Well I decided it was time to give the netbook a small upgrade. The memory is maxed out already at 2GB from when I first bought it so the only thing really left was the hard drive.
It came with a 120GB hard drive which has been more than enough for how I use the netbook however, I thought a Solid State Drive (SSD) would be a perfect upgrade.
The price point has come down decently to venture into this so I placed the order and got this back:
Kingston SSDNow V Series SATA 3 GB/s 2.5- Inch Solid State Drive SNV425-S2
For notebooks, SSDNow drives are a perfect replacement for hard drives resulting in faster, more reliable performance. Making this change will improve a notebook’s efficiency in a wide range of tasks, from booting up to running the most demanding operating systems and applications.
SSDNow uses a standard SATA interface but, unlike a regular HDD, SSD is very rugged and built with no moving parts, making it ideal for users who push the limits of their notebooks. Other benefits include reduced power usage, less noise and less heat generation.Kingston’s SSDNow V Series offers performance gains and power consumption reductions at a fraction of the cost of a new system. For added peace of mind, they’re backed by 24/7 tech support, a three-warranty and legendary Kingston reliability.
Some of the features for this brand of SSD’s include:
- Performance — enhances productivity; makes users more efficient
- Innovative — 2.5" form factor; uses NAND flash memory components
- Silent — Runs silent and cool with no moving mechanical parts
- Reliable — less likely to fail than a standard hard drive
- Shock Resistant — No moving mechanical parts so the SSD handles rougher conditions
- Supports TRIM — ensures maximum performance on compatible Operating Systems
- Supports S.M.A.R.T. — Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology
- Guaranteed — 3 year legendary Kingston warranty, 24/7 tech support
Now this I could just about not fathom but the drive arrived at my house thanks to the UPS truck in a padded envelope – and I use the term padded loosely. It was one of those yellow ones lined with one layer of bubble wrap. I guess these things really do have some shock protection!
I used the hands on at LaptopMag.com – Upgrade the Hard Drive on the Eee PC 1000HE – to familiarize myself with the process and away I went.
It took less than 10 minutes from first screw out to last screw in to swap out the mechanical hard drive with this SSD. I caused a delay by putting the bracket on the SSD backwards :-)
After installing the SSD I did a fresh install of Windows 7 which took 18 minutes. Restarts take about 25 seconds. It wakes up out of sleep mode in 3-5 seconds. It takes 32 seconds for a cold boot and 28 seconds for a restart from the Start Menu.
Amazing speed bumps across the board.
The formatted size of the 64GB SSD was 59.6GB and after Windows 7 and Office was installed it still had 49.8GB of space free.
I ran the Windows Experience Index (WEI) to evaluate the system and disk benchmarks using ATTO.
|
Standard Mechanical Hard Drive |
Solid State Device (SSD) |
 |
 |
|
Disk Data Transfer Rate 5.4 |
Disk Data Transfer Rate 6.5 |
The only score that changed was the disk score by +1.1 – that should have happened though so a good sign.
|
Standard Mechanical Hard Drive |
Solid State Device (SSD) |
 |
 |
|
Read and write scores were in the mid 50MB per second range in the heart of the test. No significant variation between read and write scores. |
Read and write scores were in the 120 – 130MB per second range for the heart of this test. Read scores well out paced writes by about 40 to 50MB per second. Read speeds were up in the 130MB per second range. |
It is easy to see by the ATTO benchmark that the SSD drive outpaces the mechanical drive with the big data block reads and writes and therefore it is not surprising to see a quick boot up, restart and read/write operations when using Windows 7.
I am very pleased with the results and I am now seriously considering putting one of these in my desktop as the boot/program drive and keep a mechanical hard drive in there for storage.
I am excited for the future of storage as the price of these devices come down over time.
Have you made the leap to an SSD drive? We would love to hear your experience with this growing technology.
