Worth throwing a SSD into my old Toshiba Satellite?

[TheVrolok]

I do my primary computing on my desktop (below), I also have a small work laptop (Dell XPS Ultrabook) that I use essentially only at work, and lastly my old Toshiba Satellite A505-S6980 that I use at home/travel for light stuff (netflix, web browsing, 90's games, etc.).

The Satellite is about 5 years old now, still works fairly well, but really starting to feel the age in terms of speed. Certainly could clean up some software issues (plan to just reformat as I don't really store any data on it), but was wondering if I may as well just grab a cheap small SSD for an upgrade prior to the reformat.

I often espouse the SSD as perhaps the single greatest upgrade you can make for performance, but do you think I'm wasting value on a pretty dated laptop at this point? I guess I should also say that I have no plans on buying a new personal laptop anytime in the next few years - if the Satellite were to kick it, I'd just use the work ultrabook (simply prefer the Sat at this point because it's twice the size for my large hands). I figure if the SSD gives me a solid increase in performance and I get another 2 years or so out of this laptop, it's a pretty solid investment?

Thoughts?



For reference, the Satellite is a C2D 2.2GHz T6600, 4GB DDR2 800MHz, W7HP).

 

[corkyg]

Does your Toshiba have AHCI mode available?

 

[Charlie98]

I put an SSD in my daughter's old Dell AMD Athlon-powered laptop, and it definitely made it more useable. Additionally, I pumped up the RAM (another big improvement) and put a slightly faster processor in... I even sprung for the update to Windows 7 and that helped even more.

Yes, it's 7 years old, but it still works well as a browser/media viewer/homework machine.

 

[Fred B]

Got a laptop with about the same specs and with ssd and it is a lot faster with ssd and the w7 is a good os for ssd and increase the possibility to have AHCI . The bottleneck we all know is the hd inside and it does not matter if it is sata 1/2.3 they are all bottlenecks.

 

[TheVrolok]

Does your Toshiba have AHCI mode available?

Yep. I figure for like 70-80 bucks I can get a reasonable SSD and a new OEM battery (9 cell vs the burnt out 12 cell that came with it) and get a fair bit of more millage out of this old fella. And if the thing kicks it entirely sooner rather than later, I can harvest the SSD for some other purpose I'm sure.

 

[mfenn]

Yes, an inexpensive SSD would be a good boost for that machine. And since it's a standard 2.5" drive, you can reuse it somewhere else later. The Crucial M500 240GB is an older drive, but it's a decent price right now at $95.

 

[TheVrolok]

Yes, an inexpensive SSD would be a good boost for that machine. And since it's a standard 2.5" drive, you can reuse it somewhere else later. The Crucial M500 240GB is an older drive, but it's a decent price right now at $95.

Grabbed one for 77 shipped on Cyber Monday to replace the 750 HDD in my GF's new laptop. Honestly don't even need that much storage space, could easily do fine with a 120 and honestly get away with something even smaller. All my media is stored on my NAS. Amazon has the 120 version for 78 shipped with tax. Not bad.

 

[boomerang]

I'm noodling on getting a new laptop to replace my hot deals Toshiba laptop. None come with an SSD at the price I'm wanting to pay so I want to add one right out of the gate. What's confusing me is the differing heights of the drives. I guess I could pull the existing one after it arrives and go from there but it would be nice to have the drive waiting and tackle it right from the start or does the height of the drive not even factor in? It appears that 7mm is by far the most common. I put SSD's in our desktop systems but have never dealt with a laptop which is why I'm asking.

I'm also wondering if I can install 8.1 from an ISO download http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2407656 and if it will pick up the internal key.

 

[mfenn]

I'm noodling on getting a new laptop to replace my hot deals Toshiba laptop. None come with an SSD at the price I'm wanting to pay so I want to add one right out of the gate. What's confusing me is the differing heights of the drives. I guess I could pull the existing one after it arrives and go from there but it would be nice to have the drive waiting and tackle it right from the start or does the height of the drive not even factor in? It appears that 7mm is by far the most common. I put SSD's in our desktop systems but have never dealt with a laptop which is why I'm asking.

