Vostro 200 Upgrade

[rjoeng]

Hi guys,

The church that I belong to has two Dell Vostro 200 computers - one is used by the Pastor and the other is used by office administrators. Problem is, both are nearing their limit on hard drive capacity. Each machine is now equipped with a Seagate ST380815AS 80 GB hard drive, 4.0 GB RAM, and an E8300 processor. On my 1st check, I found that the office machine hard drive has only 1.4 GB free. I know I can replace the existing hard drives with something that has more capacity, but since the Pastor is also complaining about how "slow" his machine is, I was just wondering if it would be worthwhile to look into replacement with a SSD on his machine? Better question, is it possible to do so on such an old computer (2008 vintage)? And if so, what would you recommend?

Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for your thoughts on this!

 

[frozentundra123456]

My lab has an E8400 and a HDD, and it feels plenty fast for browsing and office tasks, and we use some pretty large spreadsheets and data bases. I think a new hard drive and re-format should make the machine fine. I am sure most here will recommend an SSD, but a 7200 rpm HDD and a clean install should make a world of difference. Also if you are not running Win 7 64 bit be sure to upgrade to that.

 

[Ketchup]

From this pic, it looks like the board has plenty of SATA ports, so you will have no problem putting SSDs in those machines.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Crucial M500 240GB SSDs are $99.99 @ Newegg right now.

I just picked up a couple of 120GB models of the M500 for upgrading a few friends' rigs.

Whatever you do, make sure that you have backups. Might want to budget for a couple of external portable 1TB USB3.0 HDDs too. Those will run you $60 on sale at Staples.