I've actually done this on a friend's desktop computer using a SATA to IDE adapter. (He didn't have money to upgrade his entire system at the time, but we figured he could re-use the SSD in a future system so it was worth purchasing first.)
Most of the speedup from an SSD comes from its faster small file read/writes, so you still get a large benefit despite the lower max speed (66 MB/s for his IDE port). His boot time (power on to being able to interact with the desktop) went from nearly 3 minutes down to just under 1 minute. More importantly, his system didn't grind to a halt any time there was a lot of disk activity (like a virus scan) - he could still use his computer.
The SATA to IDE adapter was too bulky to work in a laptop, and was a bit flaky. We had to play around with different BIOS settings and IDE cable arrangements before we finally got it to work. I'm actually not sure what exactly we finally did to make it work - we were growing desperate and just trying all sorts of random things, before stumbling on a combo which worked. SATA to IDE adapters may have improved since then, and maybe they make one small enough to fit in a laptop now. (Or mSATA to IDE paired with a mSATA SSD.)
We had to take extensive precautions due to lack of TRIM. We copied all his data off his HDD first, leaving just the OS and programs. Then we cloned it to the SSD. Set the SSD as the boot drive, made the HDD secondary, and copied all his data to the HDD. Then I remapped all his user directories (downloads, documents, music, video, etc) to the HDD so those writes wouldn't go to the SSD. I left explicit instructions to only write data to the HDD, never to the SSD so we could stave off slowdowns due to lack of TRIM for as long as possible.
That said, newer SSDs are supposed to be better about recognizing filesystems, and can function without TRIM. Just look for a SSD which is advertised as being compatible with RAID.
All in all though, I wouldn't try it again. It was a small miracle we even got it working. IMHO the amount of effort we spent on it wasn't worth the savings in terms of not buying a new system. And by the time he was able to upgrade his computer 9 months later, SSD prices had dropped enough that choosing to buy the SSD first turned out to be a bad financial decision. Just live with your laptop for a bit longer while you save up money for a newer, modern laptop.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram