Performance question regarding Intel SSD drive

[idata]

Hi all,

I have been reading rave reviews about the Intel X25-M Mainstream SSDSA2M160G2XXX 2.5" 160GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD) drive.

I use a laptop (Lenovo W500) and currently use 7200 RPM SATA drives. I run VMWare Workstation a lot and am looking for performance improvements that possibly the above SSD will provide.

Here are a few performance questions/topics that hopefully you can help me with:

Typically the best way to have good VMWare performance (other than CPU and RAM) is to be sure to store/run the VM images themselves from another internal, non-USB drive. Meaning, you power up your pc and VMWare Workstation is installed in c:\program files yet your actual VMs are stored in d:\vmfiles or something...this way the 2nd hard drive is free from Windows' normal disk i/o nonsense. Therefore, I can imagine improving drive performance by 1 of 2 options:

1)Install the Intel SSD drive as my 2nd drive...the c drive (where Windows is installed) will still be a SATA 7200 RPM drive.

2)Install the Intel SSD drive as BOTH my drives...therefore, a definite performance gain because I am no longer using traditional non-SSD drives

My big question is: Do you think # 1 will give me a performance increase in my daily use of VMWare or will I really need to go with option # 2? I'm not a super VMWare expert but I believe all VM disk i/o is done on the drive where the VM files are stored (in my case, the D drive)...and therefore, theoretically # 1 would give me a performance increase if I am correct. But, a part of me says that VMWare Workstation's inner workings (not the VM) is utilizing the Windows Page File that is stored on the C drive...so if I do # 1, I won't get as much of a performance gain as doing # 2.

I hope my question makes sense.

Again, my use case is all around Windows (XP or 7 or 2008 Server) and VMWare Workstation...the W500 laptop currently has 4gig of RAM and will likely go to 8GB soon...and the CPU is a 2.53GHz dual core Intel. The VMs run ok now, but after reading about the Intel SSD being faster than many RAID configurations, I just had to come here and ask around. I am aware of the traditional methods of increasing system and VM performance, but until recently, laptop drive performance was the last frontier to be improved.

Thanks so much in advance for your help!

-Eric

[idata]

First, forget XP and go to Windows 7. You will likely see an SP1 for Windows 7 in the near future and Windows 7 is in my opinion better than XP. You must remember that with SSD you do not want to defrag--never, not at all.

I have everything on my SSD, OS, files, pictures, games, and Microsoft Office 2007. Depending on how much capacity you need will dictate what you do with what you have.

I believe SSD will work with XP, but you would have to run TRIM on schedule or manually; XP will not pass the TRIM command automatically.