SSD Harddisk work with my Dell?

[FirstNissan]

Ive got a Dell 220S Desktop, ive been looking at getting a SSD to improve general speeds/bootup times. The only upgrade I have is ive got 4GB ram and am running Win 7.
Specs- 4GB ram, Core 2 Duo 2.8GHz. Other than that, its all stock.

Im looking at a few 64GB SSD. What will work- Sata 2 or Sata 3? And will I need any connectors or need to upgrade the power supply?

 

[tommygunn]

Any SSD works like any regular hard drive. If your old hard drive is SATA, it'll work fine.

 

[Rand]

any sata connection and it uses less power than a hdd.. so no power supply upgrade needed.

for best results you should set in the bios the sata mode to AHCI then install windows fresh on the SSD.

I would not recommend a smaller hdd than 90GB.

the 128GB crucial M4 or samsung 830 series are top tier and problem free.
they are also getting close to 100$ on sale now if you watch deals for a few weeks.

I'd avoid most other SSD besides intel brand(and the ones I mentioned above) as they can cause nightmares or their price/performance isnt as good.

 

[FirstNissan]

Rand- Why do you say that 64GB is not enough? I figured id put my operating system on the SSD and any pictures/movies on my regular internal. I can run both of these at the same time?

 

[Bill in Utah]

I'm running a 96gig SSD as the boot drive and a 2 gig for the other drives on my main desktop.

With a i5 quad core chip and 4 gig memory it does very well with Windows 7 home premium. Boot times are around 20sec from turn on to desktop. Performance even with many tasks going on at once is very impressive.

Right now with about 10 gig of "stuff" on the desktop I'm using 60 gig. So with some programs installed and OS its around high 40's to low 50's so a 64gig would be close IMO. I agree with Rand that 90 gig is where I'd be at the min. With the 128gigs coming in under $100 (which are really 120gig) those are a good price.

My Windows experience is 7.1 for the HD, 7.4 for the processor, 5.9 for the graphics (both system and gaming) and 5.9 for the memory for a base score of the 5.9.

My Daughter's computer is a dual core AMD and it does the same as mine for hard drives and the SSD really improved her performance.

I've got one of the Hybrid drives in my notebook and it helped it slightly over the 7200rpm that came in it.

Take care, Bill

 

[FirstNissan]

Bill- Thanks for the great info! I think im going to go in for the Crucial 128GB, I dont keep much "extra stuff" on my computer, but 128gb will future-proof my computer for atleast another 1-2 years.

 

[PandaBear]

If you are frugal, 64GB is enough, but you need to remember to offload those photos, videos, mp3s to a mechanical hard drive elsewhere. Using SSD in 2012 to store these stuff is a sin.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Great info from the other posters.

Confirming what was previously stated, we've had great luck updating these exact Dells with a couple different SSD drives,
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233191
and
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820249014
and even some of the older Intel SSD models.

As was stated above, don't skimp on capacity now that prices are coming down. 64GB-80GB isn't much. Sure it will boot, by you gotta be real careful with not filling it up.

And Again, as was stated, make sure you have AHCI set in the BIOS before you install the OS on the fresh SSD.

Enjoy!

 

[Rand]

its easy to hit 60gb esp if you get the 8gb hibernate file 8gb pagefile etc I had 40gb used on a fresh install of w7 with just updates.

You CAN use a 60-64 as boot drive but it can be a pain. I would not recommend less than 90.. 128-256 is ideal right now.

 

[Volvohead]

You can run W7x64 and a modest suite of applications on under 50gb. A 60-64gb SSD is fine in these situations.

With an SSD, you should always disable hibernation, page files, the defrag service, and a host of other "disk" intensive OS activities. Many apps should also be adjusted to reduce or eliminate paging and caching. These are all just burning up cell write cycles and/or eating space needlessly.

SSDTweaker is freeware that can be used to identify and disable many of these services without a lot of registry diving.

And keep the data elsewhere.