Memory & SSD upgrades

[Hatboro]

SW: XP Professinal, TABLET PC EDITION 2005, V2002,/has Service Pack-3
HW: 60GB HITACHI IDE, Serial ATA interface, SATA 150 tranfer mode, NTFS partitions
C partition = 55.7GB, D partition (Sys Reserved) = 99.9MB /26.1MB used as 25 .tmp files.
Memory = DDR2 533, 512 MB in 2 available slots = ~ 1GB.

I'm considering:
Upgrading the memory to 2GB x 2, for an effective 3.2 -- 3.5GB (XP- limited) and then maybe installing a 250GB WD SSD; I’d setup the new SSD with a 100MB D partition, and expect the rest to function as the C partition. I’m focusing on getting a
Blue WD SATA SSD #WDBNCE2500PNC-WRSN, 250 GB.

Should I expect any nasty surprises with what I'm proposing?
And, should I expect a ‘faster’ laptop for each of the upgrades as proposed above?

About the memory: I’ll swap-out the DDR2 533, 512 MB x 2 = ~ 1GB for a
DDR2 533, 2GB x 2 = ~ 4GB.
An A-Tech (4GB) 2 x 2GB PC2-4200 DDR2 Memory Kit is readily available.

If you have suggestions / Pro -- Con comments on the proposed upgrades above, please post them below. Thanks.

 

[Sixthofmay]

That should work well. With 4GB RAM, it'll not page fault until your Commit Charge goes over 1.5GB. Any page faulting with a SSD will be handled far faster than with spinning due to the huge increase in I/Os per second.

I'd get a 500GB SSD as it'll last twice as long as a 250GB. SSDs have wear leveling as it can only write to a sector about 3000 times before the sector fails (it automatically fixes itself using the spare sector pool).

I haven't heard anything bad about WD SSDs. I do know to avoid the Samsung 860 series (850 series is fine).

Make sure to align the SSD or else it'll run at 1/3rd max speed and have 1/3rd the life. I use Paragon Alignment Tool. It's not free. There may be some free alignment tools now. Search and post if you find one.

I actually wore out the boot SSD on my main XP box. It was a first generation Samsung and didn't have auto garbage collection (TRIM). Modern SSDs have it (needed with XP as XP doesn't have TRIM feature).

I wish I could remember if I restored the drive signature or not (I used Acronis True Image 2014). XP did stay activated. Could someone clarify how WGA handles drive replacements and if you should restore the drive signature or not?