Do you think it is worth spending $60 about to upgrade old laptops with SSD drives instead of Hard Drives ?

I wish.

One of the laptops USB ports do not work at all :(
I don't see how that would hold you back from getting that kind of usability for the cost of an external enclosure. Just plug it into the working USB when you need to access your old drive.
 
I gave my old MacBook an SSD instead of a hard drive a few years ago. The speed afterwards was very significantly faster than before. If I had known that, I would have upgraded to an SSD much sooner. In my case, the decision was more than worth it.
 
ssd, huge differance and laptop will be usable.
Go with larger size so there is no need for usb drive.
500 gig and larger only to give it some space.
 
ssd, huge differance and laptop will be usable.
Go with larger size so there is no need for usb drive.
500 gig and larger only to give it some space.

Na I will wait until 4 TB SSDs become more affordable by a little more.
 
I now use a 1TB SSD and actually get along very well with it. I don't see why I would need much more storage space. However, if you take a lot of pictures and record videos, I can imagine that even more storage space could be even better. Meanwhile, you can also save some in the cloud, so that you no longer need so much storage space on the computer.

In the current situation, however, I would not bet that SSDs will become cheaper in the future as quickly as they have in the past few years.
 
I still think ram is always the best "cheap" upgrade. But SSDs can be huge as well.
I'm still in this camp. I try to lock down any OS to being a toaster so it shouldn't be hitting the drive unless it needs to and things fly. Anything less than 16GB of memory is not enough. And if it doesn't have enough memory, I only run it with a 'period correct' OS, like 7 for 8GB, xp for 4GB, etc.
 
I know it is all up to me but what would you do ? They can't update to Windows 11 stuck on Windows 10 Pro.

They are still decent machines but if you need specs I will provide.
Best bang for the buck performance upgrade for a laptop, IMAO. Did it on a 4yr-old Win10 HP laptop and made a huge improvement in usability.
 
Best bang for the buck performance upgrade for a laptop, IMAO. Did it on a 4yr-old Win10 HP laptop and made a huge improvement in usability.
I think the laptops I have may be older but not sure.
 
I'm still in this camp. I try to lock down any OS to being a toaster so it shouldn't be hitting the drive unless it needs to and things fly. Anything less than 16GB of memory is not enough. And if it doesn't have enough memory, I only run it with a 'period correct' OS, like 7 for 8GB, xp for 4GB, etc.

Well RAM isn't the best first option if funds are tight.

Try running two laptop setups -

Windows 10 4GB + SSD

and

Windows 10 16GB + 5400RPM HDD

Then tell me which worked the best. I know which one I'll grab and have my work done far quicker than the other. :LOL:
 
Well RAM isn't the best first option if funds are tight.

Try running two laptop setups -

Windows 10 4GB + SSD

and

Windows 10 16GB + 5400RPM HDD

Then tell me which worked the best. I know which one I'll grab and have my work done far quicker than the other. :LOL:


And to take things even further: many cheap laptops now exclude a memory slot - the only option then is ssd.
 
And to take things even further: many cheap laptops now exclude a memory slot - the only option then is ssd.
even higher end ones lack ram slots. Looked at the Lenovo dual screen laptops and they have soldered on ram and not slots
 
Well RAM isn't the best first option if funds are tight.

Try running two laptop setups -

Windows 10 4GB + SSD

and

Windows 10 16GB + 5400RPM HDD

Then tell me which worked the best. I know which one I'll grab and have my work done far quicker than the other. :LOL:
I'd still go for the one with 16GB because the tasks I do need the ram and that ssd will be in swap city...
 
And to take things even further: many cheap laptops now exclude a memory slot - the only option then is ssd.
even higher end ones lack ram slots. Looked at the Lenovo dual screen laptops and they have soldered on ram and not slots
Seems to be a modern day cop-out to increase planned obsolescence. When they come stock with soldered ram and ssd, there's no upgrade even possible. (n)
 
Seems to be a modern day cop-out to increase planned obsolescence. When they come stock with soldered ram and ssd, there's no upgrade even possible. (n)
Blame Apple for starting that trend, but also OEM's claims that in order to make laptops lighter and thinner, they need to solder the ram now and SSDs into the mobos so they can remove the mounting brackets...

