SSD for a Netbook

petertr2000

petertr2000

petertr2000

Associate
Joined
7 Feb 2011
Posts
353
Hi,

I'm looking at buying a Cedar Trail netbook, probably the HP Mini210-4121 as I get an employee discount (£224!)

Would I get much benefit from replacing the stock HDD with a SSD device?


I know netbooks are a bit under powered (I'm hoping the N2800 will be a big improvement on the last generation of CPUs), and I heard SSD HDDs can really give slower devices a boost in performance.


It doesn't need to be a big drive. ~80GB would do me - as its a "as and when" device, to replace a 16Gb tablet device.

Any thoughts and suggestions?




Checked page one, and the recommended one seems to be Crucial RealSSD M4 64GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT064M4SSD2) - looks good. Will it make much difference though?


And while I'm here, my dad has an older netbook, single core. He says its really slow - will it help his too? For £70 its a nice investment.
 
Last edited:
mine laptop has a Samsung PB22J 64gb in and its faster than any modern laptop for booting and for doing over stuff
ddr2 3gb ram
intel 2ghz x2 cpu
intel gpu
it do's my needs
 
I have a hp notebook, similar size but a full cpu as it were.

An ssd would be a good move, as even with a full cpu, it is sluggish doing general tasks.

Whatever you go for, there will be a considerable improvement in performance
 
I think I'll do it. Its just for web browsing around the house, maybe watching youtube in bed, and as a "take on the plane" jobbie for films.
So I dont need masses of storage. Speed and battery life are the most important bits.


Plus, I could get an enclosure for the 320Gb 5400rpm drive that comes with it, and use it as my NAS, which I was going to buy as well.
 
I would go for the Crucial M4 you were looking at. Solid drive and great service from Crucial should you ever have problems with it.
 
I dont know what the chipsets are like on these little devices but i doubt they run sata 3 (might be wrong) and the M4 is one of the higher end SSDs that will never reach its full potential. You could quite easily go for a sata 2 SSD and save a few quid or be halfway towards a 120gb one rather than 60gb (if needed)

In real world terms it wont make much difference. Between the 2 in my opinion. it certainly wont be the bottle neck in the chain.
 
Efour2 said:
I dont know what the chipsets are like on these little devices but i doubt they run sata 3 (might be wrong) and the M4 is one of the higher end SSDs that will never reach its full potential. You could quite easily go for a sata 2 SSD and save a few quid or be halfway towards a 120gb one rather than 60gb (if needed)

In real world terms it wont make much difference. Between the 2 in my opinion. it certainly wont be the bottle neck in the chain.
Click to expand...

Thanks :)
 
Update:

On looking at some benchmarks and later deciding that it wasn't "too big" after all, I went for an HP DM1 E-450, 4GB RAM.


Again, will an SSD make a big difference here?
 
I started this thread a while back:-

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18290772

I eventually opted for a OCZ Vertex 30GB 2.5" SATA-II SSD and with Windows 7 Starter and MS Office 2010 works a treat, I did up the RAM to 2Gb as well and the only thing that slows it down is the single core processor (only use it for surfing and the odd document so it doesn't really multi-task) but has made it definately more useable.
 
I think you have a similar netbook to the one I bought my dad - the 210 with the Atom N450 CPU. Single core with hyperthreading. I guess that's the bottle neck. He's already put 2GB Ram in, but its still really slow. Multi tasking is awful on it.

An SSD could make all the difference for him.
 
I checked the Windows Experience and the CPU is 2.2 (The lowest so assume that is the bottle neck), incidently the SSD score is 6.7 which is quite good, the netbook must only be SATA II hence the score.

An SSD should be a massive improvement (it does boot to Windows in about 15 seconds, including the Wifi connection so that is impressive) although with it only being a single core 1.6Ghz processor don't expect miracles.

I did get the 30Gb drive that is no longer available but with Wondows 7 Starter and MS Office 2010 Prof there is still 13Gb free.
 
Bought the Crucial M4.

DM1 should be here one day this week, as should the SSD. Will probably boot into the bloated HP just to benchmark it. Need to get my hands on a Win 7 64Bit disk that will work with my license key.
 
petertr2000 said:
Bought the Crucial M4.

DM1 should be here one day this week, as should the SSD. Will probably boot into the bloated HP just to benchmark it. Need to get my hands on a Win 7 64Bit disk that will work with my license key.
Click to expand...

petertr2000 said:
Installed Win7 64 on it last night. Windows score was 7.9

Will do a proper benchmark once the windows updates FINALLY finish!
Click to expand...

Nice :)
 
Did some benchmarks - and I must say they might not be fair, as the laptop had an HP build of windows on it with all the gubbins that comes with it, whereas the SSD has a nice clean build.
(Both cases, I'd installed all Windows Updates).


Standard HDD
-------------
Time to book to logon screen - 50s
Time from logging on seeing Google search on Firefox Homepage - 32s


SSD
----
Time to book to logon screen - 24s
Time from logging on seeing Google search on Firefox Homepage - 13s


(I'd put firefox in the startup folder)



AS SSD Benchmark score: 1036


Me = Happy! Thanks all.
 
SSD was a great upgrade to my netbook. Benchmarks aside, it's just hands down faster with than a HDD.

I went for a £30 OCZ 30GB drive when OcUK had a deal on.

Upgraded the netbook to 4GB and a 30GB SSD, it's nice a snappy in Chrome / basic desktop use. The CPU is for sure the slowest thing in there now :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom