Type of SSD Have You Installed???

Question

Hello all - I have a T61 with Win Vista Pro and want to find out from those with a similar configuration, what type, brand and size SSD have you installed? How easy it was and how does it continue to operate.
My current HD is 164g and getting quite crowded and slow...
Thanks... bo1953
T61, 6465, Vista

Answer 1

[Edited to correct typo in text.  AG]
Hello,
I have had good results with Corsair, Crucial, Intel, Kingston and MyDigitalSSD SSDs in my ThinkPads.  In particular, I have used both a 64GB Crucial SSD and an 80GB Intel SSD in my T61p and they both seemed to work fine.  A couple of generalizations:
As hausman pointed out, the latest generation of SSDs operate at faster read/write speeds than the T61-series supports, which is somewhat fixable by installing a modified (non-Lenovo/IBM) BIOS.  I have not done this myself, but from all accounts it seems to work well.  Even if you do not choose to perform this unofficial upgrade, you can still get a faster SSD that operates at the latest speeds.  After all, you might one day get a new computer which fully supports that speed, and you'll be able to re-use the SSD purchased for the T61 in that unit.
Most SSDs are sized for laptop computers (even those which go into desktops) and are the same 2.5" size as their HDD counterparts.  However, 2.5" SATA SSDs come in two heights, the standard 9.5mm height and the shorter 7mm height (used for subnotebooks, ultrabooks and other very portable computers).
You might want to consider getting a 7mm high SSD (which sometimes come with a 2.5mm spacer) and should fit fine into the T61's drive bay.  There's typically no difference in pricing that I've seen for the two heights, since the SSDs themselves are actually circuitboards which are even less than 7mm high—the only difference is in the plastic or metal shroud which surrounds them.
The reason for doing this is, again, future-proofing:  It could be that your next notebook computer only has a 7mm high drive bay, and if you want to re-use your SSD with it, you would need to remove it from its shroud (a warranty-voiding move) and put some kind of insulation around it.  If you go with a 7mm high SSD with a 2.5mm spacer, you can just remove the spacer and the SSD will fit into that new computer without having to do any additional work.
Any SSD that you decide on will be faster than any HDD you install in your T61, but with a little extra planning, you might be able to purchase an SSD that will be re-usable for a longer time.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
I am a volunteer and neither a Lenovo nor a Microsoft employee. • Dexter is a good dog • Dexter je dobrý pes
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