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#11
I see a OCZ 60 gig SATA SSD on Tiger Direct for 199. I don't need a huge amount of storage on this particular machine. Is there any reason not to go ahead and swap out my old drive for this one, install Windows 7 and that way I can use my old drive as an archive of stuff I don't want to move onto the new one? I have a docking station I can install the old drive into with one of those adapters.
sure if you want to spend the bucks go for it
Yeah, it definately will decrease your boot up time. Not sure if I would cough up that much though for a work laptop. I think personally with the clean install of W7 you'll be happy with the bootup time.
Not all SSDs are equal. Make sure you get the right one. If you go OCZ (which is excellent) make sure you get a Vertex or Vertex turbo model. Then you need those at Firmware level 1.4 or 1.4.1 - else you have no Trim support (which is very important for write speed). You can always flash it to 1.4 level, but that is an extra step.
Until you decide if you will go with Win7 or not here is a Microsoft program for WinXP that adjusts you startup and rearranges stuff for a quicker bootup.
Just install and select a full scan on next bootup.
After you do this it will shutdown and restart.
It will be running in windows so be patient and wait.
First time may take 5 or 10 minutes but well worth it.
It will also be moving your key startup programs to the fastest part of your hard drive.
Here is the link.
Download BootVis 1.3.37.0 - BootVis - Microsoft tool to provide faster XP boot and resume times - Softpedia
I'm running your setup, believe it or not. Precision m70. I've upgraded to Windows 7, and can testify that it's a heluva different OS. The Precision is a powerful machine, and handles it VERY well.
Aero? Eats it for breakfast.
In the "windows experience index" - the worst score you'll likely see is a 3.8 / 8 for your CPU speed. That's expected. It's a powerful single-core centrino that runs at 2.0GHz (for me). I'm looking to overclock it to 2.3GHz (since I've read elsewhere that it's still relatively stable at that point).
So go for it. I have a 320Gb hard drive in mine. That's the max it will take. Make special note that you can't get a SATA drive in here, which is the real kicker for why boot time is as fast as it is. It's IDE or bust, and the largest IDE that this precision will read, is the 320Gb sized one. You ain't gonna find an IDE that huge going at 7200rpm... it's 5400 for sure.
Hope that helps. :)