emachine e732

Greetings,

A friend of mine is looking to upgrade his computer with a ssd. The computer in question is an emachine e732 and as far as I can tell it only supports sata 2, wheras most ssd's today are sata 3. Does this matter at all? I´m thinking they´re backwardscompatible.

If a sata 3 ssd will work fine, what kind of performance loss are we looking at running it on sata 3? Or, more to the point, what are the highest read/write speeds sata 2 can handle. If its lower than the 500/400 you can find on some ssd's he might as well get a cheaper and thus slower one instead and save some money.

Another question. Does the computer have space for more than one hdd or will the ssd have to replace his current hdd? From what I can tell, there´s only room for one hdd.

Last question. Any recomendations for a decent ssd? Preferably with atleast 120+gb?

Thank you in advance

 

1) SATA3 vs. SATA2 - yes this does matter.

But maybe not in the way you may think: a newer SATA3 based SSD is probably cheaper to buy than a 'good' SATA2 SSD and although it won't give significantly better 'real world' results than a SATA2 based SSD, it will still be faster.

2) The system probably has room for only a single drive; but some opt to replace the optical drive with a HDD/SSD too. Keep in mind though that this may limit some systems even further to SATA1 speeds (depending on the connector in the computer and the adaptor purchased). This would not be a 'compromise' I would recommend.

3) As for the capacity of the SSD - note that performance is directly related to how fully populated the controller's channels are utilized and also how optimally interleaved they are too. In a nutshell: 240GB capacities and higher are required for maximum performance of any current SSD's available.

To keep that performance as high as possible (and to be able to use the SSD as 'hard' as you would an HDD without degrading its performance to below HDD levels) keep in mind that you should partition the SSD to less than it's full capacity (for my uses: I use 240GB SSD's at 100GB (O/S plus program drive) to 160GB (strictly data) capacities). This approach will greatly enhance it's (Firmware) garbage collection routines and ensure the lowest write amplification (WA) levels possible.

If the SSD is simply used for very light tasks - the above may seem overkill - but I buy my storage subsystems to be used to the maximum performance they're rated to - not to get performance equal or lower to what I can achieve with a properly setup mechanical HDD (over the long term).


4) Which would I recommend? Intel 320 Series (okay SSD performance vs. the others but great battery life and only SATA2) 160GB or larger. Crucial M4 256GB SATA3. Intel 520 Series 240GB SATA3. Sandisk Extreme 240GB SATA3.

The Sandisk Extreme 240GB SSD is probably the fastest and cheapest SSD I have used (and can recommend) so far:

See:
Sandisk Extreme 240GB SSD SATA 6Gb/s at Memory Express


With the Arrandale i3 380m platform your friend is running: I would highly recommend running the unpark tweak as shown here:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...indows-8-release-preview-made-each-other.html


The performance of the Arrandale system and the SSD jumps tremendously with the cores 'unparked'.

Hope this helps.

Good luck.

 

Thank you for the reply.

The main reason for uppgrading the hdd is due to using a program called ArcGis 10 as part of a program in social planing - urban and regional development. Basically it´s a map making tool containing geographical data. And since it´s currently running a tad sluggish for his liking, he´s looking for upgrades. Although he mentioned thinking about buying a new computer instead earlier today. I´m not entirely sure how demanding the program is on other components, for instance the graphics card. It is however running just fine on my thinkpad x220 with a hd3000, samsung ssd 830 series, i5-2520m and 12 gb of ram)

Either way. The 240 gb ssd versions are out of his budget. SSD´s are a litte more expensive in Sweden but basically he´s prepared to pay around what a 120-128 gb ssd would cost. As a result the intel e320 with sata 2 is out of his reach.

From what I can gather from your post sata 3 will however work just fine with his computer? In which case both the Crucial M4 and Sandisk Extreme, albeit with 120-128 gb, are looking proimising since they are readily available and cheap to boot.

/Christian

 

Sounds like the storage subsystem is not what he needs to upgrade? I would be greatly suprised if the HDD/SSD makes a difference in this case.

How much RAM is he running? (I am guessing that your 12GB RAM makes a huge difference for his project). Also; your SNB i5 is about 50% faster than his Arrandale i3 380m.


Directly replying to your question though; I would not recommend any SSD at the 128GB capacity - not even the Intel, or M4 or the Sandisk Extreme models. Especially if they will be used for intensive lookups/updating of a large(?) database.


Unless your friend is running at least 8GB RAM and still experiencing these slowdowns on his system, I would be looking at upgrading his computer platform first to current levels (IB, but at least SNB with 8GB/16GB RAM and Win7x64 HP) before buying a (too) small SSD to help in his workflow (which I think won't make enough difference for the $$$).

Would love to be proved wrong though: please let us know what the outcome is.

Good luck.