Product Description

The Intel X25-M SATA Solid State Drive (SSD) delivers leading performance in industry standard 2.5" form factor while simultaneously improving system responsiveness for mobile applications over standard rotating drive media or hard disk drives. By combining Intel's leading NAND flash memory technology with the innovative high performance controller, Intel delivers an SSD for native Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) hard disk drive drop-in replacement with enhanced performance, reliability, ruggedness and power savings.Since there are no rotating platters, moving heads, fragile actuators, or unnecessary delays due to spin-up time or positional seek time that can slow down the storage subsystem significantly, the Intel X25-M SATA SSD enables fast read/write access times and a significant I/O and throughput performance improvement as compared to rotating media or hard disk drives.

Product Details

• Brand: Intel
• Model: SSDSA2MH080G105901460
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 3.94" h x 3.94" w x 5.91" l, .44 pounds
• Hard Disk: 80GB

Features

• 80 GB Solid State Drive provides outstanding performance and durability in a 2.5" form factor
• No moving parts for faster performance and higher durability
• Sustained sequential read speeds of up to 250 MBps and write speeds of up to 70 MBps
• SATA interface provides up to 3GBps data throughput
• Backed by a three-year warranty

Amazon.com Product Description
Amazon.com Product Description The future of computer storage is here! With the Intel X-25M Mainstream SATA Solid State Drive, you'll experience dramatically faster disk performance and greater durability than traditional hard drives. Since it uses NAND flash memory instead of spinning platters for storage, there's no waiting for disks to spin up, and there are no moving parts to worry about breaking down.

Experience blazing fast disk performance with the X-25M drive.

A New Kind of Storage for Faster Data Access
The X-25M is an SATA hard drive with a capacity of 80 GB in a 2.5-inch form factor that will work anywhere a regular 2.5-inch hard drive does, such as in notebook computers and external enclosures.

But don't think that the X-25M is your normal drive. Instead of using spinning platters like traditional hard drives, the X-25M is a Solid State Drive (SSD) and uses flash memory for storage, giving you dramatically faster data access. If you need more disk space, the X-25M also comes in a 160 GB version.

Performs Even Faster than Other Solid State Drives
Intel has been making memory chips for decades, and this experience is on clear display with the X-25M drive. This drive uses Intel's Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND Flash Memory that delivers better performance than other SSDs thanks to an advanced architecture and technologies such as Native Command Queuing, which enables up to 32 simultaneous operations. The result is sustained sequential read speeds of up to 250 MBps, sustained sequential write speeds of up to 70 MBps, and a read latency of just 85 microseconds.

And by using the SATA interface that offers data throughput of up to 3.0 Gbps, you can duly take advantage of all the speed. What all this means for you is that applications launch instantaneously, files copy in less time, and your overall productivity is significantly increased.

Higher Reliability and Silent Operation
Compared to traditional hard drives, the X-25M is both faster and more durable. Since it doesn't have spinning disks or writing heads, there are fewer parts to fail. It is also less susceptible to vibrations and shock and is completely silent. The X-25M is rated at 1.2 million hours mean time before failure (MTBF) for superb reliability.

Lower Power Consumption is Good for the Environment
The X-25M also consumes far less power than traditional drives, which saves you money and makes it an environmentally friendly choice. When installed in a laptop, you'll experience better battery life, so you can work longer on those cross-country plane trips. Additionally, the drive is certified RoHS compliant for its use of non-hazardous materials.

The Intel X-25M Mainstream SATA Solid State Drive supports Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) commands as well as additional SSD monitoring. It is backed by a three-year limited warranty.

The X-25M has no moving parts for faster and more reliable performance.

