Solved Recommended means to speed up Laptop?

I have an Acer V5-571G-6401, and the hard drive can be a tad slow. I have uninstalled most of the crapware that came with the computer, and the hdd seems like the most likely culprit. so I'd like to speed it up a bit

As far as I can tell, I can go three ways:

1. Solid state drive. it would make space a little thin, but in reality I most likely won't need more than 100GB for a laptop, and I can put the old 500GB drive in an enclosure if I need more storage.

2. Hybrid drive. Would have the speed of a SSD and the storage of a HDD. Though my laptop needs a 7mm drive and I don't know if there are any 7mm hybrid drives avaialble yet.

3. faster HDD

I don't think a Readyboost drive would help a lot.

Any ideas? Advice?

Run HDTune and post a benchmar of the original 500GB disk, so we can see if its slow.

I'd go with the SSD (min of 256 GB), and don't forget about adding more RAM.

bassfisher6522 said:

I'd go with the SSD (min of 256 GB), and don't forget about adding more RAM.

Click to expand...

I think I would, as the Kingston was a decent price.

I all ready have 8GB of RAM, and I have a hard time believing I'll use more than 128GB of storage (I keep movies on my desktop with 4TB of storage, and all my other crap won't even take 20GB, except a VM which would take 40GB more)

not to mention the cheap 256GB SSDs seem to all be 9.8mm thick

It sounds like an SSD is what you need, and there are plenty that are 7mm thick. I have an HP Envy 4 and recently upgraded to a Corsair Force 3 240 GB drive, and I needed it to be 7mm. There are plenty to choose from out there.

Also, hybrid drives are faster than HDDs, but are not as fast as SSDs. They are meant to be a balance in between. Don't take that as me putting them down, but in a case like yours, where you don't need a large drive, I wouldn't consider hybrid, and would go right for an SSD.

Thanks. Aside from 7mm hibrid drives being hard to find, 128GB SSDs are at an acceptable price. I ended up buying this. Newegg.ca - Kingston SSDNow V200 Series SV200S37A/128G 2.5" 128GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (Stand-alone drive)

There's a huge range of choices out there. The thing is, SSD drives are on a major technology curve right now. I really expect you'll see significant improvements in the next year or two. I'm not quite sure what will happen with SSD+HD (hybrid). They are certainly cheaper than SSD, and strike a fairly reasonable middle grounds between SSD and standard HDD. The firmware isn't perfect, but getting there. I think hybrids will keep the magnetic platter media for storage going a little longer. Otherwise, SSD will drive that out in short order (I predict less than 3 years).

Not all SSD drives are created equal. New controller technologies have been coming out that are decreasing read/write times. OCZ has come out with a new Vertex 4 SSD that leapfrogs past the leading competition. But it turns out their drive runs in performance mode when the drive is more than 50% free. Once that threshold is crossed, it switches to storage mode and speeds advantages are lost.

One important factor to consider is what version of SATA is running on your system. If your motherboard controller is SATA II (3.0Gb), then a fancy leading edge SSD won't provide any advantage. You'll save some money going with a slower SSD drive. There are other factors to consider as well, like power consumption. I've seen some SSD drives have loads of 3W active and 2W idle. The best I've seen is 0.15W active and 0.10W idle. That will have a noticeable impact on battery life.

While SSD+HD hybrids get closer to SSD performance than typical HDD, they still have spinning platters inside. The power consumption can actually increase, especially if you go from a 5400rpm drive to a 7200rpm drive. I'd rather get the battery benefit.


In any case, Q4 is usually where the more profound computer technology improvements are released. OCZ is planning to release the Vector SSD then, which will be running off of their "own" controller (instead of Sandforce) which was possible from their acquisition of Indilinx. New tech will drive down the prices of older tech. If you can wait a couple of months, some good deals will be coming up (I'll bet some great ones on black Friday).

yeah I ended up buying the Kingston SSD.

Giving Newegg's history, I should receive it on Wednesday at around 2:15pm.

This computer is actually fairly easy to disassemble (once I googled the instructions), so swapping out the drive should be fairly easy. After I opened it up to check it seems the bottom of the multitouch trackpad seems to be depressed ~.5mm so that has me a little worried that I messed it up. When I install the drive i'll take a closer look at it to see if it's fixable. otherwise it isn't really a big deal, but it's not flush.

