Should I upgrade to Intel 530 SSD or upgrade my computer or change the way I use/abuse SSD?

I have a 2008 Sony VGN-FW 190 series laptop which was shipped with a 250GB HDD. In order to increase the performance of my PC, in Nov. 2011 I replaced the HDD with 80GB Intel 320 SSD having SATA II, which, as far as I know, is compatible with my PC's Intel PM-45 chipset. Upon this upgrade precisely 2 years ago the bump in performance was incredible! Everything was blazingly fast!

Since then my hard drive eventually filled up, and I have been using my drive extremely harshly, to the extent that for the last 6 months I have only 1 GB or less free space and the fan is always and always on, greatly generating heat. Firefox used to crash a lot until a couple of days ago where it forced me to reset it. When browsing I have sometimes even 100 windows and tabs open. Recently the scrolling has started to slow down and I'd say, when writing this message the letters I write down sometimes slightly lags behind especially if I write fast. In addition my desktop is full of icons etc.

Questions:

1) Even though I am not considering deleting/transferring the files in this SSD, for the sake of the argument if I empty up the drive to a certain percentage, would I achieve the same performance I got when I first started to use the drive 2 years ago with a fresh Windows 7? If so, what is that percentage?

2) Or regardless of how much I empty up my current SSD, or even if I buy Intel's new 530 series SSD with 240 GB and SATA III (I know I can only benefit SATA II speeds as in my current SSD) and install a fresh Windows 7, would you say that my PC has become quite outdated as within the last 2 years many applications/websites have become fancier and therefore I would have to buy a new PC --please kindly elabarote on which parts of my PC is outdated.

The specs of my PC is as follows:

SONY VAIO FW Series VGN-FW190EEH Intel Core 2 Duo P8600(2.40GHz) 3GB Memory 250GB HDD 16.4" NoteBook Windows Vista Home Premium - Newegg.com

3) Please kindly comment on how should I use my SSD considering that I won't give up browsing the Internet with 100+ tabs/windows open where I might be watching HD stuff in a few of them.

Thanks!

 

always leave at least 20% free space for the sake of the SSD, in terms of percentage gain though, just google up SSD overprovision and so you'll understand WHY it is important to do so, and so a rough idea on how SSD works with empty space which I can't explain perfectly to you, though it should be safe to say the performance gained back is observable, at least

Also I wonder if its the 3gb memory that got filled up, do you have a 32bit windows 7 installed n your machine? if its 64 that might explain the situation

if you haven't optimised the SSD (i.e. disable hybernation, configure system restore points) this Sean's Windows 7 Install & Optimization Guide for SSDs & HDDs might be a good place to start

other than that try google ccleaner and install the free version, once you are in check on the cleaner tab, check under the windows tab and tick windows event logs and old prefetch data alongside with the default settings, on the applications tab uncheck google chrome and firefox cookies (optionally you can also uncheck cache if all the websites you browse are regularly visited, if you deleted internet cache your first hour or two browsing will be slower due to a new set of cache on each webpage is being built up)

then run analyze to see how much space your system occupied as junk (yes, they are junks) and run cleaner to delete them all (if you've never done so it should get you couple Gbs given 2 years of junk building up)

then go on registry tab and scan for issues and then fix selected issues and scan repeatedly until registry is completely clean(don't bother backing it up, its a waste of time) registry is another possible junkyard of your system after years of junk collection

after that go to your control panel, programs and features and check that every program on your system is recognisable, if you don't recognise it you probably won't be needing them anymore (other than microsoft/intel/amd/nvidia/realtek/creative/adobe..... the big brands)


finally when a laptop gets "outdated", it is "outdated" as a whole (other than the SSD you have, possibly) there is no way of installing new components like how you do with a desktop(lets just say everything is soldered on, and soldered components cannot be changed) so getting a new one is your best way out, or not, if all you do is browsing on the internet, watching HD video should not be problematic at all

after these you should feel the system being a bit smoother, IF after the SSD optimization AND program/system junk cleaning you are still couple Gbs short of the 20% spare area, you should go into control panel->administrative tools->disk cleanup and clean EVERYTHING, don't remember but if after the cleanup analysis you get another option saying "clean up system files", click there and it will analyse again, afterwards check EVERY SINGLE tickbox to gain space, after that if theres still not enough area you'll have to delete some videos/music

 

There are a few reasons why things might be slow on your system. The first and most likely with 100 tabs on your web browser and running Vista is you're running out of memory. Since your computer is probably running a 32-bit version of Vista, adding more memory is also going to require buying a 64-bit version of the operating system. You need a 64-bit operating system for 4GB or more of RAM. Now if you also have less than 1GB of space available on your SSD, that will also hurt performance. You want to have 10% or more free space on the SSD for consistent performance. So you're going to need a higher-capacity SSD. 240-256GB is a good starting capacity, and you might want something with even more space. Next, if your system is generating a lot of heat and programs are crashing, it probably means either there is dust clogging up your vents or you're really working your processor hard. From your workload description, I'm guessing it's the latter.

