Hi,
I’m owner of a Dell laptop D630, a quite old computer, I know, but it has now several improvements I introduced on it less than one year ago and now it works smooth and fast like a monster.
Among these improvements, like RAM extension to 4Gb, new batteries, etc, there is the change of the mechanical hard disk to a SSD drive 240Gb that really makes the computer literally to fly. It has installed up to three operative systems, Windows 8.1, Linux Mint 18.3 (both 64 bits) and OS X 10.11 (El Capitan), this last OS works under virtualization, using VMware workstation, with Windows as the OS host.
The SSD disk it’s not a wonder, it’s a cheap chinese one I bought on Aliexpress, it only cost about 16-17 €, the brand is Goldenfir. I performed some speed tests on it using software like CrystalMark, giving expected results according to this cheap SSD (sequential read-writes of about 204 Mb/s and 162 Mb/s respectively), although not sure, I think the laptop has a SATA 2 interface instead of SATA 3, so, speed is slower. In comparison with a mechanical hard drive the improvement is obvious.
But, during all this time the SSD was installed, I have observed on the laptop that sporadically and on very few occasions when it’s running or sometimes when it’s booting up, it happens a bit strange behaviour that I’m going to explain:
The system, once running normally, at any time it gets completely stuck and you cannot do anything with it, only wait, but later in about 3 to 5 minutes the system comes again to life and then gets completely operative. The hard disk LED gets lit continuously; in summary, it’s like an intermittent “failure” and has been always observed when running Windows.
When the system gets recovered after this “phantom failure”, that happens always after waiting those 3 to 5 minutes (I never dared to force switching off the computer to get rid of this failure, I feared if later the disk gets corrupted and cannot boot again), then the hard disk LED activity goes to normal (lit off a higher percentage of time).
After all this I have explained, I think I’m giving some clear clues, but that’s the reason I’m asking here. Maybe the failure is pointing to the operative system (Windows), or maybe the failure is caused by the SSD (firmware in it not up to date?). I have tried to find information about this Goldenfir device and I found nothing, no drivers, no firmware and no support information at all. Well, I guess that’s the price of buying these cheap chinese devices.
If anyone knows something about this subject and can give me a bit of light I would be very grateful.
Best regards.
Carlos
I’m owner of a Dell laptop D630, a quite old computer, I know, but it has now several improvements I introduced on it less than one year ago and now it works smooth and fast like a monster.
Among these improvements, like RAM extension to 4Gb, new batteries, etc, there is the change of the mechanical hard disk to a SSD drive 240Gb that really makes the computer literally to fly. It has installed up to three operative systems, Windows 8.1, Linux Mint 18.3 (both 64 bits) and OS X 10.11 (El Capitan), this last OS works under virtualization, using VMware workstation, with Windows as the OS host.
The SSD disk it’s not a wonder, it’s a cheap chinese one I bought on Aliexpress, it only cost about 16-17 €, the brand is Goldenfir. I performed some speed tests on it using software like CrystalMark, giving expected results according to this cheap SSD (sequential read-writes of about 204 Mb/s and 162 Mb/s respectively), although not sure, I think the laptop has a SATA 2 interface instead of SATA 3, so, speed is slower. In comparison with a mechanical hard drive the improvement is obvious.
But, during all this time the SSD was installed, I have observed on the laptop that sporadically and on very few occasions when it’s running or sometimes when it’s booting up, it happens a bit strange behaviour that I’m going to explain:
The system, once running normally, at any time it gets completely stuck and you cannot do anything with it, only wait, but later in about 3 to 5 minutes the system comes again to life and then gets completely operative. The hard disk LED gets lit continuously; in summary, it’s like an intermittent “failure” and has been always observed when running Windows.
When the system gets recovered after this “phantom failure”, that happens always after waiting those 3 to 5 minutes (I never dared to force switching off the computer to get rid of this failure, I feared if later the disk gets corrupted and cannot boot again), then the hard disk LED activity goes to normal (lit off a higher percentage of time).
After all this I have explained, I think I’m giving some clear clues, but that’s the reason I’m asking here. Maybe the failure is pointing to the operative system (Windows), or maybe the failure is caused by the SSD (firmware in it not up to date?). I have tried to find information about this Goldenfir device and I found nothing, no drivers, no firmware and no support information at all. Well, I guess that’s the price of buying these cheap chinese devices.
If anyone knows something about this subject and can give me a bit of light I would be very grateful.
Best regards.
Carlos
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