SSD on 5 year old laptop?

[obidon]

I have an Acer Aspire 3100 that I got for Christmas in late 2006. I'm still using it to this day with Windows 7 as it came with Windows XP. However, the 60GB HDD it came with is starting to give me trouble so I was thinking about upgrading to an SSD.

Would this be possible with my laptop? I'm not entirely sure of the HDD connection but I believe it may be IDE. If this is the case, then will I need to get some kind of SATA to IDE adapter to use an SSD, or do they possibly make SSD's that can fit my laptop? I can only hope that I am not out of luck when it comes to upgrading the sustainability of my old and faithful mobile computing device.

Thank you for the helpful, yet knowledgeable replies.

 

[bobkn]

The Aspire 3100 appears to use a 2.5" ATA100 (PATA) drive.

As far as I know, SSDs in that form factor are SATA.

While SATA to IDE adapters appear to exist, I'd be surprised if one would fit in a laptop. (I haven't checked for the 3100, but it may include a proprietary mounting adapter, that would have to be transferred to a replacement HD.) Can't swear that it's impossible.

A quick look at www.newegg.com shows a couple of 2.5" PATA 5400 RPM replacement drives, so at least you can keep the old laptop alive.

 

[DeaconFrost]

You could quickly pull the drive out of your laptop and check it out, to be sure. I vaguely remember seeing some IDE SSDs early on, but I would think they would be rare and very expensive now.

If that isn't an option, you might check to see if there are any IDE hybrid drives, but again, this is unlikely.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

obidon,
You don't really have a good option here as there are Pata SSD's available but as mentioned they are expensive and from what I've found very small capacity.
Transcend TS16GSSD25-S Solid State Hard Drive (SLC) - PATA, 2.5, 16GB at TigerDirect
You might consider, though it's more work setting up your OS and software on a large SD card if your card reader will read it? Keep your spinner or up it's size and speed and balance between both.