Is there a benefit in upgrading an IDE laptop with a SATA SSD ?

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guilbert.stabilo

Hi all,

My friend has a HP DV4000 laptop.
It is quite old and only has an IDE disk interface.
He asked me to upgrade to increase the general speed.

* On the one hand, replacing the 2x256 Mb of So-Dimm by 2x1 Gb will certainly help.

* On the other hand, I decided to replace the old IDE HDD by a SSD one. I bought an IDE to SATA caddy which will replace the current optical drive (IDE drives are too expensive compared to SATA drives).
I know that the IDE bus will block SSD speed at 133 Mb/s but the SSD access time is about 100 microseconds whereas it is about 10 to 19 milliseconds for a HDD so I think I should gain time here.

Before buying the SSD, did anyone of you already did the test (mounting a SATA SSD in an IDE laptop) ?
Do you think I will really gain performance with the SSD ?

Thanks in advance for your opinions.
 
You should be running win7 at least with SSD, so I would say this is a
bad plan since your old hardware can't run a modern OS. A Gbyte of ram
is netbook territory.

Incidentally, I'm not a fan of SSD unless you have a good reason to use
it. For instance, you want to actually use your notebook in the field
where the drive could get some abuse, or you are shooting for low power.
Cheap SSD can be a brick. Get a SSD with a 5 year warranty.

I'm still debating if I want to put a SSD in the next desktop I build,
just for the OS. I'd do a mirror raid for personal data.
 
Hi all,
Click to expand...
My friend has a HP DV4000 laptop.
It is quite old and only has an IDE disk interface.
He asked me to upgrade to increase the general speed.
Click to expand...
* On the one hand, replacing the 2x256 Mb of So-Dimm by 2x1 Gb will certainly help.
Click to expand...
* On the other hand, I decided to replace the old IDE HDD by a SSD one. I bought an IDE to SATA caddy which will replace the current optical drive (IDE drives are too expensive compared to SATA drives).
I know that the IDE bus will block SSD speed at 133 Mb/s but the SSD access time is about 100 microseconds whereas it is about 10 to 19 milliseconds for a HDD so I think I should gain time here.
Click to expand...
Before buying the SSD, did anyone of you already did the test (mounting a
SATA SSD in an IDE laptop) ?
Click to expand...

It depends on the converter. Experience with a different
converter is useless.
Do you think I will really gain performance with the SSD ?
Click to expand...

Yes.

Arno
 
miso said:
Incidentally, I'm not a fan of SSD unless you have a good reason to use
it. For instance, you want to actually use your notebook in the field
where the drive could get some abuse, or you are shooting for low power.
Click to expand...

Or if you care about performance, even slightly.
 
Seriously, the notebook needs to be dumped. It is at the bare minimum of
what is needed for win 7, and the XP that it came with will be at end of
life next April. [It could be converted to linux.]

At some point, unless you are totally destitute, you pull the plug on
old gear. The design is 8 years old. We're talking a Pentium M at
1.7GHz. It is crazy to buy a SSD for something that old.

Now the RAM upgrade is fine. Probably flea market parts.

Have I ever used 8 year old notebooks? Hell yes. But I didn't put money
in old junkers. And when mine fell out of the back of the SUV to the
hard concrete, I didn't exactly get too upset about it. I just pulled
the drive to save the data, and that was that.
 
miso said:
Seriously, the notebook needs to be dumped. It is at the bare minimum of
what is needed for win 7, and the XP that it came with will be at end of
life next April. [It could be converted to linux.]
Click to expand...

Windows 8 would be a reasonable possibility too.
 
Le mardi 4 juin 2013 05:57:44 UTC+2, DevilsPGD a écrit :
Windows 8 would be a reasonable possibility too.
Click to expand...

Do you mean that Windows 8 will go faster that Windows XP on my old notebook ?
 
In the last episode of
Le mardi 4 juin 2013 05:57:44 UTC+2, DevilsPGD a écrit :


Do you mean that Windows 8 will go faster that Windows XP on my old notebook ?
Click to expand...

It's... A possibility. It really depends on the hardware in question.
Windows 8 will do a better job of handling SSDs than XP, and it's much
better at tuning itself to the machine in question, only running various
background services when needed (whereas XP would tend to launch more
stuff that just sat idle)

Even without a SSD, Windows 8 does a much better job of caching
(including pre-caching), boots faster, and is generally at the desktop
and responsive faster than XP.

It's hard to say across the board, but my Netbook came with Vista, it
performed better on XP than Vista, but better still on Windows 7 than
either Vista or XP. I sold it before W8 came out, so I can't speak to
how it would have performed, but I can tell you that when I'm running a
large number of virtual machines (limited RAM, slow drive because it's
shared across several guest OSes), W8 is noticeably faster and more
responsive than W7 or XP, and I use W8 exclusively in VMs unless I
actually need an older OS to test something specific.

Don't get me wrong, W8 has it's problems (mostly a learning curve) but
the benefits outweigh the negatives, at least for me.
 
2Gbytes of ram seems kind of skimpy for win8. Plus you have to buy it!
Microsoft really screws home PC builders with the cost of their OSs.
What might be $40 to the OEM is like $140 to the end user. Now we're
talking at least $100 for the OS, depending on sales. There is no
mention of the size of the SSD, but they are not cheap. Are you really
going to put say $300 into an old notebook?

