Small SSD's. The fastest and chiepest laptop upgrade?

We all know about SSD's and their much improved performance compared to magnetic storage media (normal hard disks).
We also know that they are VERY expensive. But wait a sec!
Only the larger capacity ones (32GB and over) are very expensive. 16GB ones can be found for around the price of a fast laptop disk.
If you are one of the lucky people that have a laptop that either has 2 slots for internal hard drives or can have a second drive as a multibay drive what would you think about keeping your old drive and just adding a 16GB SSD for your OS and office suite?
This would give a MUCH more responsive an faster system, not to mention the extented battery life etc.

Before anyone asks.
Vista CAN be installed in 16GB drives and you are left (after temporary files are removed) with at least 6GB of free space to install whatever you want.

 

Great point, you should see substantial reductions in loading times for your OS on a SSD. There was a video review link someone posted here some time ago showing a 30% difference in bootup time between a 7200RPM HDD and a SSD.

 

I expect the differences will be huge after the computer has booted and you start using it for internet etc. The 30% difference in bootup time where big chunks of data are moved and HDD's have an advantage due to their higher transfer rates is just an indication of how much faster your system can become.

 

It's always been know to be a good idea to have a nice fast hard drive for ur OS and applications (why 74gb raptors are so popular on desktops, even with their small capacity). So yes, for any of those lucky ones to have the ability to put 2 hard drives in their laptops, it would be a good idea to pick up a small ssd and install the OS and some apps on there for the boost.

 

It seems to me that even the slow,cheap SSD's (with transfer rates of 20mb/s, but still with access times of <1ms) will be able to smoke desktop raptors for the majority of everydays applications and use.

 

Of course, it's not really fair to compare a ssd with a normal spinning drive, no matter how many rpms/cache it has.

 

Yeah, a 17" desktop replacement with a 16GB SSD and a 200GB 4200rpm drive looks pretty attractive, really.

 

You might even get a higher PCMark score than a desktop machine.

 

Anyone seen a better price for a 16GB SSD? Found one for $270.

 

There is problems I see with this setup, you lose convenience of the optical drive having to swap it every time you want to use it. This will also create another problem because when you install programs to your magnetic disk (normal HD) or any other operation that requires both "normal" HD and OD you can't. The best option around this would probably to use an external OD.

There are not many notebooks that has space for two hard drives unless it's a 17" desktop replacement.

Maybe a retro fit will work: A magnetic hard drive taped externally onto the laptop! USB to IDE cables do exist.

 

Almost all HP/Compaq laptops (starting from the 14" ones) can use multibay storage media (optical, floppy, HD, etc). And thats a big number of models.
As for programs that require the OD I always keep a mountable image of my important installation DVD's so I do not have to carry the actual disks around.

 

I'm so glad my dv9000t has 2 hard drive bays.

 

You might need to get some extra memory too. The SSD wont help very much if you stay with 512MB.

 

I'm with you

 

SanDisk 2.5" SATA SSD 32GB selling for around $350 (large volume sales).
Things seem to be getting better!

 

$350 should get you 1TB of normal HDD storage easily, so we have a long way to go 'til then...but it's a start.

 

HP doesn't sell an empty multibay HDD cradle though, not last time I checked. So you end up spending $200-$300 for a cradle and hard drive when you already have one that shipped with the book. The nc2400 also has a 1.8" cradle and drive available, by the way.

Lenovo is much better in this regard, you can buy an empty cradle for $50. (it can also house a battery) Of course the X series doesn't have any optical bay at all, much less a multibay, so HP beats them there.

I've actually been considering an nc2400 with just a flash disk. 16GB would be plenty for a minimal Linux install and a days worth of music. You don't have to worry about the health of a magnetic hard drive either, and can be a little rougher with your bag.

 

Yes, but even with $1.000.000 no HDD can get you SSD access time and speed