SATA 1.5 SSD?

[AnUnusedUsername]

I have a (somewhat) old laptop I'm considering buying a SSD for. It has a fairly good processor, a nice screen, and decent battery life, so I thought a SSD to speed up boot times and system performance overall would be a helpful little change. The problem is, the motherboard only has SATA I 1.5gb/s ports, not sata II or sata III. Currently the thing is using a 5400 rpm hdd, so theres obviously a lot of room for improvement in both power consumption and performance. I know even 10,000 rpm desktop hdd's are just barely able to surpass the bandwidth of sata 1.5, but I've heard that ssd's are almost all strictly better than this.

Does anyone know of a SSD that wouldn't be total overkill for a stata I system? Ideally, I'd rather not have to buy a new high performance SSD and just not get the full benefit from it, so I'm looking for an ssd that's both faster than a mechanical drive, but also that isn't all that expensive. Capicity in SSD's is a nasty price issue I know, but I could deal with ~40gb if the drive was constantly full, which ive heard isnt good for performance or the drives lifetime, so I'm thinking a ~50-80gb drive.

I'll be using the drive mostly just for windows, office, and some other static programs, my system has a second internal drive I use for storage.

 

[AnUnusedUsername]

EDIT: (I kept getting told I am not allowed to edit my own post, odd forum bug)

A little add-on question: would an SSD in a SATA I port be any faster than a RAID array of two 5400 rpm notebook drives? My system has a raid controller and second hdd bay, so RAID is an option as well.

 

[michael775]

id say go for it if the laptop has a better FSB then 800MHZ go for it im talking 1066MHz or better same tith hyper ttansport

 

[RetiredChief]

SKIP the HDDs in Raid0 in laptop. It will improve the Sequencial read/writes and do NOTHING for the important 4 K random read/writes - for you this is the important function.

I'd go with a sata II SSD (64-> 80 gig) preferably the Intel G2 or Intel 320 (approx $185). Both would be limited by sata 1.5 for sequencial read/writes but probably OK for the random read/writes. When you do get around to getting that new laptop, then just move them over and in this case the 320 would be better choice.
The Intel have the Highest relaibility ratings and a very low power consumption < 1 Watt when active.
Note: some of the LOW end SSDs are only 2 -> 3 times faster than a good HDD in the area of random read/writes.

And yes it is bad to almost fill a SSD.

 

[AnUnusedUsername]

Hmmm. I was hoping to find one closer to $100 than $200, more than $150ish is really beyond my budget (If that means I more or less can't get a reliable SSD with enough space for my OS, so be it). Considering that performance is more or less a non-issue as I'm capped at SATA 1 speeds, anything beyond that is unnecessary cost to me, and from what I gather any SSD at all is beyond that. I'm not planning on replacing this laptop anytime in the near future, as it works and more power doesn't do simple applications much good. (Plus, my desktop needs an upgrade more and I don't want to mess with a small SSD in a new desktop) So buying an SSD thats over SATA 1.5 spec is a waste of money for me, as by the time I have another system to put it in, either I will buy one thats larger (for a desktop), or more performance and capacity will be cheaper, when I replace the laptop in a few years.

I'm looking at just a tad over 40gb of data required for windows, office, and the various other programs I'll store on it, so this means I'll need at least 60GB to keep the drive functioning properly, right?

I suppose a more helpful way for me to form my question is this: Would buying a cheaper SSD immediately mean I'm buying a lower build quality (vs simply lower performing) part, or do they go hand-in-hand? or, What's a stable/reliable SSD that holds at least 60GB, completely regardless of performance, thats under $150? Cheaper is better, in that I don't care about performance, but I don't want a "cheap" (as in poorly built/designed) drive.

In some cases (like motherboards, for example), low cost products that are well built (but slower than a more expensive one), exist alongside low cost products that are poorly built but as fast as the more expensive ones. I'm looking for the former of the two in the SSD space.