SSD upgrade?

I currently have a rather pitiful 320gb HDD in my m15x. Its probably 5400 rpm as it was almost certainly the cheapest option when I ordered my m15x.
Other components also not the best but that was my budget.

With what I have currently, I personally think an upgrade to an SSD will provide the greatest performance boost, not talking about gaming performance as I mostly use my m15x for work, itunes, multiple powerpoint and word tabs and about a million chrome tabs all at once. CPU load isn't maxed and neither is RAM so I feel when it occasionally lags this is due to the slow read/write speed of my HDD.

Could anyone advise me how this SSD stacks up as it seems to be the cheapest option for a faster 500MB/s read/write 240gb ssd?
OCZ Agility 3 240GB Internal 6.35 cm (2.5") (AGT3-25SAT3-240G) (SSD) 0842024026730 | eBay

Would appreciate any advice.

 

the 500mb/s read/write speeds are irrelevant as the M15x has a max of sata 3gb/s. Two good drives to look into would be the crucial M4 or the samsung 830.

 

Thanks for that advice. I found this cheap option on eBay. is this a good option? Not that many 240-256gb samsung or crucial ssds on eBay.
240GB OCZ Vertex Plus, 2.5" SSD, SATA II, Indilinx Barefoot, MLC, Read 255MB/s, | eBay

 

I wouldn't go with the Vertex. It is one of OCZ's older drives that had many reliability issues.

The Crucial M4 is good (since you can't really take advantage of faster drives), Amazon has it too. You won't find the Samsung 830 in stock in most places. Look at the Samsung 840 instead, which is somewhat comparable.

 

Another gem of a drive specifically for SATA II is the Samsung 470 256GB. I got it because it is the fastest SSD for SATA II.

SATA III drives usually take a larger performance hit running under SATA II. So if you don't intend to change laptop any time soon then this is a good option.

 

Thanks for all these suggestions but unfortunately these older ssds seem hard to get hold of.
Only 470s I could find were massively overpriced.

The cheapest (and most readily available) option appears to be a Crucial v4 128gb or OCZ Vertex Plus 128gb.

I have a few watches on eBay for 830s and M4s so we'll see how they pan out.

Thanks again for the advice. I'm excited about the prospect of a performance boost

 

Whenever I ran an M4 it butted straight into the limits of SATA II just fine so considering how cheap and reasonably reliable they are I would stick with that. The v4 or vertex plus seem either slow or unreliable IMO.

 

Sorry for my stupidity in advance but I'd just like to check I understand things properly.

If I remove the current HDD from my Alienware and replace it with an SSD, would I be able to place (what I'm assuming is) the 2.5" HDD into a caddy that has e-sata connections and connect it to my e-sata port?

There is a 128gb M4 on eBay at the moment which I'll try and get hold of.

Thanks

 

Yes, you would also be able to boot from it.

 

Do not go for the v4 crucial ssd. Also, getting a sata 6gb/s drive is more practical because you can always pop it into a new laptop if u upgrade

 

I would get the 6gb/s one just in case you need a futur upgrade even though the machine only supports 6gb/s speeds it will run with it.

 

Installed Samsung 840 ssd last night and went very smoothly. Start up times are now ridiculously fast. I used alien autopsy to try and work out what is filling up my disk (since I only have 30gb left on 250gb ssd) but still can't work it out.

Old HDD now in caddy with eSata connection works very well and very rapid data transfer.

Sent from my cm_tenderloin using Tapatalk HD

 

Glad to see you are happy with your upgrade. The Sammy's are great! Welcome to the club

 

Yeah but only 30GB left free is kind of silly, maybe do a fresh install from a downloaded ISO rather than the restore disks?

 

You can always use windirstat...it shows what paths/folders are using up how much space

 

So I have discovered that the pre-loaded OS has a hidden partition called recovery that takes up 14GB. I'm planning on moving my music onto the external HDD to free up 100GB lol.

Having a few problems using the eSata connector though. If my laptop is on and I try to plug in eSata and usb power connector then it doesn't detect the external HDD.
If I then restart or put in sleep (with drive still connected through eSata) and wake again then it is detected and I can use it as normal. Is this normal for eSata connection?

 

The esata port does not supply power so sometimes even though I'd connect everything perfectly it would not detect either, which is why I gave up on esata and bought a usb 3.0 express card. Hassle free all the way.

 

Yeah this a very good point. I haven't used mine with a usb 3.0 drive yet however even with 2.0 drives I get a 10% boost in transfer speeds. I believe the express port limits it to around 70-80mb/s however this is still the max you will see from a 2.5" external anyways unless you connect an ssd up which you probably wouldn't! Still more than 3x faster than 2.0 and more reliable and easier to use than e-sata.