OCZ Vertex SSD performance on the Lenovo X61

I recently replaced my 160GB 7200 RPM hard drive in my Lenovo X61 with a 60 GB OCZ Vertex SSD. The OCZ Vertex uses the new Indilinx controller instead of the Jmicron controller. The Indilinux uses an FPGA and 64 MB cache vs JMicron's much smaller cache (I've heard on the order of KB?). The performance difference is certainly noticable. Everything starts instantly, searching on outlook is very quick, boot time is about 25 seconds.

But at the end of the day, I really don't need this much speed. My 7200 drive was probably fast enough and the reduction in heat and increases in battery life were measurable, but minor. Another limitation is that the SATA I controller on the X61 is saturated by this SSD drive. My testing indicated a max read speed of about 100 MB/s vs. 150+ MB/s on a SATA II desktop controller. So, all in all not a tremendous boost in performance.

But, the drive's ability to withstand over 15Gs of shock (while operating) is a great reason for everyone to have one of these! No more 'clicking' noises coming from your hard drive, no worries about losing all your data if the machine takes a fall while operating and I have to admit that virtualization technologies (like sun's Virtual Box) do show significant speed ups.

OCZ Vertex 60GB

http://www.amazon.com/OCZ-OCZSSD2-1VTX60G-Vertex-Solid-State/dp/B001NPCTBE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1246233891&sr=8-1