SSD for laptop

Legacy_user

I am looking at buying a refurbished laptop, probably something like a Dell Latitude about 4 to 6 years old. I have a couple of 250 gb SSD drives which were given to me, there about a year old, have tried them in my pc and they work fine, I would like to fit one into the laptop, 250 gb is enough for me as it will be mainly used for home office stuff, internet use, and sorting out some family history out. Is there anything I should look for in buying a laptop to suite one of these drives, I have been told they wont work in older laptops, nut not why ??

forgotmyname

Because older laptops are probably IDE not SATA.

neilmcl

forgotmyname wrote: »

Because older laptops are probably IDE not SATA.

I'd imagine most refurbished laptops being offered for sale will have SATA drives, unless they're very old.

RandomQ

Deneva wrote: »

I am looking at buying a refurbished laptop, probably something like a Dell Latitude about 4 to 6 years old. I have a couple of 250 gb SSD drives which were given to me, there about a year old, have tried them in my pc and they work fine, I would like to fit one into the laptop, 250 gb is enough for me as it will be mainly used for home office stuff, internet use, and sorting out some family history out. Is there anything I should look for in buying a laptop to suite one of these drives, I have been told they wont work in older laptops, nut not why ??

250gb is fine, you can use old drive as an external drive by putting it in an external enclosure.

The issue you might have is whether the drive is 7mm or 9mm and if there is a limitation the laptop you get, otherwise it should be no problem.

https://mcscom.co.uk/shop/dell-laptops/

Frozen_up_north

While many of the older laptops have an easy access panel to swap hard drives (and RAM), that is not always the case and some additional strip down work may be needed. I’ve seen some that required a lot of dismantling to access the hard drive (removal of the keyboard and metal shielding)!

There are lots of refurbished ex business laptops around that include an SSD and enough RAM to start with. The bigger issues are (a) how reliable is the seller and (b) will it need a new battery as few come with a decent one.

Undervalued

forgotmyname wrote: »

Because older laptops are probably IDE not SATA.

Very unlikely at 4 to 6 years.

I've just upgraded a 12 year old Core Duo generation laptop and that was SATA.

System

Undervalued wrote: »

Very unlikely at 4 to 6 years.

I've just upgraded a 12 year old Core Duo generation laptop and that was SATA.

I've a Thinkpad T400 of similar vintage and that had SATA. I used to have a business refurbishing laptops and once you got to anything with a Core Duo or newer CPU in it it was SATA. OTTOMH I think you'd be going back as far as Dell Latitude D600 and older. BEWARE OF THE DELL LATITUDE D400 SERIES as many of those earlier ones (D400/410/420/430) used 1.8" hard drives, not the standard 2.5" laptop format.

And yes even if it is a first generation SATA interface you will still see a massive improvement upgrading to SSD both in speed of the computer and increased battery life.

Undervalued

Tarambor wrote: »

And yes even if it is a first generation SATA interface you will still see a massive improvement upgrading to SSD both in speed of the computer and increased battery life.

Yes, £21.50 for a 120 GB SSD transformed it from a bin job to a very usable Win 7 / Office 2012 machine.

googler

Deneva wrote: »

I am looking at buying a refurbished laptop, probably something like a Dell Latitude about 4 to 6 years old. I have a couple of 250 gb SSD drives which were given to me, there about a year old, have tried them in my pc and they work fine, I would like to fit one into the laptop, 250 gb is enough for me as it will be mainly used for home office stuff, internet use, and sorting out some family history out. Is there anything I should look for in buying a laptop to suite one of these drives, I have been told they wont work in older laptops, nut not why ??

Download the full suite of drivers for the particular model of Dell from their support section of the website before installing the new drive.

System

Thanks for all the advice, I may look at something a bit newer now.

letsbehonest

I have a Dell Lattitude E6420 I have just installed Samsung 500 Gb Evo ssd (Sata) no problems at all and it is now very quick.