The one thing about the SSD is that I may have to upgrade the firmware, and the steps are a little convoluted. But I will be doing a clean install, and only installing drivers and my programs. I already have everything downloaded, but hopefully Windows update automatically downloads all of the drivers.

My last laptop was a MSI X320 (I'm a sucker for inexpensive thin laptops) that I had for a few months, and so far this laptop is way better in comparison; and will be MUCH better once the ssd is installed. I will be putting the old drive in an enclosure and keeping it in the laptop bag.

The battery is sort of disappointing, it's about the size of an overstuffed freezie and only lasts 4 hours. But as long as I keep it plugged in it should be fine.

I should probably find a car adaptor...

OK, I have another question:

I installed it, but now the WEI for the drive is 5.9. I checked it and:

I swear I installed everything correctly, so what could be the cause?

Huh. I just checked my desktop's SSD, which gets a *checks* WEI of 7.5:


I was a little worried, but the laptop runs very quickly (except during software installs of office and Windows, but they may just be slow.) I think it might be a glitch, but IDK

Thats awesome! I came across this thread when I googled Aspire SSD upgrade since thats exactly what Im thinking of doing.
Currently, Im in the market for a new laptop and the V5-571G-6401 looks right for me, except I do want a SSD Drive as well.
Any regrets? Did you have to upgrade the firmware? Any other tips for a fellow Lethbridgian I can use all the help I can get...

Sometimes you have to rerun the WEI assessment to refresh the score when you add/change hardware.

Well if you haven't done already this will give you a substantial boost I do it on all machines my own fixes set ups etc

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/11728-optimize-windows-7-a.html?filter[2]=Performance Maintenance

Martin75 said:

Thats awesome! I came across this thread when I googled Aspire SSD upgrade since thats exactly what Im thinking of doing.
Currently, Im in the market for a new laptop and the V5-571G-6401 looks right for me, except I do want a SSD Drive as well.
Any regrets? Did you have to upgrade the firmware? Any other tips for a fellow Lethbridgian I can use all the help I can get...

Click to expand...

You wouldn't happen to go to the college, would you?

The only real annoyance is that the battery is about the size of a big Mr. Freez-it and only lasts under three hours standard usage.

Installing the hard drive is fairly easy once you actually know the instructions: Acer Aspire V5-571G | Acer Aspire V5-531 Notebook Service Guide - Page 93

basically remove the two screws holding the keyboard on first, and use a plastic scraper or something to avoid scratching the plastic. All screws are identical.

If you're going to do a clean install, download all of the drivers from acer's website first, so you can install whatever Windows update doesn't install. Use device manager to check if anything doesn't have the correct drivers. You will need to install the bluetooth drivers, as Windows installs default ones that give no errors but don't work.


Oh and BTW: a) On re installation my WEI for graphics dropped from 6.6 to 6.3. I don't know why. b) the wireless toggle button cycles between all off, bluetooth only, wifi only, and bluetooth and wifi on. Take a moment for the change to take place.

Martin75 said:

Thats awesome! I came across this thread when I googled Aspire SSD upgrade since thats exactly what Im thinking of doing.
Currently, Im in the market for a new laptop and the V5-571G-6401 looks right for me, except I do want a SSD Drive as well.
Any regrets? Did you have to upgrade the firmware? Any other tips for a fellow Lethbridgian I can use all the help I can get...

Click to expand...

Well Martin one thing that hasn't been mentioned is the warranty mate - better check before you throw anything in the machine! SSD or otherwise unless that doesn't bother you?

My college days are done.. I never did go to LCC thou..
I did have a change of heart and decided to go with a Dell Latitude E5430 with a factory installed SSD.. I paid a bit more going this route but I have had great luck with the Dell product in the past. I get to try it out for 30 days anyway..
Thanks again for all your input!

Martin75 said:

My college days are done.. I never did go to LCC thou..
I did have a change of heart and decided to go with a Dell Latitude E5430 with a factory installed SSD.. I paid a bit more going this route but I have had great luck with the Dell product in the past. I get to try it out for 30 days anyway..
Thanks again for all your input!

Click to expand...

No probs Martin but don't forget the optimise tutorial mate it will still give you a noticeable increase in speed

John