HDD for old P4 laptop

Praeses

Praeses

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Hello all

My dad got himself a fancy Dell lappy and passed down this seriously old P4 laptop to my mom. The current hard drive is an IDE 2.5" 5200rpm (not 5400!) friggen SLOW drive. What's the best alternative? It has no PCIe slots, so no SSD in the card slot...also I don't think there exist IDE SSD drives? Should I just try and get hold of an old 7200 rpm IDE 2.5" drive?
 
If you're running a P4, getting a faster hdd isn't going to make much difference... If it's capacity you're concerned about, you will struggle to find anything in IDE bigger than 160GB, especially since u need 2.5".

My advice - stick with the hdd thats in there. Rather use your cash to boost the ram - you'll see a much higher speed boost from that ;)

PS: IDE SSD drives do exist, but they kinda defeat the purpose because you're slowed down by the speeds of IDE ;)
 
Trust me, a 5200rpm drive is keeping the laptop behind! It's already on max ram (512MB) and I'll be adding some readyboost memory to it this week. Capacity isn't much of a problem, it's just this utterly slow HDD. I hoping the readyboost will decrease some HDD thrashing.

Dnoch said:
If you're running a P4, getting a faster hdd isn't going to make much difference... If it's capacity you're concerned about, you will struggle to find anything in IDE bigger than 160GB, especially since u need 2.5".

My advice - stick with the hdd thats in there. Rather use your cash to boost the ram - you'll see a much higher speed boost from that ;)

PS: IDE SSD drives do exist, but they kinda defeat the purpose because you're slowed down by the speeds of IDE ;)
Click to expand...
 
Eish.... sounds dire.

Hard drive thrashing is usually a RAM-need-more symptom. Throw more RAM in it. A 7200rpm drive will result in faster thrashing methinks... best bang for buck would be a stick of RAM.

What make model lappy by the way.. ?
 
Dnoch said:
PS: IDE SSD drives do exist, but they kinda defeat the purpose because you're slowed down by the speeds of IDE ;)
Click to expand...

A SSD will still be a schitload faster than an old 5200rpm drive.

But is it worth it to spend that kinda money on something that old?
 
There are a couple of places in Bloem that sell refurbished laptops to people, they might have some faster hdd's that they are willing to part with. Have you tried phoning computer services at the varsity? They might have old IDE laptop drives and even RAM (Or at least they might be able to tell you where to get some).
 
What OS are you using? Have you considered an OS with lower system requirements?
 
Upgrade the RAM ... AND get a faster IDE drive.

But IDE 2.5 inch drives are getting very rare now and more expensive.
 
512MB is unfortunately the chipset's max amount of RAM, that's why I'm getting a readyboost drive. (It's an old HP laptop btw. NX9010 or something.)

Windows 7 (with some features such as indexing etc removed) is faster than XP. Trust me :)

Those SSDs aren't worth the buck. Money is unfortunately a factor, otherwise we would've just gotten a R4000 laptop from IC.

Thanks SP, will ask useless campus IT services if they have some gathering dust. I hope they know what IDE/PATA is :p
 
Are you sure about the 512MB Max... the P4 mobile chipset should allow 1GB in 2x512MB modules.

Here... check your systems max RAM upgrade-ability...

http://www.crucial.com/uk/systemscanner/index.aspx?source=UK_Webgains

Look for this;

btn_downloadscan2.gif


Click agree, download and run... it will then interrogate your machine and report back on the memory installed, max that can be installed and recommended modules.

Useful tool JUST to make sure...

Praeses said:
512MB is unfortunately the chipset's max amount of RAM, that's why I'm getting a readyboost drive. (It's an old HP laptop btw. NX9010 or something.)

Windows 7 (with some features such as indexing etc removed) is faster than XP. Trust me :)

Those SSDs aren't worth the buck. Money is unfortunately a factor, otherwise we would've just gotten a R4000 laptop from IC.

Thanks SP, will ask useless campus IT services if they have some gathering dust. I hope they know what IDE/PATA is :p
Click to expand...
 
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