Memory & SSD upgrades

H

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.
 
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?
 
as you use the OWC SSD, could you post a picture of the IDE to SATA adapter? I was always interrested what kind of adapter they are using, and where it might fit or not, but there is no information anywhere, so a photo would be of high interrest.
 
Hope this doesn't get me in trouble, Clippy, but I have helpful info to add to this topic.
@dmitriy-kirilovskege Look on ebay, type it into search. They have endless supplies of computer adapter tools with pictures that I had never thought of, and yes I've bought IDE to SATA adapters on there.

@Sixthofmay For free alignment for all storage, SSD HD and USB Flash, I use Ranish Partition Manager. You have to use a boot disk to DOS, but the program is exacting precision and you can customize everything right down to the individual sector. I like to align Windows partitions at sector 65,536 (8mb on 512-byte drives), and then I put a DOS boot partition in 63-65,535 for quick access to old programs especially Ranish.
 
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