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Upgraded an old laptop with SSD

since9

Campaign Veteran
Joined
Jan 14, 2010
Messages
6,964
Location
Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA
Years ago I heard an expression: "If your laptop is three years old, it's OLD. Get a new one."

Well, mine is twice that old:
HP
i5-3210M
8 GB DDR3
750 GB HDD
Windows 10

At least the operating system was the latest.

While there was nothing really wrong with it, the real-life MTBF for laptop HDD is about 6 years, so I was shooting 50-50. Rather than wait until failure was either imminent or an historical event, I decided to preempt it with one of the best upgrades you can do for your computer.

I bought a Samsung 860 EVO 1 TB for $150 on Amazon, my current HDD to the SSD last night using my $30 Insignia USB 3.0 Hard Disk Drive Enclosure (2.5" SATA), then shut down, swapped drives, and... Walla! 16 s boot time. 9x faster reads and writes. Loading pretty much any program is like, "Click... BOOM." And best of all, no more system slowdowns because the hard drive kept chugging along doing... SOMETHING. It was always hopping between 9% and sometimes 100% usage. Now it's around 1% to 2% unless a program is actively loading.

Overall, the system as a whole feels about 2-3 times faster. Highly recommended.

RAM is another area worth mentioning, but with 8 GB, I very rarely go above 6 GB. Usually I'm hovering between 3 and 5. Thus, if you have 4 GB, definitely upgrade to 8 GB, but if you have 8 GB, you won't see much improvement bumping things up to 12 GB or 16 GB unless you play a lot of high-end games which make extensive use of RAM.
 

FreedomVA

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Jul 25, 2017
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592
Location
FreedomVA
M2 SSD is faster, but your mobo may not support it.......congrats....i'm going back to Windows ME
 

CJ4wd

Regular Member
Joined
Jun 22, 2017
Messages
353
Location
Planet Earth
M2 SSD is faster, but your mobo may not support it.......congrats....i'm going back to Windows ME.

Of all the Windows OSs I have used over the last 25 years, there are three I have not used and, from the comments others told me of their troubles with them, you couldn't PAY ME to use them. I'm referring to ME, Vista, and 8. Of those 3, the one I have heard the least complaints about is 8. Even 10 seems to have more complaints but I know nothing about it as I'm still using 29 year old software (Office 2000) on Windows 7. With the nature of the intrusive EULA on 10 (according to eff.org), I have no interest in ever using it.
If MS makes their next version after 10 as troublesome, it is likely that my next computer (if I live that long) will probably sport some version of Linux.
 

solus

Regular Member
Joined
Aug 22, 2013
Messages
9,315
Location
here nc
Sigh, took my win 7 pro OS and upgraded to win 8 pro OS which was upgraded to win 10 pro OS all the while moving the PC OSs through personally built boxes with top of the line mthrbds carrying I7 intel processors w/min 16G, high end video pcbs, and moving through SCSI, ITE, SAS to currently installed SSD for OS use only and SATA for personal use.

Three hand-built PC workstations and two upgraded laptops are configured and operated nicely with win 10 pro, gaggles of memory on the fastest processors are functioning with top of the line antivirus, malware, as well as VPN all running in the bkgnd.

Oh, defender is disabled, MS hooks turned off.

Only problem encountered has been MS’s stupid & unbelievable slow browser - EDGE!

Don’t like your PC buy a MAC ~ ya own several ipads w/large storage & telcon connective for use while out and about.
 

KBCraig

Regular Member
Joined
Aug 7, 2007
Messages
4,886
Location
Granite State of Mind
Late 2009 iMac here. The original 2TB drive smoked itself while I was ripping all my DVDs to iTunes (I later learned that drive model was notorious for that), so I replaced it with what I could afford at the time: a 320GB HDD from Best Buy. It's still working, and I have an external WD drive for media and Time Machine backups.

I just ordered a 400GB micro SD card for $57. I can stick it into the built-in slot, dupe my boot drive, and even use it as my main drive if I want.

I've built and maintained multiple Windoze and *nix boxes over the decades, but for "it just works", I still prefer MacOS.
 

since9

Campaign Veteran
Joined
Jan 14, 2010
Messages
6,964
Location
Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA
I'm aware of all the privacy issues surrounding various versions of Windows, CJ4wd, having pushed back against many of them over the last 23 years via Congress. I do admire the work of the Electronic Frontier Foundation with respect to upholding "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..."

Only morons and heinously unscrupulous people could ever deny "papers and effects" includes everything on one's computer as well as in one's online storage.

That said, between Windows 10's high degree of security, Norton Security's high degree of protection, and the additional security and protection of today's routers and data encryption software, I'm very happen with Windows 10.

By the way, if you're running any older operating system no longer supported by Microsoft, the likelihood that it's been hacked is quite high. Security patches are by far the number one support Microsoft provides to its operating systems, and almost always long before the breach is discovered by outsiders.

As for Vista, I kind of liked it, after the second major update that fixed most of the system crashes. Windows 8 was ok, but 8.1 was much more slick. NT 4.0 SP2 was rock solid.

As for storage...

I just ordered a 400GB micro SD card for $57. I can stick it into the built-in slot, dupe my boot drive, and even use it as my main drive if I want.

That's a good approach.

I'm holding my old hard drive in reserve in case the new SSD hiccups. After six-month burn-in, I'm going to buy a cheap 1TB HDD for less than $50 and stick it in the 2.5" external hard drive USB 3.0 case to use as a backup. I have something like 6 TB of external storage, all of it 3.5" drives.

Time to ditch everything except the two largest ones and consolidate.
 

solus

Regular Member
Joined
Aug 22, 2013
Messages
9,315
Location
here nc
H U Z Z A H...

MS put out security patches today for a horrific possible virus threat...

This danger prompted the release of a patch that closes the loophole in:
■ Windows XP
■ Windows 2003
■ Windows 7
■ Windows Server 2008
Market industry data suggests about 3.75% of desktop machines currently use XP or its variants.

Look for and assure you update your older OS variants.
 
Last edited:

since9

Campaign Veteran
Joined
Jan 14, 2010
Messages
6,964
Location
Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA
FL Studio BONUS: Earlier I'd mentioned, "And best of all, no more system slowdowns because the hard drive kept chugging along doing... SOMETHING. It was always hopping between 9% and sometimes 100% usage."

Years ago I got into FL Studio. Version 3, I think. It's now up to Version 20, but I stopped downloading updates around version 12, their first 64-bit, because both the 32-bit and 64-bit version kept skipping whenever it tried real-time rendering music more complicated than a multi-channel drum line.

A few minutes ago I had the interesting idea to test it now that my hard drive isn't hogging resources.

Before loading FL Studio + their flagship Ver 12 composition:
CPU - 2%
RAM: 1.9 GB
Disk: 0%


After loading FL Studio + their flagship Ver 12 composition and while playing it:
CPU - 40%
RAM: 3.1 GB
Disk: 1%

NO SKIPPING!!! Yee-Ha! For the last several years I thought I wouldn't be able to return to FL Studio, but all I needed to do was upgrade to an SSD!!!

If you can't tell, I'm pretty psyched! This means I can go back to having some creative musical fun in my spare time. :)
 
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