Once you get up into the business lines of most OEMs, you now get your slots back.
 
I know it is all up to me but what would you do ? They can't update to Windows 11 stuck on Windows 10 Pro.

They are still decent machines but if you need specs I will provide.

Also, lol at stuck on Windows 10.

If I had a choice I'd pick Windows 10 every time over Win11.

And I don't even like Windows 10. I preferred Windows 7.

This far I have only been using Win11 on newer CPU's that lack Windows 10 support, which is all of one laptop I e dealt with thus far.
 
My father-in-law was bitching many years ago about his HP laptop (DV6-2150us..yes that old) woth Win 7 running slow. I told him it is cause he doesn't use it a lot so when he does it is check for and doing updates. I told to buy an SSD and I'll install it and it will make a huge difference. Of course he didn't listen and went and bought a new one...still with a HDD in it...doh!

I took his old one and went on eBay an upgraded the CPU from i3-330M to i5-580M, got another matching 4GB stick on the cheap, and installed an old 256 SATA SSD that I had laying around, installed Win Pro and it is more than usable.

SSDs are cheap as hell now and they best way to refresh an old laptop with a spinner in it.

In fact, anyone who doesn't think that can just send me that laptop and I will install an SSD in it and find a kid who needs one who will be happy as can be. :)
 
My father-in-law was bitching many years ago about his HP laptop (DV6-2150us..yes that old) woth Win 7 running slow. I told him it is cause he doesn't use it a lot so when he does it is check for and doing updates. I told to buy an SSD and I'll install it and it will make a huge difference. Of course he didn't listen and went and bought a new one...still with a HDD in it...doh!

I took his old one and went on eBay an upgraded the CPU from i3-330M to i5-580M, got another matching 4GB stick on the cheap, and installed an old 256 SATA SSD that I had laying around, installed Win Pro and it is more than usable.

SSDs are cheap as hell now and they best way to refresh an old laptop with a spinner in it.

In fact, anyone who doesn't think that can just send me that laptop and I will install an SSD in it and find a kid who needs one who will be happy as can be. :)
I actually built a DV7 7 or 8 years ago. My buddy bought an Intel one from a co-worker and had an issue with the performance GPU not activating.
We found someone selling a parts DV7 so we went over to check it out. It was the AMD based one and not the Intel based one we wanted. It was just the lower chassis and motherboard.
My friend decided to buy it anyway. We decided to try and heat his motherboard with a heat gun as that sometimes fixes the issue with the GPU, but that didn't work.
Sent the motherboard to a company that is supposed to reflow or replace the GPU, got it back and it had the same issue. Ended up buying a used tested DV7 Intel motherboard and that worked.

Since I had to pull the motherboard out of his laptop so many times he offered to give me the DV7 parts machine and pay for the rest of the parts so I could build myself a working one.
Went on eBay and bought a screen, rear cover, LCD bezel, upper plate, keyboard, HDD cage, battery, and PSU.
I put 8GB of ram in and a WD Black 750GB 7200rpm drive, eventually put a Crucial SSD in it.

hp-dv7-diablo3.jpg
 
Blame Apple for starting that trend, but also OEM's claims that in order to make laptops lighter and thinner, they need to solder the ram now and SSDs into the mobos so they can remove the mounting brackets...

Once you get up into the business lines of most OEMs, you now get your slots back.
Yep, consumer crap will be consumer crap. :ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:
 
I actually built a DV7 7 or 8 years ago. My buddy bought an Intel one from a co-worker and had an issue with the performance GPU not activating.
We found someone selling a parts DV7 so we went over to check it out. It was the AMD based one and not the Intel based one we wanted. It was just the lower chassis and motherboard.
My friend decided to buy it anyway. We decided to try and heat his motherboard with a heat gun as that sometimes fixes the issue with the GPU, but that didn't work.
Sent the motherboard to a company that is supposed to reflow or replace the GPU, got it back and it had the same issue. Ended up buying a used tested DV7 Intel motherboard and that worked.

Since I had to pull the motherboard out of his laptop so many times he offered to give me the DV7 parts machine and pay for the rest of the parts so I could build myself a working one.
Went on eBay and bought a screen, rear cover, LCD bezel, upper plate, keyboard, HDD cage, battery, and PSU.
I put 8GB of ram in and a WD Black 750GB 7200rpm drive, eventually put a Crucial SSD in it.

