SSD advice for OLD Laptop

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watrhous

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Nov 27, 2013
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What do i consider when looking for an ssd to avoid spending money on an SSD that is bottlenecked by the laptop specs or vice versa?

the only specs I know of atm are its dual core i5 and 4gb of ram.
 
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I actually bought 3 of these for $27.50 each. I figured they were only about $7 more than a 500g hdd so I hope i did ok.
Micron RealSSD C300 MTFDBAK128MAG-1G1 128GB 3.0Gbps 2.5" Solid State Drive
I checked the BIOS and they have ACHI.
What do you think?
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Ironsounds

Ironsounds

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Jul 31, 2011
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Hello... Typically the HD is the bottleneck... an i5 and MB has a very good SATA communication speed... Go for it, you WILL notice a improvement B )
1) You will have to determine what type of SATA plug/connection your LAPtop needs... micro sata? std Sata?
2) There is thickness to them to consider... typically spacers are included for mounting purposes.
3) take out the OLD one and measure it and determine/post a pic of the connector on back of it.
4) check you Laptop manual/PDF for information about this.
 
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watrhous

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std Sata? Do you mean ssd sata? it is not micro.

So will I get full benefit from a 6gb ssd vs a 3gb ssd? Or is there something i need to look for to determine which would be practical to avoid wasted attributes...?

Im just saying, If i can find a sale for 6gb and its the same price as 3gb and not wasted performance or bottlenecked byt he machine somehow then of course I want most bang for buck.
 
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Ironsounds

Ironsounds

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Hello... 1b) In a laptop there can be a 'proprietary" sata too... STD=typical desktop SATA SIZE connectors.
Typically people are buying 250GB and 500GB sata SSD's... can you link me at what you are considering? B /

Yes... I understand you want the best bang for your $$$... IF you are you talking about the SATA Communication speed? any 3g SATA will be fine and not a performance breaker here. B )
 
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Solandri

Solandri

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A laptop HDD's sequential speeds are about 125 MB/s. A SSD's sequential speeds on SATA 3 are about 500 MB/s. 4x faster.

A laptop HDD's 4k speeds are about 0.7 MB/s. A SSD's 4k speeds are about 30-70 MB/s. 40x to 100x faster.

If the SATA interface supports NCQ (queuing multiple small file requests, instead of waiting for one task to complete before giving it another task), its 4k speeds can go up to 200-400 MB/s. So now it's several hundred times faster than a HDD. This is what makes a SSD feel so much faster than a HDD. It's not the sequential speeds that everyone and drive manufacturers obsess over; it's the 4k speeds.

Note that these 4k speeds are almost all below the SATA 2 speed limit (300 MB/s). Only large sequential file read/writes will be slower with SATA 2. That's mostly benchmarks and (if you had a second SSD) copying movies from one SSD to another. About the only real-life task where high sequential speeds really matter is real-time video editing. The vast majority of files a computer accesses on a drive are small (4k) to medium (a few megabytes). And with current SSDs these will almost always fall below the SATA 2 speed limit.

So yeah, upgrading a laptop with SATA 2 to a SSD is worth it. The main thing you should be worried about is whether or not the laptop's SATA interface supports NCQ (since that makes about a 5x difference in speed of 4k read/writes). Some SATA 2 laptops have it, some don't. NCQ is a part of the AHCI command set. So if the laptop has AHCI mode available in the BIOS, then it will support NCQ and you are good to go. (This is also why it's important to change the computer from SATA to AHCI mode when you upgrade to a SSD.)
 
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watrhous

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So 3gb vs 6gb is irellevant at this point for a laptop since it cant even reach the max for the 3gb, is that correct?

If AHCI mode is there is NCQ something i need to activate or si that dependent on the bios options?
This is really interesting. I wonder if the SSD I am using now on my home box is getting its max performance or if I have some feature off or on that is bottle necking it.. great reply btw, this is exactly the type of info I was looking for.
 
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Ironsounds

Ironsounds

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Hello... 1) Yes 3 or 6 g will perform the same on your system.
2) you can run the SATA MB controller in IDE or ACHI mode... this can add some drive "server" communications/maintenance software features in ACHI... either mode will work as a "SSD/HD" in your OS.
3) The communication hardware'driver used will dictate speed/performance/? with your HOME Box.
 
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watrhous

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Nov 27, 2013
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I actually bought 3 of these for $27.50 each. I figured they were only about $7 more than a 500g hdd so I hope i did ok.
Micron RealSSD C300 MTFDBAK128MAG-1G1 128GB 3.0Gbps 2.5" Solid State Drive
I checked the BIOS and they have ACHI.
What do you think?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
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