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[Solved] SSD upgrade for netbook - worth it?

Forum Storage : Hard Disks - [Solved] SSD upgrade for netbook - worth it?

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Best answer from klsdivan.

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creativename   08-23-2009 at 08:17:02 PM

I've read tons of SSD reviews and get that one driven by an Indilinx, Intel, or Samsung controller will likely be a great performance booster for a pc.

My question is this: Considering the performance issues with netbooks (Atom, GMA950), I'm wondering how much benefit a good SSD will provide. Is it a significant improvement (particularly with regard to program launch time) or do the slow CPU, etc. keep performance pretty slow despite the upgrade?

I haven't seen anything testing out good SSDs like an OCZ Vertex on a netbook, and I'm considering switching out the Seagate Momentus for an OCZ Vertex or Agility once prices drop another $20 to $30, hoping it'll change things.
Anyone have any experience with this, or seen a good article?

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Best answer from klsdivan
Well I was wrong about the Storage size as they seem to be about half 1.8" and half 2.5"

But for the money they are still not realy worth it, ok a few seconds of windows start up, but how much time do you spend actually using the hard drive. I mainly use mine for e-mail a bit of internet browsing and some light word, excel usage all of which will only load very marginally quick on a SSD. If you realy want to speed you netbook up a bit then add extra RAM I doubled mine to 2gb and it sped it up a bit and also much cheaper.
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rand_79   08-23-2009 at 10:19:34 PM

the only benefit it has is less power useage in a netbook IMO.

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Bronze Storage badge sminlal   08-24-2009 at 06:47:06 AM

It also pretty much eliminates the risk of data loss due to mechanical shock.

I'm sure it also would help boot and application load times, but by how much I couldn't say.

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creativename   08-24-2009 at 09:09:48 AM

yeah, battery, shock, sound, heat, all good things. The unknown is performance. I suspect there is a gain, but I wonder how much. When using it, does it actually feel faster...

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klsdivan   08-24-2009 at 02:47:24 PM

Netbooks take 1.8' hard drives and not 2.5' so you are very limited on slow SSD's

I have a Eee 901 with two SSD 4gb+16gb but they are a bit rubbish as transfer speeds are very low in the 20+/-mb area, but they will load things like windows faster though because of faster random read/write and the low latency, but the main advantage is as above, low power, shock and heat

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creativename   08-25-2009 at 12:45:57 AM

klsdivan wrote :

Netbooks take 1.8' hard drives and not 2.5' so you are very limited on slow SSD's

I have a Eee 901 with two SSD 4gb+16gb but they are a bit rubbish as transfer speeds are very low in the 20+/-mb area, but they will load things like windows faster though because of faster random read/write and the low latency, but the main advantage is as above, low power, shock and heat




I have an Eee 1000HA. These use traditional 2.5" hard drives, so this is not an issue.

Reply to creativename
daship   08-25-2009 at 01:39:03 AM

All netbooks I,ve had are 2.5s.

SSDs make a huge difference in netbook but not as big as in a desktop or newer laptop. The chipset limits the speed at which a SSD can run.

I had a SSD rated @ 250MB/s it ran 130MB/s in my netbook. Standard 160 5400 rpm it cmae with ran 50MB/s

Big improvement along with extra ram.

Also like was mentioned if you drop it you still got your data.. Netbooks are easy to drop due to their size.

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creativename   08-25-2009 at 05:20:26 AM

good to hear that. i found one or two people out there reporting significant gains on benchmarks and minimal gains in the user's felt sense that things were faster and was beginning to fear it wasn't worth it.
I've heard that the bandwidth was limited. Maybe netbooks only support SATA 1 spec? That may be motivation to go with an Agility vs. a Vertex. (though 30gb vertex is cheaper now on newegg...) tempting, but might wait for windows 7 (real copy) to install, then clone to the ssd...

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klsdivan   08-25-2009 at 02:56:54 PM
Best answer

Well I was wrong about the Storage size as they seem to be about half 1.8" and half 2.5"

But for the money they are still not realy worth it, ok a few seconds of windows start up, but how much time do you spend actually using the hard drive. I mainly use mine for e-mail a bit of internet browsing and some light word, excel usage all of which will only load very marginally quick on a SSD. If you realy want to speed you netbook up a bit then add extra RAM I doubled mine to 2gb and it sped it up a bit and also much cheaper.

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