Dell Precision M4400 and SSD please help.

I'm new to SSD so please guide me.

I want to upgrade the internal 2.5" drive to 256GB SSD
so does my PC (M4400) support SATA interface 1.0 or 2.0 or 3.0 or all?
cause i'm looking to buy the fastest compatible one.

any good suggestion for the SSD brand?
I'm going to store on a valuable data.

many thanks...

 

The M4400 is SATA II. You can use any SATA SSD, though. SATA III drives will obviously be capped by the SATA II bus, but you generally won't notice the difference. Buy an Intel or Samsung, but make sure you back up your data regardless of what drive you get.

 

thanks a lot buddy, i will pick a sata 3.0 then considering a future upgrade to the whole system.

do u mind an additional question please,

what if i add a mini card 64gb internal ( in the place of the 3G card)
for booting and keep the current 500GB as storage.
is this mini card compatible with M4400 board? which model exactly?
and can it be made bootable drive?
and if both yes what version of windows will support this mini card:
xp, vista or 7 (all x64 bit)?

many thanks again.
appreciated.

 

I don't think you can use an mPCIe SSD in the M4400, but I'm not 100% sure on that. If it does work, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to install any OS on it, though.

 

If you install any SSD, no matter where, keep in mind that SSD suport in XP is virtually non-existent. XP will work, but you will only realize a fraction of the speed benefit of the SSD, unless you do the following:

1.) Manually partition the drive using a tool like parted (on Linux Live CDs) to align the partitions at least to the erase block size of your SSD.

2.) Switch your BIOS to AHCI operation (do this for Windows 7, too)

3.) Slipstream AHCI drivers for your notebook into the XP installation image or have a floppy drive and a floppy disk with the driver available during installation. (Otherwise, XP will bluescreen during installation)

4.) XP does not support trim. Your SSD manufacturer may have a driver or manual wipe tool available. Either install that driver or run the wipe tool once a month to erase blocks no longer used by the file system.

No idea about Vista, never used it.

In short: use Windows 7