Storage Solutions Upgrading a 7 year old laptop to SSD - Good idea?

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Party Monger

Party Monger

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I have a Vostro 1400 that works pretty well save for the slow harddisk. The Disk for the past year has been making slight noises too. I was wonderign if I could upgrade it to an SSD?

The laptop has a core-2duo T5470 processor. The specs are similar to this http://www.cnet.com/products/dell-v...b-ram-80gb-hdd-vista-home-basic-series/specs/

I use the laptop for browsing, slight coding, Photoshop, Illustrator and other random stuff and i'm happy with the performance except the disk read and writes take a lot of time. Especially with big files in photoshop.

I was thinking of one of those Samsung SSDs for around 5k if it would make a significant difference./

I have a new charger, battery, 4gb ram and everything else kinda working okay. Also have OSX mavericks installed, Hope that can be cloned in. But its not important. Also download on this laptop, but I could get something else for that.
 
Absolutely. I had a similar plan for my six year old Dell XPS but it started overheating a lot and I had to replace it. Even I had put in a new battery and upgraded the RAM.
If you don't have a need for replacing the laptop, then just get the SSD and rejuvenate it. Trust me, it literally breathes new life into the machine and is the best upgrade one can get.
 
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What about the compatibility? Connectors, voltage and everything? Also how do I make sure I dont have to reinstall everything? (Hackintosh is a pain to reinstall)
 
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Samsung EVO 128GB was selling for ₹5100 or so few days back; good VFM SSD. Putting a SSD in old laptop literally gives a re-birth to it. I have put OCZ Vertex 4 in my HP laptop (2.4GHz 1st gen i3 and 4GB RAM) a year and half back. It still works faster than it was brand new. Right now my brother uses it in USA.

Also if laptop has SATA port, any SATA SSD will work.
 
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Mine Dell Inspiron 1501 purchased in 2008 became completely usable with a 64GB SSD . Otherwise it was just a download station . Now completely usable with IDM downloads and minimum 10 tabs open in chrome always
The only thing it doesn't do is running 10GB bluerays rips due to processor bottleneck
 
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Thanks guys. Now considering it very seriously. Which model would be a VFM SSD ? Im okay with 64gb if the price is significantly less. Im using a 120gb right now. Also have a 1tb WD Elements so space is not an issue.

Will I have to reinstall everything or can i clone the present HDD ?
 
Most probably you have to re install Mavericks, however you can try cloning also. If that works, then great.

Better try directly installing Yosemite. Worth the effort ;-)
 
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avi said:
Most probably you have to re install Mavericks, however you can try cloning also. If that works, then great.

Better try directly installing Yosemite. Worth the effort ;-)
Click to expand...
How would I clone though? Since this is a laptop.
Yeah, if the kexts remain same, it might be easy, but then you also need an Mac to prepare the damn pendrive. God only knows how i managed that last time. :P
 
Use Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper.

Most probably it will work, you may have to see if there are any extra kexts needed for SSD.

And why you need a new Mac, your current Mavericks will do just fine preparing USB :P
 
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vyral_143 said:
Get 128GB one. 64GB is less for a laptop though you have external HDD.
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I was considering if there was a huge cost difference. But this works. I'l get a laptop hdd casing. for 200-300 bucks.

avi said:
Use Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper.

Most probably it will work, you may have to see if there are any extra kexts needed for SSD.

And why you need a new Mac, your current Mavericks will do just fine preparing USB :p
Click to expand...
No I was thinking of something that does the whole drive only. Like copy paste so I can plug it in and get working. The Transcend link above shows something similar in its demo video. But then triple boot , OSX and chimera will **** it. Mavericks must have the kexts for SSD's no?
 
I don't know about SSD kexts and mavericks, so I cannot say anything.

Always keep a USB installation drive handy. Helps you in a lot of ways.

You should probably do something like this:
1. Take back up of kexts, chimera/chameleon settings files etc
2. Connect SSD and use CCC or SD to create back up. (I also think you have to add chameleon files again, do check up about this)
3. Swap HDD with SSD
4. ???
5. Profit
 
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Just go for used intel 520 series 120GB . Its been discussed in another thread . Bought it yesterday for 3500/ using Axis acoupon . Had already been using it and its awesome
 
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