SSD for 7 year old Dell Inspiron 1520

[Websurfer53]

Hi All,

I have a Dell Inspiron 1520 which is about 7 years old and I'm looking for an SSD for it.

I have Vista but am thinking about upgrading to Win 7. Do you have any advice about how this should be done? Should I upgrade to 7 on my HDD before moving to an SSD?

I'm also thinking about a fresh install of the OS Vista to start anew; do you have any advice about how and in what order this all should be done?

Finally, I'm looking at purchasing this SSD - Samsung 830 - Series MZ-7PC128N/AM 128 GB 2.5 Inch SATA III MLC Internal SSD Laptop Kit with Norton Ghost 15, on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-830-Se.../dp/B005T3GQM4)-any thoughts on this?

Thanks again,

Larry

[Cudni]

Originally Posted by Websurfer53

I have a Dell Inspiron 1520 which is about 7 years old

I would consider a new computer instead if possible.

[TheKid7]

Recently I put a 128 GB Crucial M4 SSD in an older PC (3rd Quarter 2006 hardware) which still has Windows XP Pro 32 bit. There was just a little improvement in performance and boot times.

I eventually plan to upgrade both the hardware and the OS (Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit). Then I should see a very large jump in performance with the SSD.

[Brian K]

Larry,

Just some background that may save you trauma. Did the laptop come with WinXP and you upgraded to Vista?

What size is the HD?

Do you have a MediaDirect button above the keyboard?

[Websurfer53]

[Larry,

Just some background that may save you trauma. Did the laptop come with WinXP and you upgraded to Vista?

What size is the HD?

Do you have a MediaDirect button above the keyboard?]

Hi,

Correction - I looked up my original invoice and this is not 7 yrs old - it's from Aug 2007, so going on 5 yrs old. The laptop came with Vista, Home Premium, a 160gb HD, and 2 gb RAM. The only other thing I've done to it is I added another 2 gb RAM last fall.

I'm not at home and I honestly don't recall if it has Media Direct button at the top of the keyboard. I'll check that tonight.

What are you thinking?

L

[Brian K]

Larry,

Thanks. You are safe. Inspirons from that period with WinXP OS and MediaDirect 2 had a Host Protected Area on the HD. Most had small HDs such as 60 GB. When folks cloned their HD to a larger HD they found the new HD became truncated to the size of the old HD by the HPA. For example their shiny new 320 GB HD now appeared as only 60 GB in the BIOS and in Windows. It was hard to fix too.

Inspirons with Vista came with MediaDirect 3 and didn't have a HPA.