Where Can I Get An Intel Ssd?

[nikster]

Does anyone know where I can get the latest Intel SSDs?

Do they have them at Pantip / BKK?

[leftnose]

You might call JIB Computer.

They have the 80 GB X25-M listed on their site.

80 GB.SOLID STATE INTEL SOLID STATE X25-M

I have no idea what is the latest model however.

[nikster]

You might call JIB Computer.

They have the 80 GB X25-M listed on their site.

80 GB.SOLID STATE INTEL SOLID STATE X25-M

I have no idea what is the latest model however.

Thanks - the price implies this is the old one, the new one has a MSRP of USD 225 for 80GB, and 450 USD for 160. The old one was nearly 2x as expensive. The new one is also much better over time, so only interested in the new one.

I'll check with them, maybe they'll get new ones soon as Intel is depleting the generation 1 stocks world-wide at the moment.

[nikster]

BTW the new ones are these serial numbers - Intel didn't really provide a clear new name, in their infinite wisdom...

SSDSA2MH160G2C1 - Intel SSD Generation 2 Postville, X-25M, 160GB

SSDSA2MH080G2C1 - As above, 80GB

What's different from the previous generation is the "G2" in the above item numbers. The old ones are G1.

[namoo]

Not available as far as i can tell. In fact I only found 1 retailer in fortune it mall that stocked gen1 drives. only 60gb OCZ vertex 2 drives could be found in Pantip at jedi cool.

[nikster]

Well - quick internet survey shows they are pretty much sold out all over the USA too, so no wonder... it's surprising not more dealers want to stock them though, maybe the whole SSD thing has so far escaped the attention of the local shops.

The 80GB at about 7000 THB is interesting for a lot of Thais, too. The times where these cost 15K and up are past us...

Reading the reviews, it doesn't make sense to buy any SSD right now other than Intel. There are a few Indilinx drives that can kinda sorta compete but the Intels - even the G1! - blow everything else clear out of the water. It doesn't compare. See here for a fantastic article plus comparison tests

http://anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631

[Tywais]

I've been looking at those for the last couple of days. Right now I'm waiting on the X25-E based on SLC technology to show up here with its 200MB/s write speed. Or, since the OCX Vertex has fixed their performance issues and is now a cost effective option.

[heron]

Just posting a note for lonely travelers looking for an answer to the original question:

"Are there any Intel X25 disks in Thailand/Bangkok?"

Yes, I bought one at Pantip 3rd floor at a shop called Comp-Ware. I found them through Google, searching for the product code [1] (their websites [2,3] are quite messy, although they give you a phone number and a map...). The shop looks proper and they told me they would honor Intels 3 year warranty on the drive (I assume by mailing the hardware to Intel). I think they have all different versions of X25 on offer (X25-E, X25-M G1/G2 80/160GB, maybe even X25-V) and they seem to be doing honest business (they showed me the old G1 version (black box instead of blue), mentioning that it was the old one), but I also got the feeling that they won't barter on the drive (I think it's still pretty rare in Bangkok and as discussed below, the price is good).

I bought the X25-M Gen2 160Gb retail (box) version (SSDSA2MH160G2R5). I'm not sure whether they have (and sell over the counter) the OEM version (SSDSA2MH160G2C1), which would be just the disk without package and 2.5'' to 3.5'' rackmount at a cheaper price, you'll probably have to ask them directly. The price for the retail version was THB 16500 which is IMO very nice, it's pretty much exactly what you'd pay in the States today (retail version at Newegg.com is listed at $499). To find out what version you need, check out Intels own summary [4].

My gut feeling is to recommend the shop, but I just bought the drive there today, so take it with a grain of salt...

Hope that helps someone. And now I have to leave you alone and actually install my new drive

[1] www.compware.in.th/product/harddisk-solid-state/intel-solid-state-drive-80gb160gb

[2] www.compware.in.th/

[3] www.compware-agency.com/

[4] www.intel.com/cd/channel/reseller/apac/eng/products/nand/feature/index.htm

[nikster]

Just posting a note for lonely travelers looking for an answer to the original question:

"Are there any Intel X25 disks in Thailand/Bangkok?"

