The X300 is interesting on two points; it offers a SSD and an integrated DVD burner.

The 64 GB Solid State Hard Drive

The X300 comes equipped with a 64 GB solid state hard drive (SSD) supplied by Samsung (MCCOE64G8MPP) with a micro SATA interface.

We recorded a read speed of 80 MB/s with an access time of 0.2ms for the SSD hard drive, which uses a 256 kB memory block.

The first result (HD-Tune) shows a slower speed because the program uses 64 kB blocks by default. By using 256 kB blocks that are adapted to an SSD architecture, the speed gap was closed.

The DVD burner

Lenovo succeeded in integrating a DVD burner inside the X300. The Panasonic UJ 844 ATA burner is just 7 mm thick and has a seemingly fragile drawer.

The drive’s fast speed enabled us to copy files from an audio CD in just 3 minutes and 23 seconds, while the MacBook Pro required 3 minutes and 45 seconds for the same task and the slim external MacBook Air drive needed 2 minutes and 47 seconds to do the job.

Replacing the SSD Drive

The SSD is easily replaced, but once you take it out of the machine, there are not many other applications for it since the micro SATA interface is still uncommon. Note that a 1.8" 120 GB unit with a speed of 5400 rpm exits, but Lenovo does not seem interested. As for the optical drive, it can be replaced by a three-cell battery. For those who thought of replacing the optical drive with a hard drive (like one found in other Lenovo laptop), the drive is only 7 mm thick, which is smaller than most hard drives. Only 1.8" / 5 mm thick hard drives could be inserted, which have maximum capacities of 80 GB.