X25-M seems to be running slow.

[idata]

I have a ThinkPad X200 with an Intel X25-M SSD. The machine is running a clean install Vista SP2. For some reason I can't figure out, my machine doesn't be running very quickly. When I run the benchmarks everything seems to check out, but the latency just doesn't seem to be there. It doesn't seem to boot very qucikly, taking about a minute or so to complete. Things open with about the same quickness as the Seagate platter based drive. I think I must have missed something, but I don't have clue what it woud be. Anyone have a suggestion for getting this straightened out? Thanks for any help.

[idata]

Yes, it does look better, but my notebook came with Vista. I shouldn't have to spend an extra $100+ to get it to get less than optimal performance and I don't even like Windows 7. When I ran the benches it was after a clean install with the partition wiped and formatted, and just the Rapid Restore F6 drivers installed. I don't know that trim was needed five minutes after completeling the install. This shouldn't be this difficult. I don't think loading a driver during installation is unreasonable, but to have to go through this many hoops to get less than optimal performance is not good business. It's not like it said doesn't work optimally without doing this, this and this on the box.

My notebook isn't from some comanpy you've never heard of or low rate brand, but a ThinkPad with an Intel Chipset and SATA controller. I don't understand how Intel can put out a product that runs on their stuff and is this difficult to get working correctly. I've gathered in my search for a solution, Lenovo is not the only ones having problems with this, but HP, Dell, Asus are having trouble with this as well.

I understand this isn't your fault. Please don't take it as such and thank you for the help so far, but it really blows that I just spent $200 on this drive that gives me no better performance than a platter based drive and no one at Intel can seem to help me. If anyone has any solutions, I'm all ears.

[idata]

Intel drives should just work out the box. They report the correct geometry so the OS can align the drive automatically (don't know what happened to yours), trim works automatically and defrag is tuned off by default…..if you are running Windows 7. If you are using an older OS you can use the Intel toolbox to either run a manual or scheduled trim. You should also manually turn off defrag if you are not using Win 7. Other than that the drive should just work without having to do anything else. If you switch back to Vista and use trim you should see around the same performance as Win 7.

All SSD's degrade to some extent without trim. If it's not possible to trim the drive a secure erase with hdderase gets the drive back to factory condition.

It's probably a bit unrealistic to expect optimum performance from a laptop in comparison to a workstation. Intel drives work better on ICH 9 and above than any other controller out there unless you are using more than 2 drives in raid 0. (My opinion anyway).

[idata]

Well, I finished my clean install the clean install of Vista and got things the way I like them. I ran the optimizer and the AS SSD Bench. My score was 228. It was originally 363 right after the install. To me it doesn't seem any faster than a platter based drive in boot time or opening things. I did all the tips like turn off indexing, system restore, hibernate, etc. It hasn't made a bit of difference. At this point, I don't know what to say. My drive is only about a month old. I don't know how much it could degrade in a month. I would say it hasn't worked out of the box for me. The main benefit to me is the quiet operation, but I don't know that that is worth the $$$ to me or to give up 400GB of space.