Improve old XP laptop with SSD?

[pbryd]

I have an old Toshiba M40 laptop running XP.

I've added extra RAM up to the 2GB limit and I'm toying with the idea of installing a SSD to improve performance over the 2.5" drive that it's currently using.

I know it's an old laptop but it is in very good condition so I'd like to keep it going for as long as I can get away with.

I use Illustrator and Photoshop on it so I'd like to keep XP.

Has anyone had any experience of using a new SSD in an old laptop running XP?

Phil

 

[bucknutty]

SSD on an old mobo that is sata1 or 2 and does not suppor AHCI will not help much. You will get some speed benifets as long as the SSD is mostly empty. But as it gets full and is used more it will slow down. Eventually the SSD will be slower than the mechanical drive.

The mother board really has to support AHCI (advanced host control interface) in order to make a SSD feasible. With out AHCI the computer will not pass the trim command down to the SSD so it wont delete old data when you delete. Instead the old data will be deleted when you need to write over it, causing a very long write delay.

 

[cin19]

Windows XP isn't very SSD friendly and XP is unfortunately not supported TRIM. The TRIM command enables the OS to notify the SSD that old data is no longer valid. TRIM is non-specific to either SATA controller mode, and will work equally well in both IDE and AHCI-mode.

If you want to use SSD on WinXP and check the link maybe help. I don't try to use SSD on winxp yet.
http://www.prime-expert.com/articles/a06/performance-tuning-of-windows-xp-on-ssd-based-netbooks.php

 

[jothy]

Just over-provision the drive and you should be fine since you don't have TRIM. This is the best thing you can do if you don't have TRIM. Depending on how much you over-provision the drive, your speed should hold up just fine. I say over-provision at least 20% of your capacity.

 

[pbryd]

Thanks for you info guys, looks like it's going to have the possibility to cause more trouble than it's worth.

Might be easier going back to dual boot Ubuntu / XP.