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Love SSD — Parallax Forums

Love SSD

RS_JimRS_Jim Posts: 1,768
in General Discussion
My computer for Propellering is an HP G6 laptop that started life as a WIN7 machine with a 500GB mechanical hard drive. I have since converted it to a Linux Mint 20 with a 500 GB SSD. The boot up time went from over 2 minutes to 35 seconds. BST loads in under 1 second. This, to me is a better performance improvement than doubling the processor speed!
Jim

Comments

  • Peter JakackiPeter Jakacki Posts: 10,193
    Even with a HDD you will find that LM boots very fast, and is usable as soon as the desktop comes up, not like WIN10 that fakes that part but you still can't use it :smile: I even have LM20 running off a standard 32GB USB Flash drive (Sandisk Ultrafit) on an old i3 laptop for my media center. It is very snappy and of course boots quickly, even though the HDD has long since died.

    I recently upgraded the 512GB M.2 SSD on my XPS15 up to a 1TB and decided to do a clean install, so I have LM20.1 beta running. The built-in IPTV works really well too.
  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,069
    Yes, SSD's improve the performance dramatically. Probably the best upgrade for $ you can do for an older PC.

    All our work and home PCs now have SSD's.
  • MaciekMaciek Posts: 675
    You guys are making me nervous :).

    I'm still using my 16 year old, 32 bit Acer TravelMate 400 - just typing this text on it right now - with a whooping 1GB RAM and 40GB ATA HDD running Xubuntu 18.04.5. No chance for a SSD for it :( .

    This is not my only laptop but the oldest one and the one that gets the most use for its keyboard feel and 15" screen.
    I should most probably get myself a more modern one instead of spending my hard earned money on P2 boards but somehow I haven't figured it out earlier :).
    Embedded Forths just don't have high enough requirements to justify that move.
  • Wuerfel_21Wuerfel_21 Posts: 5,107
    edited 2021-01-02 13:30
    Maciek wrote: »
    I'm still using my 16 year old, 32 bit Acer TravelMate 400 - just typing this text on it right now - with a whooping 1GB RAM and 40GB ATA HDD running Xubuntu 18.04.5. No chance for a SSD for it :( .

    There sure are SSDs for 2.5 inch PATA slot: https://www.amazon.com/128GB-KingSpec-2-5-inch-SM2236-Controller/dp/B0091T4ZWU (just one example)


    But yeah, SSDs are pretty neat. Initially didn't have one in my PC, but have semi-recently added a Samsung 970 to it. Now I don't have to reboot it ever couple weeks, haha.
  • MaciekMaciek Posts: 675
    Wuerfel_21 wrote: »
    ...
    There sure are SSDs for 2.5 inch PATA slot: https://www.amazon.com/128GB-KingSpec-2-5-inch-SM2236-Controller/dp/B0091T4ZWU (just one example)
    ...

    Yeah, but
    $83.00
    + $30.77 Shipping & Import Fees Deposit to Poland

    Financially speaking a $110 SSD would be worth more than all of my laptops combined. For such an oldie even a free sticker would result in at least doubling its value.

    Then there is a limited onboard HDD controller ...so I see no real gain here.
    I'll just use it as it is until it dies and then put it away in the storage just in case I might see some use for any of its parts in the future.
  • Peter JakackiPeter Jakacki Posts: 10,193
    The small 2.5" SATA SSDs are very cheap ($29AUD from a local supplier) and all you need is a PATA adapter for around $10, so say $40 total. But yes, they are not just old computers, they are ancient. I'm sure I have ones that are much better in my junk box.
  • Wuerfel_21Wuerfel_21 Posts: 5,107
    I haven't really kept up with laptops the last couple years....

    I wonder what a bottom end budget laptop (under 250€) gets you these days. Back in 2012 when I got the laptop I went on to use basically every day for 7 years, some 500 to 600 € (not sure anymore) were splurged to get one with a dedicated Nvidia GPU so it'd run Minecraft smoothly. The ultimate benchmark back then :)

    Nowadays the intel integrated GPUs are probably outclassing it, haha.
  • potatoheadpotatohead Posts: 10,261
    I have been using SSDs for a long time now. They are great for all the reasons mentioned here.

    Even old computers with sluggish interfaces benefit due to pretty much no seek times. Sustained read and write top out, but lots of rando reads and writes, also high fragmentation all improve significantly.

    One caution:

    If you pull one, like you would with a physical hard drive, don't count on it holding data anywhere near as long.

    I have a box full of various hard drives from IDE on up and every so often will go looking through them for something. No worries. (Not saying it is good practice. This is just how things ended up.)

    Some SSDs will only retain for a year or two.

    Something to know.
  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    edited 2021-01-06 15:28
    My several years old NEC laptop with an SSD boots from cold to the GUI login in 5 seconds flat, running Linux. My wife's almost-similar NEC boots Windows 10 in about ten seconds. So yes, SSDs are nice.
    I also replaced SD cards with SSDs for several of my Raspberry Pi boards (booting from SSD), also quite nice. The Pi gets around 345 MB/second from the SSDs (Samsung T5 and T7)
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,257
    I have a fleet of Toshiba 11.6" laptops into which I have upgraded with SSDs and various mSATA drive adapters. Lots of interesting hardware combos out there to choose from, and the speed increase is significant.
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