A New Life For My Laptop
Every couple of years or so I like to either treat myself to a new "main computer" or re-install Windows on the one I've got, in order to breathe new life in to it.
After a couple of years a Windows install can slow if you don't look after it. I have a policy of not installing any software unless I absolutely need it. Still, it feels like a re-build won't go amiss on my current laptop.
It's now about 18 months since I bought my ThinkPad T400. I can't see having enough money this year to buy a new one, so, next best thing I'm going to upgrade the HDD and rebuild it. There's nothing at all wrong with the laptop chassis and spec (I always try to over-spec and future-proof myself when buying new). I'm just going to try and boost speed.
The laptop has 8GB of RAM and a 300GB HDD (the usual 7200rpm spinning disk type). My plan is to replace with the 256GB SSD I just bought. Rather than simply cloning the old drive to the new one I'll build it as a new machine, install programs I need and then copy over what I need as I go. To do this I also bought an HDD caddy for the UltraBay slot, so I can put the old HDD in as a slave drive where the DVD drive currently sits.
For those of you who don't know what an SSD is, it's like a hard drive made out of "RAM". There are no spinning disks. It's what's inside the iPad. Because there are no disks it's faster and also more reliable. Apparently they're the "future of storage".
Here's a video of the power you can expect from SSDs. If you can watch this without getting excited, you're not a real geek:
The new SSD is due today. I might not get time to start the full rebuild today (need at least a whole day spare for that!) but I might put the new drive in and install Windows, just as a test. I'll report back here with a cold-boot time and video later on if all goes well.
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I will be very surprised if this project doesn't give your PC a new life.
I just did the same thing with wife's 4-year old laptop. And it has improved performance so much.
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<tongue_in_cheek>Surely now that you don't use Notes Designer your machine should fly anyway? </tongue_in_cheek>
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I know you're joking, but, Domino will be re-installed. Partly for support work, but also because, despite everything I've said of late, it looks like I'll be doing a couple of weeks Domino work over the coming months (non XPages mind).
There's life in the old dog yet.
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Hey there Jake.
You are going to absolutely love the SSD. It is the single biggest improvement you can make to a laptop -and the results are staggering:
http://www.devinolson.net/devin/SpankysPlace.nsf/d6plinks/DOLN-8CYMBC
Crucial is a good brand, and 256M is IMHO, a perfect balance for size vs. price.
Let us know what you think once you've completed the upgrade.
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Hi Jake,
I did almost the same trick 6 months ago. Same 18 month old T400, same "put a second drive in the ultrabay adapter", and same put in a new SSD as primary. In my case, I chose to save $$$ and go with a 128GB SSD and bought a new 320gb 7200 Scorpio Black for the ultrabay. The original 160gb drive I dropped into an external case. Also took the opportunity to upgrade to Windows 7.
Mostly this has been a positive experience, despite enduring a month of frequent crashes which turned out to be a driver issue. Super fast reboot times and app launch times are easy to get used to :-). This is absolutely the single best thing one can do to make Lotus Notes in particular fly.
The only lingering issue for me is battery life (or the incredible lack thereof). I had also bought a new (but not "lenovo certified") battery and with the new setup I struggle to get an hour of battery life. There is NO way I could have used this laptop as my Lotusphere walkaround machine (if I had gone to the show that is). Fortunately I rarely need need to take the machine out of the house since I have a client laptop for most daily needs.
So why the awful battery life? It might be I just have a crap battery, but I think powering the second hard drive is probably a bigger factor. I store only data on that second drive, e.g. several Notes data subdirectories with .dir mapping (not the entire data directory), and iTunes libraries. And lots of low priority downloads and archival stuff.
I would be very interested to hear what your battery life experience is with your new setup and what you might do to improve it. Not sure if it's worth buying a new *Lenovo* battery, or perhaps I'll need to look at ways to reduce the power needs of the second drive. Like maybe taking it out completely. That might not be too hard actually as I really don't need to store lots of iTunes and other media locally.
In the meantime, congratulations!
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Kevin
Any time you leave your battery in your laptop, charging, for everyday use you have to expect your battery to die.
I leave my battery out with about 50% charge, if I plan on using the battery I pop it in to charge fully then go. My laptop is almost 3 years old now and still has a strong battery life. For some that may not work, keeping it full isn't bad I've just read a lot about keeping it completely full in some circumstances is almost as bad as allowing it to sit and go to zero charge. It hurts the life you can get out of it.
Just my 2 cents.
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I'll try and remember to report back on this.
It's a hard one as (for some reason) I've noticed my batteries took a nosedive in performance recently anyway.
When I first switched to SSD on friday night it did seem like battery life suffered. But that could have been because you planted the seed in my mind already and I was expected it to be.
Surely a non-moving-parts drive can't use more power though? Surely?
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Thanks for the ideas Aaron. I know that leaving the battery charging all the time is not the best thing if keeping the battery healthy is your main goal. However, I (mis)treat all my laptops the same way and this one, in this configuration, is significantly below par. I'm not much interested in paying ~$150 for a new certified battery unless I think it will make a significant difference. Hopefully Jake's experience will prove instructive here.
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There is a guy nearby me that rebuilds laptop batteries. He is an independent electrical guy, repair TV's and things, but I'm sure there is probably one in every town. He replaces the cell's for $30-50, the one he did for me a few years ago worked well. May be another option to look at.
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Would you recommend adding SSD to desktop also?
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No reason why not. The fact I'm using it in a laptop is irrelevant. Any type of system should run faster with an SSD.
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Interesting thread on Lenovo and the speeds available to drives.
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T61-and.. ..-series-ThinkPad/T61-Support-SATA-II/td-p/64464/page/24
Not sure what to make of it
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Thanks for the video link and discussion. I'm seriously considering this now. My only trouble is that most of my hardware is old and not much it has SATA as an option. I have a win 2003 server box - looking forward to researching how that would treat a SSD drive and if I can get an IDE SSD! :-)
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Answering my own question - IDE SSD options are sad, lacking and spare.
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Oh dear, I must be a geek because all thru that video I get saying "wow" and paused it half-way thru to explain to Mrs A what I was saying "wow" about.
She clearly isn't a geek because she didn't look at all impressed.
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Mrs H asked what it was I added delivered and asked if it "would give it more memory". I said "No, it will have less memory but be faster". That confused her (and shut her up).
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It aint cheap, but IDE SSD does exist.
Look at OWC: http://eshop.macsales.com
specifically: http://eshop.macsales.com/search/3.5+Internal+IDE/ATA
Have fun!
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Cheers, Lars!
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