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    SSD for Inspiron 6400

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by westmeadboy, Jan 8, 2010.

  1. westmeadboy

    westmeadboy Newbie

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    I'm running Windows 7 Home Premium on an Inspiron 6400 with 2GB RAM.

    There's often quite a bit of swapping going on. Unfortunately, from what I've read I cannot upgrade the amount of RAM. So I was wondering if I'd get much of a performance boost by buying a SSD and sticking the swap file on that? Or maybe the entire OS?

    I'd prefer to keep my existing HD and so I was wondering whether buying a SSD Express Card may be the way forward. Or is that too slow?

    Thanks for any help.
     
    westmeadboy, Jan 8, 2010
    #1
  2. tilleroftheearth

    tilleroftheearth Wisdom listens quietly...

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    If you have an ExpressCard slot and can get (or, like me, already have) an ExpressCard SSD inexpensively, then maybe eBoostr is the way to go?

    See:
    http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=435052


    That thread is older, but it does allow you to see great performance increase eBoostr may have on your system.

    When I compared it to a Torqx SSD, it made the $400 SDD pale in price/performance ratio.

    See:
    http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=436882


    Download the latest beta (which has been rock stable for me) from here:

    See:
    http://beta.eboostr.com/download/


    Even if you don't have an ExpressCard slot, I would still download and try it with any spare USB key you have lying around.

    Good luck.
     
    tilleroftheearth, Jan 8, 2010
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  3. westmeadboy

    westmeadboy Newbie

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    Thanks for that - some interesting links.

    I've just been trying a 8GB class 4 SD card with ReadyBoost but haven't run any tests against it yet.

    I see a class 4 SD card should run at 4MB/s. But then this ExpressCard:

    http://www.simms.co.uk/memory/pretec/products/expresscards 34ssd robust aes protection.html

    quotes 30MB/s.

    I definitely do have an ExpressCard slot. I'm just wondering what sort of performance improvements I will get over using the SD card.
     
    westmeadboy, Jan 8, 2010
    #3
  4. K-TRON

    K-TRON Hi, I'm Jimmy Diesel ^_^

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    You can use an SSD as the primary boot device in the E1505
    The system is limited to 150mb/sec, so there is no point in buying the fastest SSD out there.
    I have never dipped into expresscard SSD's, so I cant be of help there.
    SD cards are much slower than a typical harddrive, so I dont think you are getting anywhere with that.

    K-TRON
     
    K-TRON, Jan 8, 2010
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  5. westmeadboy

    westmeadboy Newbie

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    Yeah, although class 10 SD cards give about 25MB/s I think and so are only slightly slower than the ExpressCard I posted above. Still, nowhere near the 150MB/s limit you mentioned.

    I was kind of thinking that even if the SSD is not much faster than the hard drive, things would generally be faster because the hard drive would then do less thrashing around (tech term?)...?
     
    westmeadboy, Jan 8, 2010
    #5