SSD Speed in Asus Eee

[BillV39]

I want to swap the mechanical hard drive in my Asus Eee 1005HA (1.6GHz Atom N280, 667 MHz FSB), for a SSD. I've narrowed it down to Crucial's MX100 or M550, both 256GB. Aside from price, the biggest difference is the write speed (300 vs 500 MBps). Is the faster drive likely to make any difference in my little Eee?

 

[volcanoscout]

As you say, the M550 is a lot faster, but your EEE won't be able to use it's full speed as it supports SATA II (300 Mbps/sec). Unless you're wanting to transfer the drive to a faster laptop down the road, there's no point in paying more for the M550. I would recommend getting the MX100.

 

[BillV39]

Thanks for your response. After posting I began to sense that this forum is overrun by gamers and I'd begun to wonder if I was going to get any response.

I've only had the Eee for a short time and what specs I've found didn't mention the SATA generation. But with it's age this is exactly the sort of issue that I was wondering about. I'll get the MX100.

This is my first laptop or netbook and I was pleasantly surprised by it's capabilities. Touchpads suck IMO but a wireless Logitech mouse has nicely solved that. The Eee's main purpose is to log motorcycle engine data while I'm riding. I was concerned that the mechanical disk would not be happy sitting in a backpack while doing that.

 

[volcanoscout]

You're probably right about that - I've had some pretty good luck considering how much of a beating I've given my HDDs, but plenty of people's have to come to grief from relatively mild shocks and bounces.

I'm surprised you didn't rig up a tablet or mini-tablet - not enough memory?

 

[BillV39]

I wanted something that was cheap, relatively small, and it had to run XP. I may be displaying my ignorance with these things as I've previously only used desktops. But I didn't want any on-screen keyboard or such ilk. I'll be processing the data with things like Excel and specialized plotting routines as well as moving data/programs back and forth with a desktop. Don't know if the Eee is the very best choice but it's doing what I want (and more).