Kitz Forum
Computers & Hardware => PC Hardware => Topic started by: broadstairs on December 22, 2020, 11:30:23 AM
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I have a laptop which I find a tad sluggish and am looking for suggestions to speed it up, the issue is that it is not SATA but IDE. Now my other SATA laptop has been upgraded with an SSD and I replaced the DVD/RW drive with a carrier to take the 1TB HDD which came out of the inside. It now boots much faster but bear in mind all my stuff runs Linux not M$. The DVD/RW is now in an external case which is USB in case I need it. The laptop in question has an Intel I5 processor so it is worth speeding up if possible.
Now I could get an SATA to IDE carrier for an M2 SSD but not sure how much of a performance gain that would be as I guess the IDE I/F would throttle the SSD. In addition I have not (yet) found a carrier to replace the DVD drive as it is IDE so right now I'd be stuck with the SSD as total storage. RAM is 8GB which is fine for Linux.
Has anyone any ideas please?
Stuart
Been mulling this over and the easy way is to use a readily available SATA to IDE HDD caddy to replace the DVD drive and put a normal 2.5in SSD in the caddy and leave the HDD where it is. Still begs the question how much will the IDE I?F throttle and SSD?
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I have a laptop which I find a tad sluggish and am looking for suggestions to speed it up, the issue is that it is not SATA but IDE.
Has anyone any ideas please?
Stuart
i dont know what IDE is. So, i cant comment :blush:
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Probably a complete waste of money, unless the IDE drive you're using is much slower than the interface.
Speed
The next step in IDE vs SATA is to work out the data transfer speeds. IDE (PATA) transfers data from the speeds of 5MB/sec up to 133MB/Sec (ATA100/133). SATA however data transfer speeds range from 150MB/sec to SATA II which doubles it to 300MB/sec.
Not mentioned above is Sata 3 is 600MB/sec.
Is there really any point putting a circa 500MB/sec SSD on a 133MB/Sec interface?
I've fitted SSD's to Sata 2 interfaces and haven't been able to notice much if any difference over the HDD it replaced, so the difference on IDE will probably be unnoticeable.
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I've done it on a 1999 Mitac laptop. Took ages to find an IDE to SATA adapter on ebay. Enough to say I noticed booting XP was a lot faster (bearing in mind this laptop was designed for Win 98). But in general it was not as snappy as a new laptop. Unfortunately I had a water leak and the laptop was water damaged so now the keyboard was damaged. It still boots but the BIOS portion of the boot sequence is slow I presume because of keyboard damage. I tried an external keyboard but a bit clunky. Even had wifi on the laptop.
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No particular suggestions for improvement, but shouldn't the first step be to try and identify the specific bottlenecks, then once the bottlenecks are known, address them?
Linux 'sar' can be useful, as can 'top', if run while the system is exhibiting poor performance - might point the finger at IO, memory or CPU. Or they might identify rogue processes that are hogging CPU, or leaking memory. But I'm not much of an expert nowadays, never really was, so read the man pages to find out what sar and top can tell you.
Hopefully our Linux gurus may be able to add to that advice, or even dismiss it. :-[
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i dont know what IDE is.
This link (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA#IDE_and_ATA-1) should help. ;)
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Probably a complete waste of money, unless the IDE drive you're using is much slower than the interface.
Not mentioned above is Sata 3 is 600MB/sec.
Is there really any point putting a circa 500MB/sec SSD on a 133MB/Sec interface?
I've fitted SSD's to Sata 2 interfaces and haven't been able to notice much if any difference over the HDD it replaced, so the difference on IDE will probably be unnoticeable.
I find that hard to believe, I went from a HDD to a CompactFlash card on my old Amiga 600 and even there the speed difference was obvious. Because the biggest improvement comes from the reduction in latency.
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I'm with Alex over the latency, my other laptop where I now have an SSD as the main drive was no slouch when it had an HDD but the difference now with the SSD it really noticeable and booting time is probably halved to the extent it's not worth hibernating it (which is a tad flaky) and the same is true of my desktop with an SSD booting is probably less than half although to be fair that has a new processor as well. I think my feelings about this older laptop which does not support UEFI is coloured by the performance of the desktop and SSD laptop, it is not that slow but I'd like it to boot faster and load programs faster - just a shame it's IDE and not SATA :( I am currently using it to test an alpha version of my distro which necessitates a lot of booting!
Stuart
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I don’t think you can evaluate a system’s ‘performance’ by measuring time to reboot. That is more a characteristic of OS design and in the case of Linux, down to the whim of the distribution packagers.
As example, my Unix iMac has blisteringly fast performance, but takes an eternity to complete a reboot, especially if following an untidy shutdown (Read “power cut“).
The reason for that is that MacOS apps save context while running so, upon reboot, it can reload every process in exactly the same state. I’d rather it skipped all that nonsense, but the slow start up is not the fault of the system hardware.
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The reason for that is that MacOS apps save context while running so, upon reboot, it can reload every process in exactly the same state. I’d rather it skipped all that nonsense, but the slow start up is not the fault of the system hardware.
Kinda like how Windows suspends the kernel rather than clean boots it. Much faster from HDD than not doing that, but it actually makes booting on SSD SLOWER than a clean boot.
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Kinda like how Windows suspends the kernel rather than clean boots it. Much faster from HDD than not doing that, but it actually makes booting on SSD SLOWER than a clean boot.
