Computer Slowness

[Sprintex]

Wouldn't worry. Chromebook is Linux, Android is Linux .. we'll get you in the end 

There you go again see . . . what on Earth is Chromebook and Android?? 

Is Chromebook something to do with Google Chrome I keep getting pestered about?


Paul

[justintime]

Hi Caz,

Another possibility if you are running out of upgrades to do might be to get a Solid State Drive (SSD) for your system drive. You don't need to get a large one, 64GB would do, as you can keep you current hard drive as as second hard disk (D:\).  With your system files, and most often used program files on a SSD you should find load times drastically reduced, it should make your system much more responsive.  You'll still be limited by the speed of your processor obviously.

I've not yet tried this myself and I'm not 100% certain of the benefits of putting one into a really old machine, but it might be worth investigating.

Mark

I have been building desktop PC's for over 12 years and the biggest jump in performance in all that time has been the introduction of the SSD Drive.
I stuck one in an old laptop and added some memory and it was like a new machine.

I can recommend a decent supplier if anyone is interested.

[Sprintex]

Would an SSD drive work OK with the steam valves and brass gears that run my aging laptop?? 


Paul

[justintime]

It should do but you may have to oil it well 

[dodger]

It should do but you may have to oil it well 

Not forgetting plenty of coal!

Dodger

[BobB]

All this talk of SSD's is interesting. The three latest machines we have purchased are tablet form PC's running full Windows 7 and Office 2010. They use an SSD instead of the more normal rotating magnetic hard disc. Imagine my dismay to read (after purchase) that they are subject to failure after about 10000 read/write operations ! Assuming normal office style use that's less than 3 years (10 bits of work only).

Yes they're quick, but paying extra for less than three years. What do the rest of you think ?

[swisstony]

I work for the leading storage disk people, although SSDs are rear their life expectancy is about 1/3 of an old spinning style disk, but the seek rate is phenomenal!

[justintime]

I use Crucial and I have really hammered the two in my desktop over the last couple of years and they still show a good life expectancy.  I am very happy to recommend Crucial SSD over conventional HDD but that's only my humble opinion.

[MikeDunn]

Imagine my dismay to read (after purchase) that they are subject to failure after about 10000 read/write operations ! Assuming normal office style use that's less than 3 years (10 bits of work only).

Yes they're quick, but paying extra for less than three years. What do the rest of you think ?

You're paying for speed ... I have mine as my OS drive, and have it barred from defragging.  That is guaranteed to bring the EOL forward !  My boot time dropped from around 90 seconds to 9 ...

They're good for what they are - but for home use, I'd never recommend one for data.

[EtchedPixels]

All this talk of SSD's is interesting. The three latest machines we have purchased are tablet form PC's running full Windows 7 and Office 2010. They use an SSD instead of the more normal rotating magnetic hard disc. Imagine my dismay to read (after purchase) that they are subject to failure after about 10000 read/write operations ! Assuming normal office style use that's less than 3 years (10 bits of work only).

Yes they're quick, but paying extra for less than three years. What do the rest of you think ?

10,000 per block.

[Fratton]

I'm using an SSD as main drive, no defragging no system page files on their and move the documents to secondary drive and it works a treat, if my current one fails im going to buy an Msata SSD that plugs directly onto the motherboard and is not much bigger than a SD memory card

Im a big fan of SSD, so depressing at work waiting a minute or so for the computer i my office to boot up,,,,

[Paddy]

Sounds interesting these SSDs - not had one in a PC yet.  My personal machine is a Lenovo X121e and it is great.  Due to their FastBoot tech is loads up in about 10 seconds from a standard HD.

Paddy

[swisstony]

I'm using an SSD as main drive, no defragging no system page files on their and move the documents to secondary drive and it works a treat, if my current one fails im going to buy an Msata SSD that plugs directly onto the motherboard and is not much bigger than a SD memory card

Im a big fan of SSD, so depressing at work waiting a minute or so for the computer i my office to boot up,,,,

Hope you take good backups 

[justintime]

As with anything computer oriented good housekeeping and regular backups are a must with any type of hard drive.

[martink]

For those interested, just a quick technical note on the SSD write limits. 

I haven't worked on SSDs per se, but I have designed several software products (such as cars' odometers and data loggers) that used the same kind of flash or EEPROM memory with basic hardware write counts varying between 10k and 1M.  The key to practical designs is to spread out and dilute these writes so that the limit becomes (almost) irrelevant, or at least only cuts in after the end of the warranty period!  Well, actually, the product's expected lifetime - typically 10 years or so.  There have been many similar issues with past products - how many people have been bitten by a dead battery for an old PC's CMOS RAM, or the infamous Y2K bug or the forthcoming Unix/Linux Y2038 bug?

For file systems like SSDs, data will be written sequentially across different parts of the disk so that all parts of the disk have been written to once before any part gets written to a second time, and so on.  It isn't quite that simple, but that is the ideal they aim for.  Also, the 10k or 100k limit (or whatever) is what the chip manufacturer guarantees to the product manufacturer - the counts actually achieved in the real world can often be significantly higher. 

Any respectable design engineer also tries to build in some sort of graceful failure handling when things start to degrade.  For example, the flash/EEPROM memory in a car odometer has to be updated frequently so you don't lose too many (or any) miles/km if the battery gets disconnected.  This would typically be done every one or two miles.  However, when the mileage gets high enough (500,000+) and we start nearing the write limit, we can change to updating every 10 or 20 miles to preserve what capacity is left.  All sorts of similar tricks are possible.

Anyway, in practical terms the SSD lifetime depends on how much data you write to it.  The larger the drive, the more that data gets spread out, so the longer it lasts.  Everything I've heard says that the lifetime is comparable to that of a conventional HDD.  The best approach is to have two drives in your PC, and back things up regularly.