SSD for aging laptop

[ALLCAPS]

I have a 5+ year old laptop with a smallish 5400 rpm hdd. According to its specs its has an "SATA-150" interface for the drive. Sifting through the mass of drives available has proven difficult. I realize most ssds are probably faster than what the interface can transfer, but at what point might that be? I am just trying to figure out what drive speed would be adequate for saturating the bandwidth available.

 

[Rhoxed]

you will be limited to ~150MB/sec peak

 

[postmortemIA]

133MB/s if it doesn't have AHCI. I might be wrong, but that's what I get on my oldy laptop.

Still, performance is great when compared to previous drive, which was 250GB 7200rpm.

On the positive side, you will reuse that fast SSD drive later in a new laptop.

 

[razel]

Just about any current model SSD will saturate your SATA 1 laptop. You will not regret the purchase either since 1) laptop HDDs lack big time behind desktop HDDs and 2) you will be able to use the drive in your next laptop.

 

[groberts101]

also better to have an "old first gen 6G drive" for the hand me down(or up, depending on the viewpoint)) later on.. then an "old slow 3G drive".

Prices between the performance and mainstream entry drives are just too close to not be at least minimally forward thinking in choosing an SSD in todays market.

 

[Coup27]

The main benefit to an SSD is the latency and random read and writes. Neither of these will be affected by the SATA 1.5Gbps connection. Whilst sequential reading and writing at >150mb/s is nice, you don't use it that often, especially for a sustained period.

If it were me, I would buy an SSD based on manufacturer/controller preference, size and price and forget about the 1.5Gbps connection.

 

[exdeath]

Do it. Laptops see the biggest gains from SSD just because 2.5" HDDs are so terrible.

 

[ALLCAPS]

Thanks for the responses. It looks like its a question of how much size do I really need. I have had good experiences with crucial products, but anecdotes dont make for a reliable dataset. Any preferences here between crucial, owc and samsung?

 

[PrayForDeath]

Im in the same boat as OP, and planning to sell the laptop with the ssd in the future, so I dont really need a high-end drive, just something cheap to replace my faulty hdd.

Is this any good?

And exactly how can I make sure that my laptop is compatible with it?

Thanks

 

[RhoXS]

I am using an IBM Thinkpad R51. This laptop is a good laptop with a lot of life left in it but the HDD is painfully slow. I also want to replace it with an SSD but cannot find a compatible SSD becauswe it uses an IDE PATA interface. If anyone knows of a compatible SSD wwith TRIM/Garbage Collection I would certainly like to know what it is.

I also have a Dell Mini 9. This is a great little laptop and it came with an SSD. Unfortunately, because the SSD does not support TRIM/Garbage Collection, it has slowed down so much that it really is not practically usable.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I am using an IBM Thinkpad R51. This laptop is a good laptop with a lot of life left in it but the HDD is painfully slow. I also want to replace it with an SSD but cannot find a compatible SSD becauswe it uses an IDE PATA interface. If anyone knows of a compatible SSD wwith TRIM/Garbage Collection I would certainly like to know what it is.

I also have a Dell Mini 9. This is a great little laptop and it came with an SSD. Unfortunately, because the SSD does not support TRIM/Garbage Collection, it has slowed down so much that it really is not practically usable.

I don't know about trim or garbage collection, but other world computing sells pata 40gb ssds. I have one in my old think pad.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Im in the same boat as OP, and planning to sell the laptop with the ssd in the future, so I dont really need a high-end drive, just something cheap to replace my faulty hdd.

Is this any good?

And exactly how can I make sure that my laptop is compatible with it?

Thanks

If I were to purchase an SSD today, it would most def. not be the OCZ Vertex Plus. Those had a LOT of issues. Maybe they were resolved with new firmware, maybe not.

I would probably get a Plextor M3 or a Crucial M4. Both use the highly-rated and reliable Marvell SSD controller.

Second to those, I would get a Corsair Force 3 or Mushkin Chronos or Chronos Deluxe.

For my own machine, I was waiting for the Plextor M3 256GB to drop in price, but then I grabbed a Chronos Deluxe when the price went to $1/Gig (well, $238.99 for 240GB).

 

[RU482]

what OS are you going to run on this ole lappy?

 

[ALLCAPS]

I am considering a switch over to a linux distribution, but right now I have 32 bit Windows XP.

 

[Coup27]

If you stay on XP you'll want either an Intel or Samsung drive. Both of these come with a toolbox which will allow you to manually run the TRIM command.

 

[Schmide]

I just stuck a SSD in a 4 year old laptop. My battery life went from 2hrs to 2:45-4hrs.

The HD in it was always hot and heat equals power.