Dramatic decrease in boot time. Its now 40 seconds from pushing the power button to having the desktop fully ready for use. The machine has Win 7, MS Office 2007, The Sony VAIO applications and drivers & AVG Antivirus... I noticed that the AVG Anti-Virus added about 8 seconds to the boot time :-(

2. The machine is much quieter

3. Generally the laptop is much more responsive. Downloaded Software applications install very quickly (After installing Office 2007 I had to download and install the SP1 update... this happened much quicker than expected). This is substantial improvement compared with a "traditional" hard drive. The regular MS windows and office updates also install noticeably quicker.

4. Office applications open... instantly (perhaps 2 seconds?) to a blank application. Files open much quicker as well (Opening office to a 1.5MB *.pptx file took about 4 seconds.

While most of these observations are subjective, the overall experience is that this did not just "enhance" the performance of my laptop, it resulted in a substantial performance transformation.

It's not cheap (paid about $455 ($475 with one day shipping), but the performance increase was certainly worth it. It feels like this is how our computers are meant to run... I alternate between more than one machine and it's going to be difficult to use the computers with conventional drives... I think there are going to be more SSDs in my future.

The only question is whether or not to get one of the cheaper "value SSDs". After reading several independent reviews I came to the conclusion that a "value SSD" was still an expensive purchase, and so decided to pay more for the Intel product. The drive controller seems to enable (by a noticable margin) the fasted seek times and least performance degradation over time. I think Kingston has now licensed this controller for it's higher end drives, but the cost seems at par with the Intel models.

My only advice is that after installing the SSD, make certain you download and run the Intel SSD toolbox to get max performance.

Hope this helps you in your decision making

I was hesitant to get this drive for my Macbook Pro (Mid-2009) for several reasons. According to the forums on Apple's site, several users were complaining of intermittent lockups after upgrading to SSDs, and there were reported problems with EDI 1.7. Since I hadn't experienced any problems with my computer to date, and could really benefit from the performance boost offered by SSDs, I took the leap. Getting into the new Mac chassis was a breeze, and getting the drive installed was a snap. After installing the drive I ran the firmware update, and used Time machine to restore my system. This process took about an hour to do over WiFi, and after restarting the computer, it was noticeably faster. Boots before using the SSD took about 40 seconds. Current boot time is around 15 seconds. Login takes about 8 seconds including all of my startup scripts which were previously disk bound. An added bonus is the fact that my laptop can now sit comfortably in my lap for several hours because there is virtually no heat at the bottom.

Furthermore, the battery life is now unbelievable. The battery monitor now reports that I have 8:29 minutes of life in the battery versus 4:27 minutes before. Actual battery life before reserve has bested at 6:52 minutes versus 5:12 minutes. I do run power saving that is more aggressive than what Apple's test scenario states because usually I do not need the full power of my laptop.

We replaced a 5 disk RAID 5 with 2 of these drives in a RAID 1 on a Windows 2003 server for Lotus Domino. They have eliminated database lockups and sped up everything significantly.

The speed is amazing. I am using in my laptop with Windows 7. It starts up and shutsdown very quickly and my applications come up almost immediately. It makes no noise when running. When I first boot up my laptop, I can't hear any sound coming from the laptop. Very cool!

I put this drive in an intel i7 vista desktop. It definitely speeded up the system. Installing programs is a lot faster and it boots applications a lot faster. I installed the 80 gig version of this drive on a 2 and half year old laptop with a 5400 rpm drive. I did a clean install of windows 7 on the laptop. The laptop is many times faster even thought it has a 1.5 Gbit/s Sata interface (i think the intel ssd maximum read speed is 2.5 Gbit/s?).

I'm using this Intel X25-M 160GB SSD in my desktop machine under Windows 7. I'm very happy with it. Booting up the machine and bringing it out of Sleep mode is significantly faster than with my old Western Digital 640 GB Caviar Black SATA 7200 RPM 32 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD6401AALS (it's not just the actual start-up that's faster -- the disk churning that used to take minutes following start-up is now over in a matter of seconds). Other positives are that I no longer have to listen to hard drive seeks and the starting up of applications is snappier. I've experienced no negatives at all. Definitely an Excellent 5 stars out of 5 rating.

Dropped it into my old ThinkPad T60 (I needed to reinstall Windows anyway) and the performance improvement is spectacular. Yes, it's expensive, but it completely removes the Achilles Heel of laptop usage - slow hard drive performance. I can now honestly say that for most of the stuff I do with it, my laptop is as fast (or faster) and responsive as my desktop.

Blazingly fast. Hits Infiniband 1.2 MB/s envelope on sustained read of large iso files etc.... Other rates blindingly fast - write, random etc... Used HD Tune Pro. Very impressive drives. The X25E series with blow your mind but at a much higer cost per GB.

This 160 GB drive works very nicely in my ThinkPad T61 running Windows 7 x64 as a hard drive replacement. Performance is remarkably good ... it extends the useful life of this computer. Also the battery now lasts longer.

Oddly, the drive came in a plain brown box with a single sheet of documentation. No 3.5" drive adapter plate and no CD, unlike the 80 GB drives I also bought. Since this was going into a laptop and not a desktop the adapter plate was not missed. Had to download and update the drive's firmware ... something also different from the 80GB drive which was already up to date.

So beware, if you ware putting this into a desktop PC that has standard 3.5 drive slots you may need to get an adapter. The customer-supplied pictures for this item show the adapter plate and also the consumer box but that's not what I got.

But the bottom line is this drive breathed new life into my 2 1/2 year old computer. Paid $429 for this.