mullet_man Posted February 8, 2016 Posted February 8, 2016 We've got a LOT of slow netbooks and laptops which only 2GB so am hoping to give SSDs a test to give these things a new lease of life. What price and make should one look be looking for? I would say a 120GB would be enough space as our image is pretty small. Thanks.
mrbios Posted February 8, 2016 Posted February 8, 2016 I have a box of 70 or so sat on my desk at the moment ready to be deployed in to two IT suites another 45 to buy in the new budget, then the school will be 100% SSD
mikeyd101 Posted February 8, 2016 Posted February 8, 2016 Lucky people, Last week I just rescued a PO for 10 new machines with spinning HDD (as department ordering asked me to look over the specs), as Tech Coordinator (person that got the original quote) doesn't know or care about such things . I mentioned it to TC that would be a cheap upgrade for all our aging machines but went unnoticed. Icebergs ahead.
3s-gtech Posted February 8, 2016 Posted February 8, 2016 We've got a LOT of slow netbooks and laptops which only 2GB so am hoping to give SSDs a test to give these things a new lease of life. What price and make should one look be looking for? I would say a 120GB would be enough space as our image is pretty small. Thanks. Depends on the lifespan. Your netbooks will probably be SATA 2 (or even 1 if they're based on very early Atoms!) so even the hobbled Kingston V300 will be more than up to the task. If you would be doing this short term, then putting the drives in something else, get something better like a Samsung 850 Evo or equivalent. IMO.
pete Posted February 9, 2016 Posted February 9, 2016 120gb is the perfect size too, 240 is too much and 60 just isn't enough. How did you escape the Capital Wasteland and what made you give up radio?
mullet_man Posted February 9, 2016 Posted February 9, 2016 Depends on the lifespan. Your netbooks will probably be SATA 2 (or even 1 if they're based on very early Atoms!) so even the hobbled Kingston V300 will be more than up to the task. If you would be doing this short term, then putting the drives in something else, get something better like a Samsung 850 Evo or equivalent. IMO. Hi 3s-gtech. Thanks for this, looking at the model they might just be SATA 1. They are Toshiba NB500s. It would possibly be a short term thing to extend the life of the devices as we have lots of these and a lot of Dell 5520s. Am going to order a couple and do some testing. Thanks.
3s-gtech Posted February 9, 2016 Posted February 9, 2016 Looks like the NB500 may have the ICH7-M / 82801 controller. This was a relative of the desktop ICH7 but it had SATA 2 support disabled, only runs at SATA 1 speeds. I have fitted a few laptops with this southbridge with SSDs and they've been massively improved, so it is worth it. Very long in the tooth now though.
Norphy Posted February 9, 2016 Posted February 9, 2016 Fitting an SSD to a SATA 1 southbridge is certainly worth it. The transfer speeds may be limited to 150MB/s but for the majority of disk transactions, this is pretty irrelevant as the size of the files being accessed is usually pretty small. What makes the SSD faster is the access time of an SSD. A modern 7200RPM hard drive will have a sustained transfer rate of around 150-200MB/sec but access times of 9-12ms. Access times on SSDs is usually a tenth of a millisecond, maybe less so it finds its files so much more quickly.
mullet_man Posted February 9, 2016 Posted February 9, 2016 Thanks 3s-gtech and Norphy. Checked my image and it's only about 32gb in size so a 120gb is plenty of room.
adamholt1 Posted February 10, 2016 Posted February 10, 2016 How much are these coming in at for you? Looking at doing a similar project?
mullet_man Posted February 10, 2016 Posted February 10, 2016 How much are these coming in at for you? Looking at doing a similar project? I've been looking at Misco at the minute but they are ranging at between £40 and £55 quid it looks like based on model as mentioned by 3s-gtech the Kingston V300 is 30 quid ex VAT. Whereas the Samsung model which is more recommended is 45 quid ex vat. Am sure if i bought a job lot I could get the price down a few quid on each one. Might test the Kingston one first as at the minute it's only a test. - - - Updated - - - Welcome to 2012 Haha better late than never
3s-gtech Posted February 10, 2016 Posted February 10, 2016 You can't moan at £30. The Kingston is okay, pretty reliable and fast enough considering they switched out the internals for slower ones after the first batch.
mullet_man Posted February 13, 2016 Posted February 13, 2016 We ordered 2 of the cheap Kingstons just to test they came next day so we gave them ago yesterday. The Toshiba netbook honestly didn't make much difference they are only seemed speedier on boot up even then it wasn't by much. The Dell laptops were much better and really quick.
mrbios Posted February 13, 2016 Posted February 13, 2016 We ordered 2 of the cheap Kingstons just to test they came next day so we gave them ago yesterday. The Toshiba netbook honestly didn't make much difference they are only seemed speedier on boot up even then it wasn't by much. The Dell laptops were much better and really quick. How much ram did the toshiba have? I've found that so long as the CPU is better than an old celeron and you have 4GB ram in everything an SSD shows massive gains. If you have celerons or less than 4GB ram though then an SSD is a bit like polishing a turd.
mullet_man Posted February 13, 2016 Posted February 13, 2016 They have 2GB and an Atom processor. They were bought before my time but we've got hundreds of the bloody things. They are awful I just thought it might give them a bit of a boost that's all.