Unless your laptop was sold as a thin and light, it probably uses a 9.5mm drive. Whether or not a 7mm drive will work depends on the specifics of the drive mounting, but most mounting systems will take a thinner drive without issue.

I'm also wondering if I can install 8.1 from an ISO download http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2407656 and if it will pick up the internal key.

No idea on that one.

 

[boomerang]

Unless your laptop was sold as a thin and light, it probably uses a 9.5mm drive. Whether or not a 7mm drive will work depends on the specifics of the drive mounting, but most mounting systems will take a thinner drive without issue.

Thanks much, that makes perfect sense. In the sub $800 price range I'm looking at obviously none are advertised as thin and light.

No idea on that one.

Yeah, it's outside of the scope of this subforum. I just threw it in on a hope.

 

[bbhaag]

If you can find one for a good price I say do it. I have a Satellite S355D that I threw a V300 in and it made for a great up grade even on SATA2.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I would say, "hellz yeah". Not just for the performance increase, with a decent C2D, 4GB of RAM, and Windows 7 (needed for TRIM support), but also to make the laptop much more shock-proof. If one were to drop a laptop with an HDD, it would almost certainly cause bad sectors (if it were spinning when dropped), but with an SSD, the only worry is the screen. Which, unless you drop it hard or at an awkward angle, would likely be ok.

 

[gmaster456]

I say go for it. C2D, 4GB, Windows 7 and an SSD is still a decent package for everyday usage.

 

[WT]

Added an 80GB Intel SSD to my Gateway 6860FX and it performs so much better. I used the 320GB drive as secondary storage (laptop is a huge 9.4lb monster) and for a total of $40 on a used Intel M25, I am happy. I say go for it !

 

[TheVrolok]

Put the aforementioned Crucial M500 120gb in (got it for 58 bucks) and a new OEM battery for 18 bucks and this thing feels like new. Certainly the fresh install helped, but I think it is well worth the upgrade.

 

[gmaster456]

Depending on how you use it I'd say you now have a few more years worth of life left in it.

 

[JackMDS]

Almost any Laptop with SATA HD port can be refreshed with new SSD more memory (if possible) and fresh install OS of Win7/Win 8.11, and they would work Better thereafter

The issues most of the times is the Video component. Unfortuntly replacing the Video component of a Laptop is close to impossible. As a result Video activities like action games and streaming might Not do much better even after refreshed/upgrade.

 

[Fred B]

But the Video card is no bottleneck with the wright settings ,os and aps ,and the video card in the old laptop outperformed my new R7 240 in Z77 system. Also consider it is a smaller screen than desktop needs lower resolution to see letters good .

 

[gmaster456]

But the Video card is no bottleneck with the wright settings ,os and aps ,and the video card in the old laptop outperformed my new R7 240 in Z77 system. Also consider it is a smaller screen than desktop needs lower resolution to see letters good .

What card is in the laptop?

 

[ahenkel]

I'd say yes get an SSD. Dropped one in an even older Toshiba satellite a year ago and it turned a papeweight into something useful.

 

[Fred B]

What card is in the laptop?

There is a GF 7300 GO inside , not a very good card but no bottleneck for the labtop . Funny that even my atom netbook gets more points in the windows 7 performance index than the R7 240 :\

 

[Puffnstuff]

+1 for adding a ssd. I recently replaced the super slow Seagate in my alienware with a Samsung 840 pro 256 and it made a huge difference. My windows 7 wei jumped from a 5.9 to a 7.2 and boot times decreased dramatically.

 

[postmortemIA]

There is a GF 7300 GO inside , not a very good card but no bottleneck for the labtop . Funny that even my atom netbook gets more points in the windows 7 performance index than the R7 240 :\

That card works fine in 7, 8, and Windows 10.

 

[gmaster456]

There is a GF 7300 GO inside , not a very good card but no bottleneck for the labtop . Funny that even my atom netbook gets more points in the windows 7 performance index than the R7 240 :\

I take WEI results with a grain of salt. It isn't always indicative of actual performance.

 

[mek42]

Most stock laptop drives are really slow, 5400 rpm or even 4200 rpm. Even putting in a 7200 rpm drive intended for server use would make some improvement. If the $/Gb of SSD is in your budget, obviously that is the best choice.