SSD for a old laptop?

nippynoo · 4 Sep 2010 at 14:29

I have a question about SSD vs HDD.

Would an SSD be any quicker than a new HDD in a (5 year old) laptop with SATA Revision 1.0 (SATA 1.5 Gbit/s) ? According to Wikipedia "..mechanical hard disk drives can transfer data at up to 157 MB/s,[7] which is beyond the capabilities of the older PATA/133 specification and also exceeds a SATA 1.5 Gbit/s link"

This seems to suggest a SSD would be no quicker than a modern HDD. The bottleneck being the speed of the SATA 1.0 interface.

Is this correct?

reygjabla · 4 Sep 2010 at 14:38

Its not just the speed that counts but access time. I installed a Corsair P128 on a 5 year old Dell Inspiron and Boot up times and application launches is way, way faster than the 7200 RPM HDD that used to be in it.

nippynoo · 4 Sep 2010 at 14:44

I dont see how the SSD could be much faster on SATA 1.0 interface compared to HDD. The reduced access times would reduce the boot-up time by 8-12 milliseconds, which just wouldnt be noticeable. Is there some other reason for them being "way, way faster" ?

ANDARIAL · 5 Sep 2010 at 08:49

I have put a vertex2 into my hp mini net book and while i have to say boot up times have got `slightly` faster application do open a lot quicker
So my conclusion (in my case at least)is if you are after quicker boot times the cost over a 7200 drive is not worth it,if however you want apps to load nearly instantaneously it is worth it

reygjabla · 5 Sep 2010 at 09:59

nippynoo said:
I dont see how the SSD could be much faster on SATA 1.0 interface compared to HDD. The reduced access times would reduce the boot-up time by 8-12 milliseconds, which just wouldnt be noticeable. Is there some other reason for them being "way, way faster" ?

Here's a sample of SSD Boot times of W7 Ultimate 64 on Intel X25-M Mainstream 160GB

I bet you can't find a mechanical drive set-up that can beat this speed.

ANDARIAL · 5 Sep 2010 at 10:09

Doesn`t bootracer time windows startup i.e. i mean from when windows starts to desktop?

In my experience,of my kit,timeing from when i press the start button,i found very little speed increase as the bios checking seemed to be the hurdle
@ op time how long it takes to get to the windows is starting screen,it will give you more info on whether to consider a ssd or not
Just my 2p worth

reygjabla · 5 Sep 2010 at 10:38

Bootracer time your system from Bios check to logon screen and from logon screen to desktop.

ANDARIAL · 5 Sep 2010 at 10:54

reygjabla said:
Bootracer time your system from Bios check to logon screen and from logon screen to desktop.

Doh

me needs to look more carefully

nippynoo · 10 Sep 2010 at 23:09

So do we all agree that an SSD is no faster than a (modern 5400rpm) HDD for SATA 1.0 ?? Am I better off just upgrading my laptop with a new HDD, which would give me the exact same speed improvement?

Boozebeard · 10 Sep 2010 at 23:13

It wont transfer data faster but it sure as hell will load things quicker which is what ssds are really all about.

vsmora · 10 Sep 2010 at 23:41

The wiki cites one of the fastest HDDs in the world. Laptop HDDs are not as fast as desktop units, and I'm not aware of any laptop units that can exceed 133MB/s. Peak transfer is also only reached at the start of the disk when reading sequentially which is a best-case scenario i.e. real-world usage will always be slower and no where near limited by SATA 1. Google for HD Tach graphs to see how it tails of across a disk. SSDs generally perform nearer to their maximum for more of the time.

For access time, I think you may have misunderstood what it is nippynoo. Every independant file access will benefit from the few millisecs improvement of an SSD and there are thousands of such accesses at boot time, so they will add up to make a noticeable difference.

Whether it's worth installing an SSD that's worth more than the laptop it is going into, is more difficult to judge. Maybe look at hybrid (Momentus XT) drives.

MikeHunt79 · 11 Sep 2010 at 03:05

nippynoo said:
So do we all agree that an SSD is no faster than a (modern 5400rpm) HDD for SATA 1.0 ?? Am I better off just upgrading my laptop with a new HDD, which would give me the exact same speed improvement?

Don't forget an SSD will use less power meaning you also get better battery life.

reygjabla · 11 Sep 2010 at 11:01

and less heat as well which means cooler laptop.

Bane · 11 Sep 2010 at 11:24

nippynoo said:
So do we all agree that an SSD is no faster than a (modern 5400rpm) HDD for SATA 1.0 ?? Am I better off just upgrading my laptop with a new HDD, which would give me the exact same speed improvement?

I don't know what I'm going on about, so here's my layman point of view.

It looks like you're comparing the max sequential transfer rate. So comparing the SSD's figures against a mechanical drive won't appear any better. But in real life there are lots of other factors that contribute to an overall faster response.

The finding the data to begin with the lower access time of the SSD. Once transferring the data does a SSD performance drop off (look at HD Tune graphs for mechanical drives)? I think mechanical drives are affected depending on where on the platter the data is taken from, with either the inner or outer part being faster than the other.

Suppose it comes down to if you plan to just install/uninstall programs all day or use the drive regularly were the snappy response of a SSD apparent. If you’ve got Windows XP I’ll probably avoid it unless modern SSD’s have great internal garbage collection/maintenance.