Customer Reviews

One of the best SSD on the market
Purchased this drive to go in my Lenovo Ideapad U330. The performance is awesome. The drive is silent since there's no moving parts. Using a SSD also decrease the heat output and energy usage also. The computer is much cooler and uses less energy than before, thus longer battery life. Before this, I had also purchased an OCZ Core 64GB SSD to use in my new Lenovo at $280. That drive, the OCZ Core, was horrible, the performance on HD Tach was 130MB/sec which is good, but it wasn't the benchmark performance that was bad, it was real world use. To use the OCZ drive as a primary OS drive was impossible. It was plague with stops and stutters. Most of the good reviews about how SSD was so fast are from users using an SLC (single level cell) drive. Usually an OCZ SSD or a G.Skill SSD in a sivler case both of which are a rebranded Samsung drive.
This Intel drive is a MLC (multi level cell) drive but intel developed a new technology on how the drive is read and write so it does not suffer from stutters like other MLC drive. This drive performance on HD Tach was equivalent to a RAID (0): SATA WD Raptor 74GB drive at 10,000 rpm. The benchmark on the Intel: Burst speed: 194.4 MB/sec, Average read: 114.3 MB/sec, Random Access: 0.3ms. The benchmark on the Raptor was Burst speed: 197.9 MB/sec, Average read: 110.6 MB/sec and Random Access: 8.6ms. As you can see this drive improves laptop performace by quite a bit. Worth every penny.

Don't Replace Your Laptop! Replace Your Hard Drive!
I bought this SSD to place into a new laptop I purchased (Samsung X460). However, prior to using the new laptop I figured I would install this SSD in my old laptop first, just to see if it made a difference. It did! Vista now boots in about 15 Seconds and shuts down in about 5 seconds! No more need for hibernate mode! Word documents open immediately! Visual Studio projects that used to take 10-20 seconds to open now open in 1-2 seconds! IE opens immediately! The list goes on and on! Needless to say I'm very happy with the results so I returned the new laptop unopened and kept my money.

This drive is by far the best upgrade I have ever performed. Since installing it my laptop now runs substantially cooler. It used to get so hot in my lap but not anymore! I will never go back to spinning drives again!

The only con I can find about this drive is the storage size. It would be nice to have 120gb+ drive but as of today the larger Intel drive is simply too expensive. To be sure, there are larger drives out there from other manufacturers, but in this price range none come close to the performance of the Intel drive. However, my laptop does have an SD card reader so I slapped in a 16GB SDHC Class 6 card to help out. I use the SD card to hold my music files and other data files. It works out perfect!

Again, I highly recommend this SSD. For the price it is the fastest SSD available. The bottleneck in most computers is the hard drive. This item addresses that issue.

Performance Tips(to try): If you have enough RAM(3+GB), disable virtual memory. You can also disable pre-fetch. For further improvements, just Google "SSD Optimization Tips." Most operating systems were designed to work with spinning hard drives and some of that stuff may hinder the speed of a SSD.

An amazing improvement in computer speed
I have to say that this is undoubtably the most amazing improvement that I've made in my system in as long as I can remember. The only thing that I can remember like this is the time that I bought a 3Dfx Voodoo 3D card and used it to play my first 3D accelerated game.

Vista 64 boots to the desktop in ~22 seconds from the "press any key to boot from CD" until the desktop appears. And the system is immediately responsive when the desktop appears - you can click on things and they come right up as if Vista's not busy loading a whole lot of stuff. The drive is absolutely quiet - which is a bit weird actually - but weird in a nice way. It's completely cool - in fact, it's made out of metal that feels like thick brushed aluminum and it feels cold to the touch. I'm a gamer and Warhammer launches in literally half the time that it used to and the loading sequences between zones feels much faster than it used to. Everything feels much faster than it used to. Even little programs like iTunes, and Firefox that never felt particularly slow feel like they are way faster to load and come up.

I'm upgrading from a Hitatchi 1TB Deskstar - I presume if I had a WD Raptor or Velociraptor, or some RAID0 setup that I wouldn't be so impressed. But coming off of a fairly fast single 7200rpm 1TB drive, this drive is a massive improvement


On the negatives, well, 80GB is pretty small. I had a hard time fitting my Vista Ultimate 64 directory tree, my Program Files and Program Files (x86) directories onto it with room to spare for a couple of my favorite games. I have about 7GB free. And there's still a bunch of games that are left on my "old" 1TB drive. It's supposed to be low power - but 80GB is too little for me to actually use (my photo library alone is 300GB.. the problem of RAW mode and a DSLR), so I have to keep my 1TB drive plugged in. So about the best that I can say is that it probably doesn't add a lot more power to my system. It's also extremely expensive for the capacity you get.

But aside from the small capacity and the cringingly high retail price, I am amazed at what a difference it made in my computer..