SSD | PeterKellner.netPeterKellner.net

Recently, I posted about the new SSD drive I have for my Lenovo W520 Core-I7 smokin’ fast notebook computer (OCZ Vertex 3) Clearly I was in the honey moon period because everything seemed blazingly fast. However, reality set in and the computer started hanging, refusing to boot all the way, have pregnant pauses, etc. I called OCZ tech support and they suggest reload a fresh version of windows (now that’s a big help!). I then posted to the Lenovo forums asking for advice on anything special I need to do when reloading. Instead, I got what seems to be the answer to my problem from a user by the name of “Gan” from Norway.

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/W-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/Need-to-Repave-my-W520-with-Windows-7-Ultimate-Use-Vanilla/td-p/439787

I finally got home from a long week of travel, did a full backup of my computer just in case the registry hack failed, and applied the registry fix discussed in the article here: http://geekmontage.com/texts/ocz-vertex-3-freezes-locks-up-stutters-and-crashes/.

I can say, after using the computer for a few hours, I have not had one hickup. I’m hoping it stays that way. For anyone else who thinks they have the same problem, here are some of the issues I was having:

W520 would boot slowly and about 1 out of 5 times hang forever after reaching the logged in screan (wait cursor when hovering over startbar)
Outlook would hang in the middle of typing messages, often for more than a minute
Eventlog errors referring to location iaStor
Visual Studio 2010 would get really slow and hang
Many others

Here is what my current stats look like. This is a newer version of CrystalDiskMark so it may not be comparable to the previous version I ran.

For the moment, I’m a happy camper.

Important Update 5/13/2011: …/nasty-problem-with-ocz-vertex-3-ssd-on-lenovo-w520-solved/

Let me get the fireworks out of the way first so you don’t need to wait for the numbers

OCZ Technology 240 GB Vertex 3 SATA III 6.0 Gb/s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive VTX3-25SAT3-240G: Electronics

For those that don’t know what these numbers represent, let me tell you, this is a screamer! The W520 actually supports the SATA III interface spec which goes up 600MB. I was wondering if it would actually work and I have to say, if it’s showing Sequential reads of 472.2 MB/second, it must be working. The drive holds 240Gig and currently costs about $600.

In contrast, the drive I had before in my Lenovo W520 was no slouch. It was a 256Gig Patriot Torqx M28. The numbers are below run from the same Lenovo W520 computer.

Patriot Memory 256 GB 2.5-Inch Torqx Solid-State Drive PTX256GS25SSDR: Electronics

Just by way of comparison to a rotating disk, my configuration in the Lenovo W520 is I put my boot drive (the SSD) in the slot normally used by the DVD and I put my data disk (mydoc’s, etc.) where the normal built in disk goes. I’ve got a 750GB Hitachi drive that simply rotates platters around (but costs less than $100). The numbers are not quite as impressive.