Yes, I bought one at Pantip 3rd floor at a shop called Comp-Ware. I found them through Google, searching for the product code [1] (their websites [2,3] are quite messy, although they give you a phone number and a map...). The shop looks proper and they told me they would honor Intels 3 year warranty on the drive (I assume by mailing the hardware to Intel). I think they have all different versions of X25 on offer (X25-E, X25-M G1/G2 80/160GB, maybe even X25-V) and they seem to be doing honest business (they showed me the old G1 version (black box instead of blue), mentioning that it was the old one), but I also got the feeling that they won't barter on the drive (I think it's still pretty rare in Bangkok and as discussed below, the price is good).

I bought the X25-M Gen2 160Gb retail (box) version (SSDSA2MH160G2R5). I'm not sure whether they have (and sell over the counter) the OEM version (SSDSA2MH160G2C1), which would be just the disk without package and 2.5'' to 3.5'' rackmount at a cheaper price, you'll probably have to ask them directly. The price for the retail version was THB 16500 which is IMO very nice, it's pretty much exactly what you'd pay in the States today (retail version at Newegg.com is listed at $499). To find out what version you need, check out Intels own summary [4].

My gut feeling is to recommend the shop, but I just bought the drive there today, so take it with a grain of salt...

Hope that helps someone. And now I have to leave you alone and actually install my new drive

[1] www.compware.in.th/product/harddisk-solid-state/intel-solid-state-drive-80gb160gb

[2] www.compware.in.th/

[3] www.compware-agency.com/

[4] www.intel.com/cd/channel/reseller/apac/eng/products/nand/feature/index.htm

Good info, and a very good price indeed.

I have the 80GB version, it's an incredible performer. Paid close to USD 300 for it in Europe - I was just there and they were all sold out in the USA at the time. I replaced my laptop's optical drive with the SSD, and the HD with a 500GB HD, so I thought I'd only need 80GB. By and large, that's true, but I had to symlink some files off the system drive (Mac OS X) that I'd in a perfect world rather leave where they were. So I'd recommend the 160GB.

[heron]

I have the 80GB version, it's an incredible performer. Paid close to USD 300 for it in Europe - I was just there and they were all sold out in the USA at the time. I replaced my laptop's optical drive with the SSD, and the HD with a 500GB HD, so I thought I'd only need 80GB. By and large, that's true, but I had to symlink some files off the system drive (Mac OS X) that I'd in a perfect world rather leave where they were. So I'd recommend the 160GB.

(nickster: I assume that you know pretty much all of this, because you linked the anandtech article, but maybe someone else wants to give SSDs a try and hasn't thought about it in detail yet. So I'm just summing up my thoughts on the subject )

I think the average user should be able to trim down a regular day-to-day Mac OS X installation to about 50-60 GB for use on an SSD without too much hassle. Even though the throughput is fantastic for the SSD, you're not going to need it for instance for movies and music, because of how you consume them (watching a movie is not a lot of work for your computer or your HDD, and whether that movie starts playing in 0.05s (SSD) or in 0.8s (HDD) is IMHO not very important, as long as it doesn't skip during playback. On the other hand, I care a lot about whether all my applications are responsive when working, and I usually have plenty of stuff open that doesn't fit into my RAM (4GB), so it gets swapped out. The swap files are probably the most important thing to keep on the SSD, and this includes application specific swap files like for Photoshop. The OS swap files are on the boot volume by default, meaning if you install your OS to your SSD you're set (true for Windows & Mac OS X, Linux is a bit different). This means, you'd have to move ~/Music, ~/Movies, ~/Downloads, and wherever you're keeping your temporary stuff to a second HDD (preferably internal, external works well except for maybe ~/Downloads). Everything else stays on the SSD (which I guess is like 40 GB for a used installation + 10 GB for swap files + 10 GB free to not shorten your SSDs lifetime (explained in the anandtech article linked above). The 40 GB estimate increases if you have other things that benefit from being on the SSD: Games (loading tons of textures from disk into graphics card memory), VMWare/Parallels & Co. image files, software development files (my own use case), etc.

That being said, I'm also on a MacBook, and I pretty much had the same thoughts. I'm still running on a 120 GB HD which is full to the rim, even though I'm using it in combination with external disks. I figured that if I had to do with 80 GB, it would be extremely tight. I'm still playing with the idea of replacing my optical drive, but decided to first work with the 160 GB and just move all unnecessary stuff to an external drive in the meantime. I think I can't use the optical drive for the SSD anyway, since my optical drive isn't connected via SATA (have to verify first). But I assume that some bulk HDD storage should work in that slot.

nickster: What directories did you end up symlinking from the SSD to the HDD? Did you come to the same conclusion like what I outlined above?