View attachment 513180
Nice! Probably runs nice too. :)
 
RAM faster > SSD, so it will load up quicker than from a swap file. ;)

You still have to pull that data off the HDD into RAM first to get there.

Actually I just had in a 16GB laptop that had a 5400rpm HDD in it. It was a total dog. You would be tearing your hair out. Trust me, that dog didnt perform at all till the SSD was swapped in. It may as well have had 2GB.

I've tried it time and time again. For normal everyday use, low RAM with SSD wins over high RAM with HDD. In theory the RAM is wayyy faster as you say. But in real life practice...doesnt seem to to work like that.
 
You still have to pull that data off the HDD into RAM first to get there.

Actually I just had in a 16GB laptop that had a 5400rpm HDD in it. It was a total dog. You would be tearing your hair out. Trust me, that dog didnt perform at all till the SSD was swapped in. It may as well have had 2GB.

I've tried it time and time again. For normal everyday use, low RAM with SSD wins over high RAM with HDD. In theory the RAM is wayyy faster as you say. But in real life practice...doesnt seem to to work like that.
Not if it's coming off the network/internet and going straight into a browser running in ram. ;)

All of my laptops are 16GB+ and have hard drives. The only lag is in booting time or first launch, but I don't think that's important at all.

Interesting that you've found that practice doesn't follow theory, but if you let MS manage the swap file this can definitely happen.
 
Interesting that you've found that practice doesn't follow theory, but if you let MS manage the swap file this can definitely happen.
Yes the practice of 99% of normal domestic and small business users. I have seen it so many times. Lots of RAM but HDD = crappy sluggish performance. But even a cheap 4GB laptop with a SSD upgrade works far better for day to day usage than the former.

I get asked to upgrade RAM in so many machines that still have HDDs in them. Twenty years ago you could always put more RAM in cos storage was just storage. Folks still think that. I tell the customer I'll upgrade the HDD to SSD instead (these are not gamers or folks doing video/graphics work, different usage case) and slot in a 250/500GB and tell them that if the machine is still "slow" to bring it back. They never do, they just text me back how great it is.

When I get handed a 16GB+ machine handed to me because "'it's f**king slow!" it will have a HDD in it. Time and time again, I don't even have to open it up to tell. I tell the customer "ask me for advice before buying your next machine!"

But if you think still running a HDD for your main app data/OS drive in 2022 is worth your life...go for it.
 
Ya sorry have to agree, running any spinning rust in a laptop is crap, period, unless you are literally only opening a web browser and leaving it open and being done with it. But if you actually open and close apps, SSD is the way to go, period, 4/8/16GB does not matter. I do not like waiting for a laptop to take 5-10 mins to boot up to the desktop and be to the point it is useable and not watching a spinning circle while windows does its crap.

And Windows manages the swap file fine these days, not since XP have you had to manually do anything with it.
 
Ya sorry have to agree, running any spinning rust in a laptop is crap, period, unless you are literally only opening a web browser and leaving it open and being done with it. But if you actually open and close apps, SSD is the way to go, period, 4/8/16GB does not matter. I do not like waiting for a laptop to take 5-10 mins to boot up to the desktop and be to the point it is useable and not watching a spinning circle while windows does its crap.

And Windows manages the swap file fine these days, not since XP have you had to manually do anything with it.

And those Windows Updates that take forever too.

This shouldn't even be a discsussion!
 
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Yeah anyone that advocates using a HDD for your main drive no matter what other hardware you have is unacceptable, should hand their tech enthusiast credentials in at the main desk. :LOL:

"But I need a 12TB swapfile!" :rolleyes:
 
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Yah man. SSD that for sure. I'd look at adding another 8gb ram as well
No! It is a cost limited machine and I will argue it does NO tasks that require 16GB. 8GB is more then adequate for menial laptop tasks which will be massively improved by a SSD. In-fact a switch to a SSD will often alleviate perceived RAM shortages.
OP are you doing any RAM intensive tasks? Are you pushing your current spinning drive system hard and upset at your RAM level?
Only questions you can answer. My opinion is add SSD for cheap and smile. When you go from a smile to a frown, UPGRADE!
 
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