Using SSD in legacy machine

[jbrenan]

Can I use a Samsung EVO SSD in my legacy Sata machine
(Uses the ICH7 82801GB chipset) (I'm not familiar with SSD at all)

If so would I could anyone suggest what sort of throughput I could expect?
I'm looking to just replace my 500GB hard drive and boost performance a bit.

TIA

 

[USAFRet]

Can I use a Samsung EVO SSD in my legacy Sata machine
(Uses the ICH7 82801GB chipset) (I'm not familiar with SSD at all)

If so would I could anyone suggest what sort of throughput I could expect?
I'm looking to just replace my 500GB hard drive and boost performance a bit.

TIA

What ports are on that motherboard?
SATA II, SATA III?

 

[grmnlxndr]

Sata SSD are compatible with any SATA version. You'll find some decreased performance when using Sata 2 or 1 (but in raw speed, not in normal usage), but the speed bump from mechanical HDD would still be big 😉
In your case, I would get a cheaper SSD to use in an older machine.

I have an older C2D machine with P35 chipset with ICH9 (with sata 2) and I got a cheap Kingston v300 SSD 120GB to replace the dying 500GB HDD and the speed bump has been big. I would recommend changing it. Just make sure to install an actual OS (Win7 +) in order to get all the OS optimizations for SSD (TRIM, etc). Also check some guides to disable some services/features that could decrase the lifespan of an SSD (Defragmentation, Hibernation, etc).

Regards

 

[sykozis]

ICH7 is ATA150 aka as SATA 1.5GB/s or first gen SATA. Depending on the drive that's being replaced, the data transfer benefit may be relatively small. If you're replacing a first-gen SATA harddrive, you should see reasonable gains as those drives generally had a transfer rate of around 40-90MB/s and a rather long seek time. You won't see full performance from an SSD on anything but SATA3 though so it does not make sense to buy the fastest SSD available unless you plan to upgrade the system in the near future.

 

[bono_john]

I put an SSD in my i7 960 with SATA 2 and saw a very big bump in performance. The speed boost is less from increased throughput, though it does help quite a bit. The improvement in speed is because there are no mechanical components. The 4 - 15 milliseconds that is spent seeking for data on the drive disappears, and since 99% of all reads on the drive are small files that are read multiple times a day, it makes a huge impact on performance, even if your drive interface is very slow.

 

[sykozis]

I put an SSD in my i7 960 with SATA 2 and saw a very big bump in performance. The speed boost is less from increased throughput, though it does help quite a bit. The improvement in speed is because there are no mechanical components. The 4 - 15 milliseconds that is spent seeking for data on the drive disappears, and since 99% of all reads on the drive are small files that are read multiple times a day, it makes a huge impact on performance, even if your drive interface is very slow.

He's not going to see the improvement you saw since SATA1 is limited to 150MB/s, but that drop from 4-15ms should be extremely noticeable even with the much slower interface. In his case, the dramatic decrease in seek time should have a bigger impact than the difference in transfer rate will. Even SSDs have to seek data, but the time spent seeking that data is too short to bother with calculating. I believe we're in the nano-second range, if not lower, for SSD seek time. Either way, it's fast enough to call it instantaneous in most cases....lol

 

[jbrenan]

Thanks for the info
I'm using a ST2000DL003-9VT166 drive for win7-64 now.
I guess I'll have to upgrade if the SSD doesnt bump the speed much -
I dont need much more on this machine but some would help.

at least I know now I can plug it in.

Thanks again

 

[sykozis]

You're limited by the SATA interface. With a 150MB/s maximum transfer rate, you're not going to see but so much of an increase. The majority of the increase you'll see, which will still be noticeable, will come from the vastly reduced seek time.

For comparison
SATA - 150MB/s
SATA2 - 300MB/s
SATA3 - 600MB/s

Most SATA3 mechanical drives are still in the range of 50-200MB/s transfer rate whereas most SATA3 SSDs are in the range of 300 - 590MB/s. When you plug any SATA3 drive into an SATA or SATA2 interface, the performance of the drive is degraded for compatibility but an SSD will always outperform a mechanical drive.

If you go with Samsung, enable Rapid Mode if possible to improve performance. Crucial, who makes good drives as well, has Momentum Cache, which is essentially the same as Samsung's Rapid Mode. The caching features use ram as a read/write buffer to improve performance.