And also: does anyone know whether they sell any optical drive bay HDD adapters in Bangkok/Thailand? Offerings I've seen on the web: OptiBay, NewModeus, DualDrive.

[regedit]

Curious as to why Intel say the 40Gb version would see "Improved responsiveness and performance over a 5400 RPM hard drive"...how about against a 7,200 RPM HDD ?

[Tywais]

Curious as to why Intel say the 40Gb version would see "Improved responsiveness and performance over a 5400 RPM hard drive"...how about against a 7,200 RPM HDD ?

I suspect that the original intent of the drives (2.5") are for notebooks where 5400 rpm is the norm.

[nikster]

Curious as to why Intel say the 40Gb version would see "Improved responsiveness and performance over a 5400 RPM hard drive"...how about against a 7,200 RPM HDD ?

An SSD, and the X-25 M in particular, blows any HD clear out of the water. Tests vs. HD speed are usually done against the fastest HD out there, I think a 10,000 RPM WD Caviar, and HD stands no chance in small random read/write tests. It's more closely matched large file read/write throughput but even there the SSDs win. So in the end, in some tests SSDs are much faster than HDs. In others, orders of magnitude faster. No competition. HDs of course win hands down in capacity, and price/capacity, $100 for a 500GB HD.

[nikster]

I have the 80GB version, it's an incredible performer. Paid close to USD 300 for it in Europe - I was just there and they were all sold out in the USA at the time. I replaced my laptop's optical drive with the SSD, and the HD with a 500GB HD, so I thought I'd only need 80GB. By and large, that's true, but I had to symlink some files off the system drive (Mac OS X) that I'd in a perfect world rather leave where they were. So I'd recommend the 160GB.

nickster: What directories did you end up symlinking from the SSD to the HDD? Did you come to the same conclusion like what I outlined above?

And also: does anyone know whether they sell any optical drive bay HDD adapters in Bangkok/Thailand? Offerings I've seen on the web: OptiBay, NewModeus, DualDrive.

I like to carry TV shows and series around, and I never used the optical drive in my notebook, so replacing it was a no brainer. I used the NewModeus enclosure, they shipped it to me for $11 via USPS, no customs paid. Very good service too, I can recommend them. If your optical drive is PATA I think you need to get an old ATA HD, so that might be more problematic. Newer MacBook Pros have SATA optical drives. Everything you'd ever want to know about this mod is here:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=680228

You might want to skip forward, it's a very long thread, lots of people have done it using different opti bay installs. I think there were some that got a $15 enclosure from ebay to work. The original post is about installing a HD with just a few spare parts and duct tape, but considering that this is your data, and that optibay enclosures are pretty cheap (apart from the original MCE one), the consensus is that it's not worth it. Even the author of the original post said that on page 1 or 2.

I have symlinked Music / Movies, I moved some rarely used but very large apps out to the HD, and I symlinked some stuff from ApplicationSupport, example GarageBand libraries weighing about 2GB, and others. I've also now symlinked the iPhone backup b/c it's grown to 6GB. I have 20GB left on the SSD. Virtual machine images are on the HD as well, they're just too big about 20GB each.

I could have symlinked out downloads and things like that but here is the catch: If you swap out folders that are used frequently, then the HD will spin up, costing additional battery life. I have made it so that I can do all the things I normally do, save for music and movies, without the HD. That means I can unmount the HD if I must, improving battery life significantly. A hard disk + SSD when both are in operation use more battery than a hard disk alone. A SSD with the HD unmounted, use less than a single HD. So my battery life is better than before when I unmount the HD, and worse when the HD is mounted and/or in use.

I don't worry about the SSD performance. This topic is a moving target. The first generation had some serious issues once all sectors had been written to once, so I don't think keeping 10 - 20GB spare would even help this -everything is going to be used eventually. The new generation SSDs uses various technologies to address those technical issues. It's pretty technical but I think eventually SSDs will just work as expected, and without performance degradation. My SSD is very fast since the firmware upgrade (a whole different issue BTW, it's impossible without optical drive so I had to get an external one).

PS: If you have a PC and are thinking about this be aware that most PCs use PATA connectors for the optical drive, even though HDs are connected with SATA.