Not really, wake from RAM should be an awful lot faster than a cold start from a boot device, regardless of whether magnetic or SSD. Waking from a RAM image saved to disk would take longer, but not as long as cold start from disk followed by restoring saved context - which is what MacOS does, after a power cut. That’s when you might as well have a weekend away, to let it complete.
Wake from RAM, or from a disk image without context restoration, on MacOS iMac is, to all intents and purposes, instantaneous. There is no obvious reason it should not be. And that’s great, power cuts apart, I appreciate it every morning.
I’m not in a position comment on why Microsoft, or a Linux Distribution, might take longer to boot. But I’d Not automatically blame the hardware.
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Perhaps I'm spoilt by the NVME drive's I'm using that run at around 3000 - 5000 MB/s ;)
But seriously the two laptops I'm thinking off just felt slow, but perhaps they were faster than before, they should have been as they would be maxing out the SATA 2 interface, but they just didn't feel it in use. Both were/are Window's 10 machines.
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I think I should add some more background to my laptop use. Using suspend to ram is not an option as it uses battery power to maintain the data in ram and the laptops are not in use daily, in fact my wife's laptop gets used about once every 4-6 weeks so the battery will always be dead by the time it gets used, the laptop I do use but not daily and some times it might be several days between uses so again relying on battery is not a good idea and the one I am contemplating trying to update is the oldest and had not been used for about 9 months when I decided to test the alpha version on it so the battery was dead anyway. As I said they all run Linux and even the old one is quite OK once booted up although some applications are a little slow to load. The SSD where installed has speeded up boot up time considerably such that boot times for a full boot is now between 20-30 seconds and application loading is noticeably faster. Yes I have checked the boot processes and there are no significant bottlenecks or issues on the oldest laptop. Hibernation is an option for all PCs but it can be problematic in Linux more especially resuming from hibernation and when it fails a full boot is needed plus it is not significantly faster when using SATA SSDs.
The only option for this laptop to update it is going the SSD route and that is what I was attempting to quantify as I know that being PATA/IDE is not ideal, certainly latency will improve. Overall I am trying to decide it it is likely to be worth the outlay.
Stuart
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The only option for this laptop to update it is going the SSD route and that is what I was attempting to quantify as I know that being PATA/IDE is not ideal, certainly latency will improve. Overall I am trying to decide it it is likely to be worth the outlay.
Stuart
Certainly agree with the above. I suppose the risk here is whether you have an alternate use for the M2 SSD you'll need to buy if it doesn't turn out as planned, as the IDE-M2 part is cheap in comparison. The slow IDE interface will be a bottleneck but I reckon it'll still be very usable given the i5 and 8GB RAM.
:)
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What is the make and model of the laptop?
Thinking about it I would of thought that something with an i5 would have had a sata interface. Perhaps being a laptop the manufacturer just skimped on it.
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What is the make and model of the laptop?
Thinking about it I would of thought that something with an i5 would have had a sata interface. Perhaps being a laptop the manufacturer just skimped on it.
It's an ACER Aspire 5742 manufactured in 2011.
Stuart
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It's an ACER Aspire 5742 manufactured in 2011.
Stuart
I have an ACER Aspire 5738Z it has a newish SATA TOSHIBA HDWL110 1TB hard drive.
I run PCLinuxOS updated regularly.
You know you can press 'Esc' when booting to see if there are anything slowing boot down eg like a network card driver etc.
What OS do you use ?
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Currently it runs openSUSE Leap 15.3 alpha, and no there is nothing in the BIOS that is impacting stuff. The issue is that boot times are longer than I'd like and I know if it had SATA I would gain a lot by having an SSD more than just latency which I think will improve despite the PATA/IDE I/F. Using it as a test bed for this distro means a lot of booting and re-booting. Being an I5 it runs acceptably well once booted and programs loaded. Initially I had forgotten it was PATA/IDE.
Stuart
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It's an ACER Aspire 5742 manufactured in 2011.
Stuart
Ifixit clearly show it with a SATA HDD (https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Acer+Aspire+5742+Hard+Drive+Removal/12154), the optical drive also appears to be a SATA drive.
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I based my original comments on what I was being told by Linux which was PATA/IDE and not SATA.
I am completely flummoxed now...... I just opens the back cover of this laptop and pulled the HDD out and it is SATA :o :o Now have to boot it up again and see if I can find out why Linux thinks it is PATA/IDE :no:
Stuart
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I am pretty convinced I was misled by Linux and the program I used to list h/w. It could also be an issue with the alpha version of the distro. I know there is a problem with some of the repositories and that needs fixing before I do any more testing, however using the command line it does show the HDD and DVD/RW is indeed SATA. So now after Christmas I can do some updating. I guess it will be a toss up between and M2 SSD in an adapter of a normal HDD style package, I'm guessing I wont see much more performance from an M2 over the HDD style SSD.
Stuart
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SATA drives can operate in AHCI or IDE mode. This is set in the BIOS. AHCI is the preferred mode for an SSD.
Changing from IDE mode to AHCI mode with an already installed OS is probably not a good idea and may stop it from booting.
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Yes I was aware of that, not sure there is an option in the BIOS for that on this laptop, if it is set wrong the it's not a problem to re-insatll since it is a test system anyway and being Linux it is very straightforward.
Stuart
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It does appear to have a Sata 3 interface (https://www.mrmemory.co.uk/ssd-upgrades/acer/aspire-notebook/5742) as well, so should be a very nice upgrade.
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I'd be amazed if there wasn't an option somewhere in the BIOS to switch to AHCI.
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This laptop has a very basic BIOS but I must have missed it because the linux command line shows ahci as the driver being used.
Stuart