Is it worth putting an SSD in an old laptop?

[Anders]

My grandparents have an old lappy which is running very slowly, specifically a Sony Vaio vgn-fs315m.
The basic spec is:

• Intel Pentium-M Centrino 740 Processor 1.73GHz
• 512MB DDRII SDRAM
• 80GB Hard Drive
• NVIDIA GeForce Go 6400 with TurboCache supporting 128MB

I’ll do the easy bits, upgrade to 2GB of RAM, remove unnecessary start up apps, updates, etc., but is it also worth swapping out the HDD for an SSD, or is this laptop too old to benefit?

[MrJim]

Which OS is it running? Windows didn't support TRIM until version 7, which might be a factor in the decision. When was the OS last installed? Windows does have a habit of slowing down over time...just formatting the disk & reinstalling Windows can speed a laptop up quite a bit...& it's free

[Anders]

Thanks. It's Windows XP and it's been installed since they got the lappy. So would XP rule out an SSD?

[smargh]

A year ago I put an SSD into an old XP laptop with a failed HDD. IIRC, it was the cheapest SSD which Crucial made. It improved responsiveness significantly and was the best (only?) thing which was worth doing to improve performance. "Re-install Windows" is occasionally something to consider, but if you do a manual clean-up then therere's not much point and the risk of the end-user being annoyed is quite high: "but where is that icon on my desktop? I used it every day! No, I can't remember of the name of it, please put it back." etc etc.

Definitely worth doing.

[Anders]

This link seems to give some good tips about migrating XP to an SSD. I didn't know about the lack of TRIM support in XP! I'd like to avoid the reinstall if I can, as it my grandparents.

Is it a given that a laptop like this will support SATA? I'm away from home this week so don't have the machine to hand.

[ik9000]

This link seems to give some good tips about migrating XP to an SSD. I didn't know about the lack of TRIM support in XP! I'd like to avoid the reinstall if I can, as it my grandparents.

Is it a given that a laptop like this will support SATA? I'm away from home this week so don't have the machine to hand.

almost certainly not - it will be pata HDD. The 6400Go is old and Sata was only just being incorporated back then. My Dell Inspiron 9300 shipped later with pentium M760 1.86Ghz , 6800Go and 80GB HDD and it is most definitely a pata IDE HDD. Do you have the service tag (usually printed on the underside)? Most manufacturers let you search support using that to find exactly what it is equipped with.

XP with SSD not a great idea as without TRIM you'll find performance will decay over time. It will be amazing for a while. Then slowly but surely decline into laggy pausing.

If its Pata then forget it. Not enough bandwidth for it to make a difference. Similarly sataI isn't really that great. It's only really SataII and SataIII in particular where SSDs come into their own. Or even better Sata-express. Vroom vroom....

[Anders]

I haven't got the laptop to hand. A quick bit of searching does seem to suggest the it is parallel ATA. Upgrading to 2GB of RAM from 512 megabytes should help somewhat. Thanks everyone for the help.

[Domestic_Ginger]

You could short stroke your HDD for a little gain. Defrag after a fresh install helps a little bit.

[ik9000]

if you really want to make sure go into device manager/BIOS and find the actual product number for the HDD. A google on that will reveal what it is far quicker than trying to use Sony's woeful support. They don't list things that old. Dell on the other hand - still let you download drivers and the whole chebang. Something I will bare in mind when I next buy a laptop....

[MrJim]

XP with SSD not a great idea as without TRIM you'll find performance will decay over time. It will be amazing for a while. Then slowly but surely decline into laggy pausing.

It might not be quite that bad, depending on the SSD. Most SSDs come with a utility which 'optimises' it for systems which don't support TRIM. Also, most SSDs do 'garbage collection' in the background, which while not as effective as TRIM, will help keep the performance at a reasonable level.

The comments about PATA are valid though - unless the laptop has SATAII, it's not really worth the upgrade IMHO.

[Kumagoro]

Seeing as ultra dma was likely 133MB/s on a machine that old an SSD should still fly along.

The good ones now still only do 30-40 MB/s 4k reads and that is what matters.

I would have a look into if ide to Sata micro converters would fit or the same thing for a CD drive type of replacement.

[spiritdreams]

older operating systems without trim build in will see a massive degrade in performance.

also without the optimised caching the performance advantage of the SSD will be greatly reduced, not to mention the automatic defrag reducing it's life expectancy.

[scaryjim]

older operating systems without trim build in will see a massive degrade in performance.

also without the optimised caching the performance advantage of the SSD will be greatly reduced, not to mention the automatic defrag reducing it's life expectancy.

1) built in garbage collection, 2) a slow SSD is still orders of magnitude faster than spinning rust, 3) turn defrag off (in fact, I can't remember ever seeing an XP machine with autodefrag turned on). Hardly insurmountable problems.

Also, given you're three weeks late to this party anyway and all of the above points have been made by other people, reading the thread before postibng might not be a terrible idea Otherwise it looks like you're just trying to hit that magic 20th post for Scan's free shipping....

[TerminatorUK]

Assuming it supports at least Sata II, it'd be worth getting a 64GB for sure.

[ik9000]

Assuming it supports at least Sata II, it'd be worth getting a 64GB for sure.

read the thread - it's pata. Or is that a post to try to get to 20?

[Scow Captain]

Not applicable for the OP but I'm surprised a couple of the commenters have said only look at an SSD with Sata-2 or 3. An SSD with SATA-1 (SATA-150) is still a good upgrade (having done it myself with the Toshiba Satellite L350). Obviously there is a transfer speed bottleneck which slows down start-up time but most PC tasks don't require long transfers.

The improvement in seek and access time makes the laptop far snappier in normal operation. PCs with the original SATA are likely to have been pre-installed with Vista so they should perform fine with the more slimline, TRIM friendly, Windows 7 & 8.