Solid State Drives

[staningrimsby]

Hi Guys,

 

I am after some recommendations please from those of you who have used them,

I am looking to upgrade some old Dell Latitude D531’s that we have, there a little slow

but with a little TLC can be improved.

 

I am looking at 2GB RAM upgrades at around £47 each, 802.11n wireless cards are £12 each and will be looking for SSD’s, 64GB should be enough but 128GB is also an option there only for pupil laptops and at the moment less than 10GB is used on the drives.

 

Hopefully with these updates the laptops will give me another year so I can budget for a new laptop trolley.

 

Cheers

Stan.

[sted]

are the windows xp if so ssd's need vista or above really or they age prematurely. other than that they will make any pc faster

[mrbios]

£47 for 2gb ram?! You can get single 2gb ddr2 notebook memory for £21 exvat, £47 seems a bit extreme?

 

edit: if you're only using 10gb hdd space why not just go with some 32gb or 40gb ssds? Hell of alot cheaper

Edited March 22, 2013 by mrbios

[staningrimsby]

There currenly running windows 7, as for £21 fir 2gb ram were is that from my price was from crucial

[mrbios]

There currenly running windows 7, as for £21 fir 2gb ram were is that from my price was from crucial

 

here you go: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-159-CR&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=936

 

they happily deal with schools too also scan and novatech have some a bit cheaper but theyre not branded.

[Arthur]

SSDs need Vista or above

Don't you mean Windows 7 or above? Vista doesn't support TRIM.

[CyberNerd]

There are tools like Intels SSD optimiser mean you can effectively use SSD's without OS built in TRIM on Vista, XP:

 

http://download.intel.com/design/flash/nand/mainstream/Intel_SSD_Optimizer_White_Paper.pdf

[synaesthesia]

Wouldn't recommend it anyway. Besides if it can run 7, do run 7. Not worth the hassle of using already defunct and soon to be unsupported operating systems. However on older laptops I would question if it's worth it - yes they will be massively improved with ram (as above you wont need to pay more than 20 quid - nearer 15 quid exc VAT). Not sure how well the processors (Turion?) will cope with it or indeed the laptop BIOS. I suspect it will hold an SSD back and you'll never get the full benefit.

[CyberNerd]

Wouldn't recommend it anyway. Besides if it can run 7, do run 7. Not worth the hassle of using already defunct and soon to be unsupported operating systems.

 

Neither would i in this case but it is an option for older machines where putting a new operating system on it is too costly or result in a slower machine.

[Vierkantdel]

In case you haven't got any solid state drive yet, and want something that's reliable. DO NOT BUY ONE. They fail in a range of 2 years. Even when you treat them as you should.

[synaesthesia]

Do shush @Vierkantdel , if you're going to sign up just to rant about something YOU have had a problem with then this probably isn't the place for you.

 

** edit ** I stand slightly corrected, this is a youth problem as this is a student. @Vierkantdel you'll do well to tone it down a bit! Not all SSD's are equal and the majority of us have been in the business long enough to know when something is bad. There are some really bad ones (all original sandforce drives and very notably the Sandisk Ultra drives and OCZ Vertex 2) but the majority are absolutely fine. Solid state storage has been around longer than you've been alive!

Edited April 14, 2013 by synaesthesia

[Arthur]

They fail in a range of 2 years.

I have SSDs that are approaching 4 years old, so that isn't true at all.

 

Did you buy OCZ SSDs?

[featured_spectre]

I am looking for a 250GB SSD for my laptop...can anyone give me some pointers as to price and brand...having NEVER dealt with one for lappys I dont know the quality....also if they have migration software so I can transfer everything that too would be awesome

[synaesthesia]

Exactly the same as for desktops. Samsung 840 would be top of my choices due to cheer performance and reliability seen from the 830s. If you have any concern at all over reliability, then plump for the Intel drives but there will be a financial cost to that. You can get a "Laptop pack" from Samsung which means it comes with a great USB>SATA adapter and Acronis software for exactly that purpose too.

[featured_spectre]

Other than amazon or ebuyer (I dislike both for electrical or hardware purchases)....anywhere to pick the full kit up?

[sted]

ccl online

 

ive had 2 crucials and fitted a few m4 and v4 drives and had no issues so far

[Homeland]

Have a look here RAM Memory Upgrade: Dell, Mac, Apple, HP, Compaq. USB drives, SSD at Crucial.com/uk they sell some of the SSD's with the full kits as well.

[old_n07]

Microdirect sell the Samsung drives and kits

 

Solid State Drives - microdirect.co.uk

[Arthur]

can anyone give me some pointers as to price and brand

Samsung or Samsung.

 

840: £134.98 (Dabs), £129.98 (Amazon) - £20 cashback

840 Pro: £179.98 (Dabs), £177.46 (Amazon) - £15 cashback

 

The 840 Pro is faster than the 840 and comes with a 5 year warranty (instead of 3). It also uses MLC NAND instead of TLC, so will be slightly more reliable (although for most people this is a non-issue).

 

migration software so I can transfer everything that too would be awesome

If you buy an SSD and it doesn't come with a copy of TrueImage or Ghost, the following disk cloning programs are excellent alternatives and completely free...

 

• EaseUS Partition Master Home Edition
  
• MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition
  
• Macrium Reflect Free
  

Using the bootable discs that each program offers, you could stick the hard drive and SSD in a spare desktop PC and clone the disks much faster than you could if you used the USB 2.0 to SATA adapter that Samsung supplies with some of their SSDs.

 

If you are using Windows 7 or 8, run WinSAT after you have cloned the disk since this will ensure that TRIM support gets enabled in the OS.

Edited April 14, 2013 by Arthur

[featured_spectre]

Will look into those.