Is it worth putting an SSD in my laptop?

Ben6

Ben6

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Hi guys, i know ssd's offer great performance benefits for load up times and many other things but just wondering if it would make much of a differnce to put one in my laptop. Its a couple ofyears old now and running Win 7 64bit, 8gb ram, intel pentium 2.0ghz dual core processor and a normal 500gb hard drive. I was thinking of buying this:

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/compo...0bw-2-5-sata-iii-ssd-250-gb-19719658-pdt.html
And then just installing the current 500gb one I've got in the optical bay for just general file storage.

My main question being will i notice much of a difference or will the old processor be holding me back too much too?

As for putting the hard drive in the optical bay will any optical bay hdd holder do (as long as i get the correct 12.7mm or 9mm one) or are they more laptop specific than they look?

Also how do i go about finding a good fitting cover for over the end of it so as theres not a big hole in the side of my laptop? Are the universal side covers that come with them generally quite good fitting to most laptops?

And last but not least, all this work and dragging as much life as possible out of this laptop is because I'm planning on building a nice monster spec pc as soon as i can but just don't currently have the space for the dual screen set up that i want but will the ssd above be suitable for the new pc that i build? Can i just buy and 3.5' to 2.5' holder and use it in my new pc when i build it?

(Is a bay like this suitable or do cheaper ones hold the old hdd's back even more?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Universal...es_HardDriveEnclosures_RL&hash=item51afa6c8a9
 
Lr and ps mainly. Its things like lr load up time, image load up times, image exporting that i want to speed up.
 
What do you think to the ssd I've linked to? Seems very cheap to me, not sure if thats a good thing.
 
How about replacing the cpu also? I know you can on some laptops but how do i find out if i can with mine and what the max it could handle is? Its and acer aspire 5738z
 
Can't replace the CPU on a laptop. The SSD isn't too bad, but also isn't the best (the 840 Pro is about the best there is out there at the moment, but that's closer to £180).
 
Is the pro THAT much faster?

More than willing to pay the difference if its noticeable.
Do you think its worth doing or is the cpu going to hold lr back too much to notice?
Also will this ssd fit into a pc tower and still give me a decent spec when i get round to building one?
 
Ben6 said:
Is the pro THAT much faster?

More than willing to pay the difference if its noticeable.
Do you think its worth doing or is the cpu going to hold lr back too much to notice?
Also will this ssd fit into a pc tower and still give me a decent spec when i get round to building one?
Click to expand...

Yes the pro is that much faster. It's a shame because the 840 pro is what the 830 used to be (I have the 830).

If you're going to reuse the ssd in your new machine later then it won't hurt to get one anyway..
 
In short, the only good reason is if your going to start throwing your laptop about, but even then you'd brake the laptop before the hard drive. Any speed advantage will be tiny.....
 
The gf's laptop was creaking and she was going to spend a fortune replacing it.

I swapped in a Momentus XT 1TB (hybrid hdd/ssd), blitzed vista and put a fresh Win7 install on.

Makes a huge difference, 'like new' she says :) Takes a few restarts before the key system files are cached then it's lovely and quick in day to day usage, and with oodles of storage.
 
mid_gen said:
The gf's laptop was creaking and she was going to spend a fortune replacing it.

I swapped in a Momentus XT 1TB (hybrid hdd/ssd), blitzed vista and put a fresh Win7 install on.

Makes a huge difference, 'like new' she says :) Takes a few restarts before the key system files are cached then it's lovely and quick in day to day usage, and with oodles of storage.
Click to expand...

Don't suppose you've been cheeky enough to run lightroom on it have you and notice a good speed difference?
 
Lyonspride said:
In short, the only good reason is if your going to start throwing your laptop about, but even then you'd brake the laptop before the hard drive. Any speed advantage will be tiny.....
Click to expand...

How come you think it'll only be a tiny speed advantage?
Do you think the cpu will hold it back?
 
The speed advantage of an SSD is booting and general snappiness. I know when we went from a 7200rpm HDD to a decent SSD, there was a noticeable improvement in "speed". I.e. things seem faster as any disk accesses are much quicker. Although witha dual core laptop, you are still limited in speed and you may not have a SATA 3 port running the disk (which limits your bandwidth to 300MB/s max).
 
Ben6 said:
How come you think it'll only be a tiny speed advantage?
Do you think the cpu will hold it back?
Click to expand...

Someone clone their OS onto an SSD and then please tell me it's much faster.....

The thing is, people change their HDD for an SSD, claim it's super fast when in fact it's the clean install and near empty MFT that's caused the apparent speed increase.

SSD are still very expensive and you get around half the storage for your money.
 
Lyonspride said:
Someone clone their OS onto an SSD and then please tell me it's much faster.....
Click to expand...

arad85 said:
The speed advantage of an SSD is booting and general snappiness. I know when we went from a 7200rpm HDD to a decent SSD, there was a noticeable improvement in "speed". I.e. things seem faster as any disk accesses are much quicker. Although witha dual core laptop, you are still limited in speed and you may not have a SATA 3 port running the disk (which limits your bandwidth to 300MB/s max).
Click to expand...

Cloned. I don't re-install windows ;)
 
I recently installed the same SSD on my old Intel Duo Core PC running at 2.6GHz which I mainly use for surfing the net and checking out different programs.

