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Upgrading an old system to an SSD (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I have this laptop from like 2012 that I use a lot and I can even say it's my main Linux machine. It's got 8 Gb of RAM and a dedicated GPU so it's not bad but it has an HDD so slow it takes what seems to be 30-60 seconds to launch a web browser. I guess it's 5400 RPM. I want to finally buy an SSD for the machine.

However I noticed that all of the brand new ones that are available in my area are either SATA3 (for SATA) or PCIe 3/4 (for M.2). The laptop obviously supports none of these standards.

Will such an SSD work or do I have to search for a used one with an older standard (like SATA2)? Adapters might be a problem to get because I'm not a customer of marketplaces I can get them from so I'm afraid of getting scammed or just not figuring out the purchase procedure.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Should be fine, SATA3 is backwards compatible AFAIK. If the laptop can take a 2.5 inch SATA drive then you should be okay.

I happen to have an even older laptop than yours (from 2008 era) that's been rocking a 2.5 inch SATA SSD for at least 5-10+ years now. Works fine and was definitely an improvement over the old performance. The laptop is still quite old/slow in other ways but that's expected from something that old.. luckily it's not my main computing device.

[+] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That's definitely not true. Spinning rust has all sorts of latencies that slow down read speeds, even in the best case scenario. An SSD has no seek time. You will feel every little difference when the limit is the controller.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

This is the correct answer. An SSD was a big upgrade even when SATA2 was the standard, especially against a 5400 rpm HDD.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Well the reports I've seen said there were improvements. I have another machine from roughly the same era and its HDD performs much better (to the point I don't even want to upgrade it much) so I'd say the attempt is worth it.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I can't give any first-hand experience, but this article:

https://www.technewstoday.com/sata-2-vs-sata-3/

says that all SATA generations are backward and forward compatible with one another. If the physical connector fits, it should work. Just at the lower speed of the controller.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Thank you, mister/miss. This is very helpful.