Expanding hard drive space on older SSD Sony TZ

I've got a TZ-195 which is about two years old. It has a 48gig SSD drive which was just too small to accomodate data plus a biggish .pst file for using Outlook offline. I bought a TT-190 with a 128gig drive which solved the problem, and left the TZ lying around.

Now the TT is on the fritz (won't boot up) and I want to revive the TZ so I can use it while the TT is being fixed.

What is the best way to expand the storage space?

1. Swap out the SSD drive for a bigger one.

2. Plug in a 32gig ExpressCard drive.

3. Install a Mini PCI Express drive (like from an eee) in the one empty Mini PCI slot.

Easiest and cheapest by far is Option 2. But I am thinking this is going to have a very slow data transfer rate? The Express Card standard allows either USB or PCI bus to be used, but as far as I know the ExpressCard SSD drives all use the slower USB bus. Or will it not be enough to make a difference, given that all my programs will be on the main hard drive?

What about the other options?

I bet someone here has some experience already -- please share.

 

Anyone have any clues?

 

If this is not your main notebook and you don't plan on using it much i would say go the Express card route and put up with the speeds.
If you at least plan using it a bit more i would get a larger SSD drive, may be a 64GB at least.

 

Thanks. So even the faster Express Card SSD's will be painfully slow for this purpose?

 

I don't think so, also Pretec do some faster Expresscards. It depends really on what is an acceptable speed to you.
For me it would be perfectly acceptable for the task but for another person it might not be.
Try and free up space on your main drive if you can also. I have a 32GB SSD right now in one of my computers and really that is enough for Vista Business, some applications with about 16GB left.
Do you still have your recovery partition there taking up space?

 

Thanks for that. I already nuked the recovery partition, did a clean re-install to get rid of the crapware, and so forth. I was managing, not very well, but kind of getting by, with the 48 gig drive, until I tried to put my .pst file from Outlook on the computer so I could work offline with my company e-mail. That was the last straw, at which point I bought the TT-190 with a 128 gig SSD. Even 128 gig is not quite enough storage for everything I'd like to have, so this exercise will be useful -- I will add storage in any case, also to the new machine.

The speed issue won't be so bad if I can find space on the main hard drive for the .pst file. I don't think speed will be a problem for files, images, music, etc. -- what do you think?

Cheers.

 

I think that is fine. I used a 16GB USB stick or external drive to store things for my TX when i used it more and it had a 32GB SSD.
From what you've written i get the impression that you don't like the idea of external storage systems like usb hard drives etc?

I often empty system restore to free up space.

If you feel that you're going to be using it more then like i said before i would go with a bigger SSD.

See this thread also
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=419502

 

do you want to sell your ssd drive

 

I took the CD drive out of mine and installed a 500gig hard drive. SSD for the OS and 500 for everything else.

 

Hey, how to install the 2nd hard drive in optical drive bay. Please post some more info.

Thanks.

 

Ive got some pics of how I did it. I will get it ready in the next few days. Bit flat out and got to find those pics..... Its really nice to have such a small laptop and so much space