I bought a solid state drive

[albertdesalvo]

Yes I did. And I put my OS on it, and immediately experienced an incredible boost in performance. Then I installed all my apps to the new SSD and witnessed another incredible leap. I haven't seen this kind of increase since I upgraded my 286 to a 386sx!!

[dashx]

How big is the drive and how much did it cost?

[moocow]

Which brand did you get and which controller does it use? SSD is still out of my budget and the fact that you got limited write cycles worries me. However, my next laptop drive may be a hybrid drive that Seagate makes. Not as expensive and speedy as a true SSD but it got 500GB and decent speed.

[albertdesalvo]

It's a Kingston 64gb. Cost me a hundred bucks. Windoze 7 64bit takes about 15gb, lots of room for apps.

[albertdesalvo]

@moo: Didn't delve deeply enough to worry about the controller. I wanted it to work; it does.
Write cycles... yes, but the thing will be obsolete long before write cycles are an issue. I have been pounding the living shit out of various flash drives/cards for years with no ill effects.

[dashx]

I agree Moocow.

The Seagate Momentus XT drive looks tempting and well priced. I would consider that as well for my next drive.

64 GB is not enough for me. If however I had a laptop with complete mobility for A/C troubleshooting that would be a good alternative.

[albertdesalvo]

64g is plenty for an OS+apps drive. Obviously you need a real HDD for data storage.

[dashx]

You are correct.

So you now have a fast laptop plus an external HDD for storage of data. That you don't access frequently. And carry with you. ??

[moocow]

SSD performance chart with controller listed (it gets updated frequently):

http://www.pcper.com/ssd

[albertdesalvo]

I'll admit it was an impulse purchase.... I had some money burning a hole in my pocket. I never researched controllers or whatnot, so for all I know, I may have bought the crappiest SSD available. But if I did, it's still speeded up my system by a substantial amount!

People are always fooling around trying to speed up their machines. Adding memory, fancy video cards, overclocking etc. But computers are so fast these days, the improvements are only visible with benchmarking software. We are talking about nanoseconds. In my view, if the improvement is imperceptible to the human eye, there's no improvement.

That was the point of my post......put your OS on an SSD and the real world difference is obvious and you don't need benchmarking software to know your machine is working better. You can fart around overclocking all you want, but adding an SSD is a much better option.

I was hoping to hear from others who'd gone this route, but all I got was a couple of laptop toting cheapskates.

Calm down, it's just a joke....

That Seagate looks interesting, but at this point I don't think SSD or hybrids are viable for laptops. You can get huge HDDs for peanuts these days and that's got to be the way to go for portable machines.

[Louis]

Money's a bit tight for me right now or that's something I'd be looking into. Especially since I already running Windows 7 and it has optimizations for SSDs that the previous versions don't.

I haven't checked if mine's PATA or SATA, but you can get modular bay adapters and throw your regular hard drive in there if you don't have two internal hard drive slots, which is the case for most 13" and 15" laptops I've seen.

[moocow]

I believe OSX 10.6 or Snow Leopard now support SSD. Most of the cheap SSD have very poor write performance but that only cap your install speed. Once everyone is installed, it seem to run perfectly fine. Seagate XT is a bit different in that it doesn't speed up until you use a computer a few times. Once it figure out what program get loaded most often, it will load the program into the SSD portion of the drive. And when the memory chip dies, you get a standard HDD.

[dashx]

Well I bought the Momentus XT 500 gb hard drive. Installation was straightforward. Seagate provides the software to transfer the data (DiscWizard) on their website. No charge.....

I am kicking myself for not doing it sooner.

The old drive was 5400 rpm and the new one is 7200 rpm so of course that makes a difference. But everything they say about the drive is true. The laptop now has a new life (for a laptop that is less than 1 year old that is....) and some zip to it. I always thought it was Vista.

Almost every application (Word 2010 is still slow to open files) and saved files (pictures especially) open so much faster.
I know its still not an SSD but for a total of 148 (external SATA hdd case and cable) taxes included I think its a deal.

Now lets see how long it lasts......

[GyvAir]

Old thread, I know..

Wondering if anyone cares to update their SSD experience or add something new.
I'm condsidering spending the $80 or so to replace a failing PATA/IDE hard drive with an SSD in an older laptop that still works well for what I use it for, other than the drive issues.

[moocow]

Are you aware of that most SSD are SATA? As far as I know / searched, Transcend is the only brand that makes a PATA/IDE SSD. Also, if your laptop is old enough to use PATA, may as well buy a new laptop. Also, I believe you need at least Windows 7 to order to use TRIM function on the drive, otherwise it will just degrade over time. Better if you post computer questions over at Hardware Canucks.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/

[GyvAir]

Thanks for the link, Moocow. I found a couple threads there that were quite informative. I've found it hard to find clear information about SSDs, especially when it comes to PATA types. There seems to two manufacturers of PATA SSDs; Trancend and Kingspec. Mixed reviews on both out there. Lots of people putting them in old XP machines and gushing about the performance, but nobody talking about how they fare after a year or two of use.
As near as I can tell, the PATA SSDs don't support TRIM regardless of what OS you're running. Haven't determined if there is something one can do as an alternative to recover performance. There is talk of alternative programs to run, but I haven't got to bottom of it.
I may just buy a new HDD and be done with it, as I know that will work with no glitches and for about the same or slightly less money.
I could buy a new laptop, but I like this one and if I can get a couple more years and a bit more speed out of it for $80 and some hair pulling, why not? Really though, it's more about tinkering than practicality. If I factor my time in, the new laptop is clearly the way to go. That can go for most things we own though. Ever refinished a piece of furniture or tried to keep a 10+ year old daily driver working and looking good? When IKEA is right around the corner and new cars can be had for $300 a month, maintenance is a hard sell after a point. I just like the satisfaction of saving something from the landfill and enjoy learning something new in the process.