3s-gtech Posted February 13, 2016 Posted February 13, 2016 Lowest model I've tested an SSD in is a Dell Inspiron 6400 from 2006, which was upgraded to a Core 2 Duo T5600 and 4GB of RAM. Transformed an antique into a perfectly useable laptop that is still going now. Not tried them in any netbooks myself.
davethetekkie Posted February 14, 2016 Posted February 14, 2016 I did some benchmarking of our older gear to establish what would be worth the upgrade and what wouldn't. Our Toshiba NB510s showed a slight improvement but with a little bit of a test drive it became apparent that the test unit was still just too sluggish to make any investment worthwhile. Our 2nd and 3rd gen i5 machines (Viglen Genies and Lenovo M72e Tinies) showed a VAST improvement over their spinning rust though... The drive used was a 120GB Kingston V300 (current stock so I guess it's the hobbled version).
mullet_man Posted February 15, 2016 Posted February 15, 2016 I did some benchmarking of our older gear to establish what would be worth the upgrade and what wouldn't. Our Toshiba NB510s showed a slight improvement but with a little bit of a test drive it became apparent that the test unit was still just too sluggish to make any investment worthwhile. Our 2nd and 3rd gen i5 machines (Viglen Genies and Lenovo M72e Tinies) showed a VAST improvement over their spinning rust though... The drive used was a 120GB Kingston V300 (current stock so I guess it's the hobbled version). Yes it that's exactly what am thinking with our NB500s we also have about 60 NB510s too. The investment just isn't worth it which is a bit disappointing but I at least know it can work for the Dells we have. Any new devices we purchase I'll make sure come with SSDs now. Thanks for everyone's help and advice.
markwilfan Posted February 15, 2016 Posted February 15, 2016 What really grinds my gears is PC manufacturers STILL are not offering SSDs as an affordable HD swap. I mean you can pick up a Samsung EVO 850 for about £55 ex VAT and even less if bought in bulk. Why the hell would anybody want a clunky slow 500GB or 1TB drive in a workstation? grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr We are investing in SSDs for older PCs with the intention of just swapping the SSDs out as we refresh the hardware.
Norphy Posted February 15, 2016 Posted February 15, 2016 Why the hell would anybody want a clunky slow 500GB or 1TB drive in a workstation? grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Because the average idiot sees a PC World advert on the telly which says "£2 3s 6d for a Intel Core i7 Laptop with 8GB RAM and 2TB Hard Drive" (They of course don't mention that it has the worst possible screen, a touchpad which makes you want to through it out of a window and build quality that will make it fall apart if you do so much as belch in the same building). If they see "120GB SSD" instead, they're going think "Hmm, smaller number, not gonna buy that". This is why we can't have nice things.
markwilfan Posted February 15, 2016 Posted February 15, 2016 Fully agree with what you say there @Norphy . Even the business section of the dell site doesn't give you a standard option for ssd
sonofsanta Posted February 15, 2016 Posted February 15, 2016 What really grinds my gears is PC manufacturers STILL are not offering SSDs as an affordable HD swap. I mean you can pick up a Samsung EVO 850 for about £55 ex VAT and even less if bought in bulk. Why the hell would anybody want a clunky slow 500GB or 1TB drive in a workstation? grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr We are investing in SSDs for older PCs with the intention of just swapping the SSDs out as we refresh the hardware. This is why you get Novatech, Stone or VeryPC to build your PCs for you they've been giving us SSDs in new builds since 2012. It frustrates the bejesus out of me in consumer kit though. 95% of people don't need more than 256GB in their laptop and so they would benefit massively from an SSD. It's a world of difference on a modern Core i3 M with enough 4GB+ of RAM.
Arthur Posted February 15, 2016 Posted February 15, 2016 Even the business section of the Dell site doesn't give you a standard option for SSD All of the Dell OptiPlex and Latitudes I looked at did. http://i.cubeupload.com/FBAbRL.png http://i.cubeupload.com/VCLnYv.png
cpjitservices Posted February 15, 2016 Posted February 15, 2016 What about SSHD's are they worth a punt ?
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