SSD in older laptop

justintime2001 · 2 May 2011 at 22:33

I have a HP Pavillion DV8000 laptop (5yrs old). Can anyone tell me if it will take a 2.5" Crucial C300 SSD. The bios doesnt offer any options to choose ADHI instead of IDE and although it will physically fit I'm not sure if it will run with an SSD installed? Also, if it will take it, will I see much improvement in performance? Thanks

shine · 2 May 2011 at 22:57

I'm pretty sure that laptop uses IDE drives so an SSD will not fit as it uses SATA connector.

justintime2001 · 2 May 2011 at 23:06

oh no, thought the idea might be too good to be true

cmndr_andi · 3 May 2011 at 00:00

Looking at the service manual (pdf here) and checking the part numbers of the hard disk options - this laptop does indeed use PATA (or IDE) hard drives, not SATA ones.

justintime2001 · 3 May 2011 at 00:20

I have just checked the HDD itself and I think I might be in luck?

shine · 3 May 2011 at 00:24

Quite clearly says SATA so you are in luck but stick with the cheaper Older tech as your laptop will not be able to make use of the faster speeds on the lateSt generation.

justintime2001 · 3 May 2011 at 00:28

shine said:
Quite clearly says SATA so you are in luck but stick with the cheaper Older tech as your laptop will not be able to make use of the faster speeds on the lateSt generation.

Do you mean stick with SATA or the older SSD (ie Crucial C300) ?

shine · 3 May 2011 at 00:40

justintime2001 said:
Do you mean stick with SATA or the older SSD (ie Crucial C300) ?

I mean stick with the older SSD's, even the C300 will be a waste on your laptop. The C300 is a SATA 3 drive, your laptop is either SATA 1 or 2 so something like the Vertex 2 or Intel X-25M SSD's will max out the available bandwidth. Anything better is a waste of money for you.

cmndr_andi · 3 May 2011 at 00:41

Ah, yes - SATA indeed. Maybe that tech manual is for an older version of the DV8000.

As for running an SSD - so long as you plan to use an operating system that uses the trim command (ie Windows 7) then I say go for it. It may not support AHCI and be stuck at SATA1 (150MB/s) speeds, but compared to a mechanical HDD (especially a 5400RPM one) the step-up in performance will be massive.

I installed a Vertex 2 SSD into a 5 year old dell laptop (which used SATA1) and it turned it into a new machine. When doing standard desktop tasks it literally felt as fast as my much newer and faster desktop - a far cry from its performance before.

justintime2001 · 3 May 2011 at 00:45

Thanks for the advice chaps. I have a C300 in my desktop and am tempted to get the newer M4 and stick my C300 in the laptop and then install Windows 7.

The full spec is:
HP Pavilion DV8000 Series DV8263ea
2.00GB of RAM
Intel T2400 @ 1.83GHz CPU

Can you think of anything else I can do to improve this sluggish old lump. Its in 'as new' condition so it would be a shame not to make the best of it.

shine · 3 May 2011 at 00:53

Some reviews are saying the C300 is faster than the M4. Of course I didn't see these until after I ordered mine! Make sure you do your research befor getting an M4, mine should be here Wed.

justintime2001 · 3 May 2011 at 00:57

Thanks for that bit of info shine, I'll take your advice and wait a while I think