So you're looking at the need to upgrade your memory, operating system, SSD, and processor. Sounds like it's time for a new system to me.

 

just to add, I ran an old XPS m1530, same generation as yours, with a good SSD it is still going great just like yours, except that since I have only 3Gb ram running on windows 7 64bit I often run out of ram during photoshop/illustrator, a 32bit windows should solve the problem though, and heres the thing:
If all you do is office, and browsing, anything that has the drivers for windows 7/8 (doesn't HAVE to run on windows 7 but is adviced to, having the drivers available just means the system is still considered valuable to update to the newest tech) will serve you just fine, heck I can still produce stuff on the latest version of illustrator with my core 2 duo machine, its just slower, but at least it runs fine

system hiccups usually come from junkfilled systems (imagine systems that has thousands background applications running, heck even the latest 1k desktop build will be slowed down), if you keep the system clean it should keep running, component degradation might come in place but my 2 cents are: if it degrades, it should've been broken, it shouldn't even turn on, so you can keep it running until you find yourself needing to play new games/using intensive software to be productive

 

All the above responses have a lot of good stuff in them, and get you thinking about how much good maintenance can get you.

I can't add much to them except maybe zero in on your biggest problem which is a shortage of space. Get a bigger internal HDD, or archive some files to an external HDD. A Terabyte in either is about $100 or so. Then you can lean out the SSD and claim some OP space.

For sure, get that air can out bi-weekly and keep the dust out and exhaust vents clear.

A reimage would get you that new feeling again.

Otherwise the alternative is a new system.

 

Thanks for the informative replies and your experience with a very similar PC. I run Windows 7 64-bit where I could find all drivers. I still have the original 3GB DDR2 RAM. From your comments I understand that (i) if I follow the steps you mentioned it is ( highly?) likely I may keep my current SSD with this system; and (ii) if I upgrade to Intel's 240 GB newer tech SATAIII SSD with a fresh install of Windows 7 64-bit, then it is CERTAIN I won't have any problems, even with 100+ tabs/windows open where I watch full HD videos. Therefore, unless I want a futureproof PC to watch/stream 4K stuff in the future, I don't need to buy a new system. Do you agree?

As a side note, I will be leaving the US next week and I have the opportunity to buy the latest generation Apple rMBP before I go. I know it is a completely different system (OS in particular), but I will either revive my current system or invest in this route.

 

I agree, I have a 2007 ThinkPad T61 with 80GB SSD (Intel X25-M), 8GB DDR2 RAM and it still runs remarkably well in this day and age. Given that you already have a SSD I think having a larger SSD would only have some marginal gains based on your usage, even if it means a bit more free space.

You'll be surprised on how quick Browsers consume RAM these days and if you're opening 100+ tabs then the bottleneck would most likely be the RAM and not the SSD. The drawback however is that DDR2 memory is very expensive at this time, unless you can find 4GB DDR2 modules for a reasonable price then you're probably better off funding that towards a newer system.

 

Reading the opening post, I would be inclined to suggest a current platform for your workflow/needs.

However, I have seen games speed up incredibly (in the MIN FPS 'scores'), browsing speed up and have even seen less buffering in streaming content with SSD's: performance increases that should not technically happen, btw.


Although your cpu is fairly antiquated by today's QC monsters, it should still be able to browse... the gpu on the other hand may be limiting your HD playback performance and contributing to the heat/noise of your system as you're using it today. As mentioned; clean out the dust/debris of all fans and vents in your system (if you can repaste the cpu/gpu do that too).


As for the OP'ing of SSD's: 30% is where I've found them to be stable (long term). With an 80GB (nominal) capacity, the real capacity left for you will be dismally low (less than 53GB), which indicates its time for a capacity upgrade.

As for the Intel 530 Series SSD you're considering: good choice!

