SSD on old laptops: Conflicting advice

Hi all,

a way back I asked on this forum on ways to improve my 2006 laptop. I have followed the tips and the performance has improved a lot.

One of the suggestions was to install a Solid State drive, and by reading documentation on the internet, they seem to be a great improvement for old laptops.

This article I have found, shows an SSD upgrade on a laptop with a sligtly higher spec than mine, with very positive feedback. http://www.laptopmag.com/advice/tips/can-an-ssd-save-an-old-notebook.aspx?page=1

But when I went to a few computer stores to get quotes, all the shopkeepers advised me against this upgrade claiming that the performance increase would not be that great.

So basically I'm wondering is this upgrade worth my money, and which advice I should follow?

I dont want to buy a new laptop yet, and I mainly use it for Adobe CS4 for web and graphic design.

Thanks for the help!


SONY VAIO FE21B
Intel Centrino Core Duo T2300 Processor 1.66 GHz
2GB DDRII-533MHz SDRAM
80 GB Hard Drive
15.4" WXGA Widescreen TFT Screen with X-Black Technology
NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400 TurboCache 256MB dedicated graphics
Operating System: Windows XP Media Center Edition -

 

OCZ Agility 60GB drives regularly drop under $140, buy one of those, it's definitely a worth the money upgrade to spruce up an old system.

 

Well if you don't want to buy a new computer then the SSD is the next best thing. In my opinion any 7200 rpm HD upgrade would improve your score--it certainly did mine.

Anyway, your computer is holding you back as far as CS4 goes.

 

SSD will improve your boot times and response times. If your bios supports AHCI, recommend an Intel X25M SSD, which will has 2-3 times faster multithreaded 4kb reads than an Indilinx drive. If your bios only does IDE compatibility SATA, then the Indilinx SSD will be faster.

Consider putting the 80GB HDD in an optical bay caddy for additional storage (see sig).

Your 533Mhz FSB CPU will hold back calculations. See sig for PLL pinmod thread to see if you could possibly overclock it.

 

i agree with this, if you're coming from a 5400 rpm drive then you WILL definitely see the difference. if storage is a concern, you can get a 320gb external Hdd, or do the optical drive and add a small hdd.

 

My main computer is a 4 year old Latitude. Dropped a 128gb Samsung SSD + Win7 and the performance difference is like night and day. The entire system is much snappier. Chrome loads in under a second, Photoshop, about 4 seconds.

 

Thank you for the advice this is great.

I realize my system is old, and for certain design work it is a problem. Still doing the system clean-up with the tutorial from this website I improved things a lot.
But I'm planning on an upgrade in 7 months.

I will look into the OCZ Agility, even though I have not found one for lower than 140$ yet. I think here in the UK they are more expensive.

I will have a think about overcloking, not knowing the subject I'm a bit weary of doing it on my laptop.

nando4 mentioned support fot AHCI, it sounds new to me. I doubt I have support for this but how can I find out?

Finally how about those Kingston SSD? they are not as fast as the OCZ but they are cheap..would you still reccomend them?

thanks

 

be sure to price out new laptops when pricing out a sata drive for an old laptop.

if a sata drive for an old out-of-warranty laptop cost $250- and a new laptop stuffed full with new, in-warranty technology costs you $600-, which is the smarter deal?

 

I work for an IT company and our boss didn't think SSD helped with performance... WRONG.... The hard drive is normally the slowest component in the workstation, giving it a boost will only help. It GREATLY improved the performance in mine.

 

Very true... the CPU is a little bit too weak for the newest version of CS4...

you can try overclocking but 1 wrong step might brick ur laptop...as far as SSD's go , u can get them online in UK... try amazon and play.co.uk... there is where u might find cheap ones but seriously , instead of waiting 7 months , why not just get a new laptop now? The tech isn't going to get better in 7 months really... u can easily get a decent laptop for 1000-1500 pounds which can last 2-3 years...

 

That's because unlike your view, your boss is likely thinking about the dollar value vs the performance increase. It's probably not that he doesn't think it helps, rather, that it doesn't help enough to off-set the price he has to pay for the upgrade.

After all, why pay for a new backhoe when you can pay two guys minimum wage to dig until the drop.

 

Check in Device Manager -> IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. If your sata controller is listed as AHCI like it is shown below, then you have set AHCI mode in your bios.



If not, then check your bios setting for "SATA native", "AHCI". AHCI doubled 4kb multihreaded reads on my hdd as shown here which equates to faster bootup times and faster application response.

Oh.. if you are running XP then google search on how to add AHCI drivers. It requires a bit more work than just switching a bios setting.

 

Great thanks for the information.

I think I will refrain myself from overclocking my system.

I'm simply not able to get a new laptop just yet, that's why I'd rather wait 'till after summer.

But I will go with a good SSD.
Another ignorant question, any internal 2.5 SATA will go into my system, right?

 

yes as long as it is 9.5mm...

 

and it's fine even if its a second generation SATA?

 

Yes. It will downclock appropriately if necessary.

 

yes it will downclock but just get a Samsung... or something slow like a kingston... they'll be good enough.. not worth spending more to get intel which will be resticted...

 

Yes that's fine.
But on the other hand I was thinking of investing in a good SSD, and in a few months when I will get a new laptop transfer it onto the new system.

I have seen that upgrading a new laptop that comes with a 5400 drive is cheaper than getting a new one with a SSD already installed.
Do you agree with this?

 

It really depends on where you get it from. Certain retailers/resellers don't charge much of a premium (generally the smaller, boutique vendors/resellers). Other ones, on the other hand (*cough* Dell *cough* HP) charge a rather significant markup for SSDs (actually, just about any upgrade in general).

 

If you get a quality SSD that the manufacturers don't bundle into the laptop, then you're going to come out ahead. If it's on par, then you're probably going to break about even, maybe a tiny bit ahead unless you have a plan for the spare 5400 rpm drive.

 

That's actually a good question. It might depend upon the "old" laptop. What is faster -- a 2006 Thinkpad T60 with a T7100 and an Intel G2 or some Best Buy special with an T4400 and a 5400 drive?

 

Yes that is the case... manufactuers generally charge u 10% more to rip u off money and make a profit...