Real life IDE SSD speeds?

D

DellAxim

Gawd
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Feb 14, 2003
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I have an old Dell Inspiron 4150, and, even though it's 6 years old it still looks and works perfectly. It's been upgraded over the years but the current bottle neck is the 4200RPM, 2mb cache IDE hard drive. I'd really love to replace it with a solid state disk, for both increased battery life and increased speed.

Anyway, according to HD Tune, my current hard drive has a maximum transfer of 28.4MB/sec, averages 22MB/sec with a 19.6ms access time and 52MB/sec burst rate. Pathetic!

As I understand it current solid state drives aren't faster than regular hard drives, but is that true with an IDE interface?

I'm looking at a "King Spec" IDE SSD on ebay which claims 76MB/sec sustained read, sustained write 67MB/sec and 0.2ms access time! Is this the real life performance I can expect or is it just standard chinese lies?
 
As I understand it current solid state drives aren't faster than regular hard drives,
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Wow, you couldn't be more inaccurate.

Some of the first generation had stuttering problems but the current models trump mechanical HDs badly in every catagory. I think you'd better find a more accurate source. :D

There's little market for IDE SSDs and as a consequence, very few are being made. I haven't read any reviews or seen any forums where they were being discussed but I don't frequent the laptop forums any longer.

As with anything, those "King Spec" stats are a best case scenario and probably not applicable in real world usage. If you had your heart set on an SSD, you should do a little more investigation into the manfg of the controller in that unit. Controllers make a tremendous difference in the SSD world and JMicron is considered the worst of the bunch.

There's no way I would consider an SSD for your machine. It's age and lack of SATA are major drawbacks.

A better option would be a 7200rpm mechanical IDE drive.

I've done the 7200rpm update on many machines and it makes quite a difference.

If you don't get many responses here, Notebook Review probably has more users familiar with IDE SSDs.
 
Even a regular 5400rpm drive would be a huge improvement over what you have. I'd expect ~80MB/sec transfer from current gen drives.
 
I guess I should have mentioned that, I know a 5400 or 7200 RPM drive would definately be faster than what I have, but they're also a bigger battery drain. Obviously this old laptop isn't as efficient as newer models, and my batteries are getting old. Also my current HD creates a lot of heat, I'm just guessing SSDs run cold?

Basically I'm wondering if a cheap, chinese brand of SSD would be as fast as a 7200 RPM IDE drive?

I know most will think I'm nuts for spending money on this old laptop, but I recently bought completely NOS bottom plastic, lid plastic, hinges, keyboard, and touchpad, along with the max memory and CPU. It was all quite cheap on ebay, and now the laptop looks like new. My hard drive is laughable though....
 
What you are trying to do is like installing a sticky racing tire on a 15 yrs old car, and hope that you can corner a little faster. I mean, it is your money, and you are free to spend it, so I do respect that.

My suggestion is looking at new laptop. Some of them are very reasonably priced. You will end up with a whole package that is faster, better monitor, longer lasting battery and probably lighter, which will increase the user experience.

Another consideration, I would not use a questionable harddrive, because my data is very valuable. Not worth the headache. Some things I will cut corner, like getting a cheap ugly case :D but not harddrive.

Chris
 
sequoia said:
What you are trying to do is like installing a sticky racing tire on a 15 yrs old car, and hope that you can corner a little faster. I mean, it is your money, and you are free to spend it, so I do respect that.

My suggestion is looking at new laptop. Some of them are very reasonably priced. You will end up with a whole package that is faster, better monitor, longer lasting battery and probably lighter, which will increase the user experience.

Another consideration, I would not use a questionable harddrive, because my data is very valuable. Not worth the headache. Some things I will cut corner, like getting a cheap ugly case :D but not harddrive.

Chris
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qft
 
For a little more than the cost of the KingSpec you can get an entirely new machine that'll destroy that old machine in every possible way, from over all performance to battery life.
 
silent-circuit said:
For a little more than the cost of the KingSpec you can get an entirely new machine that'll destroy that old machine in every possible way, from over all performance to battery life.
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If you can find me a laptop with a 14.1" screen or larger, 2.4ghz or faster, 2gb or more ram, and an SSD for "a little more than" $120 I'll buy it. I'm not aware of any that aren't complete and total crap or miniature.

Regardless, even if I got a new laptop I wouldn't get rid of this one, and would still likely want to upgrade the HD, so the question still stands. Mostly all I use it for is web browsing, and it does that just as well as faster machines, except the HD bottle neck can be annoying.
 
IMHO judging from the other upgrades you have done, you either really really like that laptop, or you upgrade as the money comes in small increments, or both. If it were me, I would find a nice WD hard drive, 7200 rpm, and also invest in a new battery when I could.
 
I know a 5400 or 7200 RPM drive would definately be faster than what I have, but they're also a bigger battery drain.
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This too is pretty much an old wives tale......

WILL A 7200RPM NOTEBOOK DRIVE DRAIN MY BATTERY FASTER?
The short answer is, "Probably not." You see, the 7200rpm drives are as much as 28% faster doing random reads and writes compared to the 5400rpm drives. They are as much as 80% faster than 4200rpm drives. Yet the Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 uses the same amount of power as the Travelstar 5K100. The Seagate Momentus 7200.1 uses only 10% more power than the Momentus 4200.2. The Momentus 5400.3 uses less power than the Momentus 4200.2. My theory is that the "speed to power" ratio is so good with the 7200rpm drives that the net effect on the battery is negligible.

I researched all these factors before I did my first swap.
 
Where are you finding a IDE SSD that isn't total crap for $120? Even on Ebay? Clearly prices have dropped since I last looked.

EDIT: Nevermind. You're looking at 2.5" drives, and I've been looking at 1.8" (Damn you HP...)

Really, just get a modern 7200RPM 2.5" HDD and be happy. Cost of admission is far too high on a SSD to put it in an old machine right now, and a quality 7200RPM mechanical HDD may actually be a good bit faster than an off-brand IDE SSD like the KingSpecs you're looking at. You won't be gaining any appreciable difference in battery life by going SSD; the only fix there with an old machine is a new battery.
 
I'd really consider getting a whole new laptop.

To get a decent IDE SSD, you're going to spend $200.

For $400+- you could get an el cheapo laptop at the local Bestbuy, etc. Or you could order an Asus EEE for around the same price and have a much more portable laptop that is good for 10+ hours of use on a single charge!! Either should be faster or at worst the same speed as your old P4 mobile laptop. However both would be much lighter and hold a charge MUCH longer.

Let go of your old setimental PC. Its a lot easier to move on than you think, don't be afraid of doing it, like so many people are!!
 
Personally, I would rather get a new hard drive for such an old (but still useful) computer. You'll still benefit from the performance of an SSD, but it'll mostly be wasted on such an old system. IDE is dying out anyway so you won't be able to migrate the drive to a newer laptop.

Besides, you'll probably get more battery life just using the money to buy a replacement battery (assuming you're currently using a 3+ year old battery); switching to an SSD won't reduce power consumption that much.
 
I don't think anyone has experience with IDE SSDs to offer you. A word of caution, getting an SSD right requires some talented engineering. Many of the first generation SSDs were not properly engineered, and while they had transfer speeds in excess of physical HD, they often experienced "stuttering" which causes the UI to lock up. I do not think that is worth the bargain of having faster transfers.

But if you do go the IDE SSD route, please come back and share your experience.
 
Are there even decent Indilinx or Samsung SSDs on the ATA interface? If there are, I doubt they'd be comparable in price to the SATA SSDs today.
 
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