See:
AnandTech | Intel SSD 530 (240GB) Review


But as Kristian states in his review (once again), don't fill up a SF based drive unless you want to back it up into a (performance) corner that it will not be able to recover from (unless you SE it).

In the end, the best (real) performance improvements will be from:

RAM (8GB or more)
O/S (Win 8.1 x64 highly recommended)
SSD (with 30% OP'ing or more).


The performance of the current rMBP (with 16GB RAM, SSD and Maverick) will blow your current system away - but if all you use it is for browsing... I would even say the rMBP is over kill.


With your current system:

Clean out the fans/vents.
Delete as much non-needed files as possible.
Disable Hibernation (at Elevated command prompt: powercfg -h off).
Disable System Restore
Run CCleaner to get rid of any temp files.

See:
CCleaner - Builds


Shrink the C:\ partition to ~50GB
Create a new partition with the remaining capacity - (do a quick format) - and leave the system idle for at least an hour (this will allow TRIM to clean all the nand properly) while making sure that you have disabled all sleep/hibernation timers.
With the above step completed - delete the partition you created (and leave it as 'unallocated').

If your system responds as every other system I've done the above to; you should see a fresh/new side of your current PC.

Now.... if it still overheats, if it still lags/stutters, if it still sounds like a jet engine on a test block; time for a new system.


(But I still wouldn't recommend the rMBP for extended/heavy usage).



Hope some of this helps.

Good luck.

 

I did not know about this software and installed it after reading your post. Attahced is the snapshot you want.

I once installed and measured the performance of my SSD through the trial version of another software called SSDLife Pro which yielded similar (outstanding) results for my highly abused drive.

 

To all: Thanks for your comments. I will follow most of your suggestions. I was wondering whether your comments would change (and whether you would recommend buying a new system) If I add the activity of post processing 36 mp files from Nikon D800 in addition to my already existing activities of browsing the web with 100+ windows/tabs and watching/streaming HD videos?

 

I typed in "DDR2" on amazon.com and the prices seem not to be that expensive. Perhaps I misunderstood what you are trying to say?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?keywords=ddr2+ram&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&tag=s30a-20&index=blended

 

You're probably not abusing it as much as you might think
But if you start doing what you're thinking and planning, then probably.

If your heart desires and wallet can afford it, then a new platform will speed things up nicely for a bit of a price.

Just saw a 2TB Seagate External HDD at Costco for $114.00

For 133.00 - Amazon.com: Samsung Electronics MZ-7PD128BW 840 Pro Series 2.5-Inch 128GB SATA 6Gbps Solid State Drive: Computers & Accessories

 

Because most of the RAM showing is desktop RAM. 8GB laptop DDR2 is $100+ nowadays...

 

I see. Could you please guys recommend me RAM module(s) from amazon.com for my notebook which, as far as I know, has two slots.

 

Prices on Amazon - based on my very short search - are atrocious.

Try posting a WTB (want to buy) ad here on the forum...or check eBay

 

Start looking for a new system now. (Unless you want the images to be antiques by the time you finish processing them).


(1920x1080 (or higher) resolution, IPS full Adobe 1998 gamut panel, Win 8.1 Pro x64, i7 QC Haswell platform, 32GB RAM SSD/HDD or SSD/SSD setup... you know, just order the 'insane' setup).


Good luck.

 

Am I the only one who thinks that keeping 100 tabs/windows is insane? I don't think you can be productive with that..

 

Only 1 machine (with a Estimated Ship Date: 12/4/20133) fit that criteria iirc.

 

you are not the only one but.... "you don't say?"

anyways, the OP should try cleaning up your system as suggested, having windows vista and browsers together with some essential software should only occupy like 30~40Gb of space, until a full set of adobe is installed will it start occupying a lot more
Try keeping the system clean with like 16Gb "free" space

If you really have to post process photos, I'd recommend not getting a laptop but building a desktop instead, but hey, it might just be what tilleroftheearth says, minus the 32Gb Ram and the pro version of windows, perhaps a haswell i7 QC is preferred but it won't hurt (a bit) getting an Ivy bridge i7 QC

 

I don't think it's insane. I have 80 open tabs in one window at the moment. BUT only 2 tabs are active. Thanks for the 530 link tilleroftheearth It's about time the Intel was reviewed by a big name site. Firefox can be optimized to use less RAM. Switching my tab manager from Tab Mix Plus to Tab Utilities saved RAM. It also let me put tabs to sleep after a specified amount of time of inactivity or manually.