It has certainly given it a new lease of life even though it only has SATA 2 with everything seeming much faster and zippier compared to the SATA 2 HHDD previously used.

.
 
Definitely worth it, even on old laptops. Other have mentioned about possible capping due to SATA 1 or 2 but to be honest it will still be faster.

On the Samsung looks like their bringing out a new 840 SSD so shop about.

I would sound a small note of caution, both this laptop (Crucial M4) and my desktop (Adata) have been less stable since having SSDs in, so may want to consider what your backing up policy is like. In fact I almost posted 5 minutes ago but the laptop crashed.
 
Thanks for all the replies guys I'm thinking of trying one out, its certainly not going to slow my system down and if not much of an increase i'll at least have it ready for my pc build.

Suomi said:
Definitely worth it, even on old laptops. Other have mentioned about possible capping due to SATA 1 or 2 but to be honest it will still be faster.

On the Samsung looks like their bringing out a new 840 SSD so shop about.

I would sound a small note of caution, both this laptop (Crucial M4) and my desktop (Adata) have been less stable since having SSDs in, so may want to consider what your backing up policy is like. In fact I almost posted 5 minutes ago but the laptop crashed.
Click to expand...

Sorry do you mean theres a new version of the 840 coming out?
I think i'll got for the 840 pro by the looks of it now but may be worth waiting if theres a new version.
Any idea as why its more unstable? How often is it crashing?
 
This may help on the 840 http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18529360

Why they seem to crash, I am not really sure. The desktop when you switch it on will go so far then either freeze or do a memory dump. Restart it and it loads up fine. The laptop usually does it at anytime and possible for it do it a couple of times in an evening. This will be it just seem to switch off or do a memory dump and a restart.

Only commonality is that the OS was cloned across from the original drives.
 
So when i put the ssd in and the old hdd in the optical bay, how do i clone the hdd over to the ssd? Its a pretty fresh instal so not much point in starting again. Is the included samsung software any good at this?
 
Ben6 said:
So when i put the ssd in and the old hdd in the optical bay, how do i clone the hdd over to the ssd? Its a pretty fresh instal so not much point in starting again. Is the included samsung software any good at this?
Click to expand...

It's Symantec ghost, at least the software supplied with the 830 was. You'll need to partition the old drive so that its smaller than the ssd otherwise the software won't clone it.
 
I might just do a fresh instal just for ease but just wanted to get around having to de authorise lr and ps before doing it and then re installing
 
Have to say I've cloned a couple of drives and installed a number of different OS's on ssds and never had a stability problem (a quick tot up and I have 8 systems running from an sad or msata ssd)
 
neil_g said:
Remember to set the Sata mode to ahci in the bios before installing windows
Click to expand...

Thanks Neil, anything else i need to do thats not going to be v obvious to me?
If i partition the hdd now ready to be cloned can i un-partition it afterwards so i just have one big storage hdd like i do now
 
Run Windows Experience Index. It recognises an SSD and enables TRIM support. Allegedly.
 
arad85 said:
Run Windows Experience Index. It recognises an SSD and enables TRIM support. Allegedly.
Click to expand...

I believe the software that comes with the samsung has trim support with it also but I'll do that too thanks
Might try and get it tomorrow, just depends if pc world sell a carrier for my existing hdd, cant see them on the website.
 
neil_g said:
Remember to set the Sata mode to ahci in the bios before installing windows
Click to expand...

If it's an old laptop it may not have AHCI - mine doesn't but the SSD runs perfectly at the normal SATA settings and much faster than the old HDD.

.
 
Ben6 said:
I believe the software that comes with the samsung has trim support with it also but I'll do that too thanks
Might try and get it tomorrow, just depends if pc world sell a carrier for my existing hdd, cant see them on the website.
Click to expand...

I believe that Windows 7 has TRIM support built in, otherwise you can run the supplied software regularly to optimise the SSD.

You don't need a carrier for the SSD as it is so small and light - mine just sits on the bottom of my cases - however ( as a sudden afterthought), check whether it need to be earthed - I think I remember something about this from some time ago but I've never had any problems with mine.

.
 
petersmart said:
If it's an old laptop it may not have AHCI - mine doesn't but the SSD runs perfectly at the normal SATA settings and much faster than the old HDD.

.
Click to expand...

yup itll run fine, but itll run faster in ahci if you have it.

petersmart said:
I believe that Windows 7 has TRIM support built in, otherwise you can run the supplied software regularly to optimise the SSD..
Click to expand...

yup, as andy said you need to run the WEI to make window "see" the SSD and enable/disable the relevant options.

alternatively the Samsung "SSD Magician" utility can do this also.
 
Simple way to test if an SSD will speed up your system.....do you find yourself waiting watching the HDD light flickering....or listening to the fans as the CPUs are maxed out :)
 
A bit of a thread revival but I'm only just getting around to doing this. How do I know what size optical bay holder I need? They're stated as 12.7mm and 9.5mm.

So I'm thinking of putting just the ssd into the laptop booting the os from disk and installing along with lr and ps etc then once set up i'll put my old hdd in the optical bay, load the laptop up and format the hdd and just load all my files back onto it from my back up hdd. How does that sound?

Would you run your lr catalogue from the ssd while your working on the files then once done export them to the hdd to keep the ssd free?
 
That's what I meant sorry. Sounds good then.

Any idea with the optical bay size Neil?
 
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