What I did for a notebook is I surfed the Dell refurb website. They are
new models that are customer returns. I got one that was stupidly
configured (too small of a disk and very little RAM) and just upgraded
it myself. [Who configures a notebook with 64bit windows and 3Gbytes of
RAM?) That way I had something that was recent hardware to tweak rather
than some old clunker that was likely to fail on me.

The Dell website links are kind of funky, but just search for Dell
Outlet or Dell refurb. Unless you are destitute, go for the Dell
business outlet. For one thing, they are way more likely to have items
that were ordered incorrectly (stupidly configured) or ordered prior to
the employee quitting or being terminated. Businesses screw up a lot.
Get a Latitude model. Dell Latitude is your typical business PC.

In my case, I got a ATG model like they use in police cars. Daylight
readable screen and backlit keyboard. With the SSD, I've run it in cold
temps (below freezing) and in the desert just shy of 120 deg F. But the
ATG is just a tweak of a stock lattitude other than the daylight
readable LCD and a bit of shock protection.

Note that the Dell outlet is a constantly changing list of items. It has
been my experience that the discounts are higher on the more expensive
items, though I suppose it could be a percentage game. Unless things
changed, support on the business notebooks is from the US.

Regarding SSD, you turn off all that cache/prefetch nonsense. The drive
is so fast you don't need it. I put in 8Gbytes in ram, and would have
put in more if the mobo could use it. Then I turned off all virtual
memory and file indexing. With SSD, you try to limit unneeded writes.
 
Seriously, the notebook needs to be dumped. It is at the bare minimum of
what is needed for win 7, and the XP that it came with will be at end of
life next April. [It could be converted to linux.]
Click to expand...

You do realise that XP will not stop just because MS calls it "end of
life"? It is only just recently that Win7 overtook XP on market share
of current computers used for general internet access. XP will be just
as good a choice in April as it is now, and is certainly a perfectly
good choice for an old laptop.
Click to expand...
But there will be no patches to XP. I suppose if the notebook is never
used on the internet, you could get away with running XP.

I predict in April 2014, the XP boxes on the internet will be virus 'bots.
 
miso said:
But there will be no patches to XP. I suppose if the notebook is never
used on the internet, you could get away with running XP.

I predict in April 2014, the XP boxes on the internet will be virus 'bots.
Click to expand...

With a decent firewall and a non-IE browser, your attack surface can be
limited. Of course, the type that chooses to keep using an out of date
OS is also often the type who is too clever to "need" antivirus software
or a properly configured firewall.
 
My gut feeling, which means based on nothing, is the damn virus bastards
have a pile of exploits and are just waiting for MS to stop patching XP.

Hey, sorry if I offended any virus authors, which these days includes
nation states like the US and China.
 
I predict in April 2014, the XP boxes on the internet will be virus 'bots.
Click to expand...

I've been running XP at the ranch without an update since
2007. A monthly scan with a updated USB Kaspersky rescue disk shows no
malware.
When patches come out, it means the exploit has been in the
wild for a while. No patch will protect any version of windows if it
has already been compromised.
And BTW, virus is a bad term. They have been virtually extinct
for ages. We have worms, trojans and spyware now.
[]'s
 
In the last episode of <[email protected]>,
Shadow said:
When patches come out, it means the exploit has been in the wild for a while.
Click to expand...

That's far from true, a lot of people disclose responsibly, more still
are found internally.

What does happen, however, is that the "bad guys" reverse engineer
patches to get a starting point about where to look to find an exploit
to go after people who can't figure out how to install patches.
 
miso said:
My gut feeling, which means based on nothing, is the damn virus bastards
have a pile of exploits and are just waiting for MS to stop patching XP.
Click to expand...

Don't believe that.
Hey, sorry if I offended any virus authors, which these
days includes nation states like the US and China.
Click to expand...

I doubt it with the US.
 
I've been running XP at the ranch without an update since 2007.
Click to expand...

Me too on one machine for rather longer than that.
That machine has never had an update at all.
A monthly scan with a updated USB Kaspersky
rescue disk shows no malware.
Click to expand...

That machine of mine has never had an infection.
When patches come out, it means the exploit has been
in the wild for a while. No patch will protect any version
of windows if it has already been compromised.
Click to expand...

But will stop it getting compromised
that way if it hasn't been already.
And BTW, virus is a bad term. They have been virtually extinct
for ages. We have worms, trojans and spyware now.
Click to expand...

And virus is just a generic term for all of those.
 
Le mardi 4 juin 2013 05:57:44 UTC+2, DevilsPGD a écrit :


Do you mean that Windows 8 will go faster that Windows XP on my old notebook ?
Click to expand...

It's not the speed you'll need it for, it's the support for the SSD's
TRIM command that it'll be needed. Windows Vista, 7, or 8 have support
for the TRIM command, but not XP.

Actually a far better option for you would be one of the Linux distros.
It'll work much better on the older hardware, as it has lower memory
requirements, and has support for TRIM. But it may not have support for
the applications you would want to run, unfortunately.

Yousuf Khan
 
With a decent firewall and a non-IE browser, your attack surface can be
limited. Of course, the type that chooses to keep using an out of date
OS is also often the type who is too clever to "need" antivirus software
or a properly configured firewall.
Click to expand...

Sounds like you're talking about Rod. :)

Yousuf Khan
 
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