Speeding up my Laptop

[michaelkenward]

I was wrong! Lol, it was the RAM Anyway, I took off the other panel and found the HDD, mounted with four screws to a bracket which is mounted by four screws to the chassis (two of them through the plastic cover panel). I've encountered a problem (I think), one of the chassis screws will not come out It just turns and turns either way! Is there something I'm missing?

I was about to warn you that that bit is the memory slot on my Vaio.

If the screw is "threadless" it might just fall out if you turn the thing upside down. (On top of a clear desk where you will be able to see it clearly!)

What size is the drive? (The physical dimensions.) On very small Vaios, like mine, it has a 1.8-inch drive rather than the standard 2.5 inch. I doubt it in your case, partly because of the capacity. But do check exactly which drive it is, what the dimensions are, and if you can find a comparable HDD to fit the slot. Even 2.5-inch drives come in different heights.

I have messed around with and built PCs ever since this became possible, more than 20 years ago. But laptops are very different. They are not put together with standard bits and pieces. The makers customise far more than for bigger PCs. That is why you will not find much in the way of bits to "build your own laptop" at Aria. Proceed with caution.

[Joshimitsu91]

I was about to warn you that that bit is the memory slot on my Vaio.

If the screw is "threadless" it might just fall out if you turn the thing upside down. (On top of a clear desk where you will be able to see it clearly!)

What size is the drive? (The physical dimensions.) On very small Vaios, like mine, it has a 1.8-inch drive rather than the standard 2.5 inch. I doubt it in your case, partly because of the capacity. But do check exactly which drive it is, what the dimensions are, and if you can find a comparable HDD to fit the slot. Even 2.5-inch drives come in different heights.

I have messed around with and built PCs ever since this became possible, more than 20 years ago. But laptops are very different. They are not put together with standard bits and pieces. The makers customise far more than for bigger PCs. That is why you will not find much in the way of bits to "build your own laptop" at Aria. Proceed with caution.

Thanks It looks to me to be a 2.5" drive, but I haven't taken it out yet to check the thickness of the drive or to placement of the SATA/power connections. I will probably take my SSD out of my PC and see if it fits in the laptop before I buy one anyway.

[Joshimitsu91]

Just wondering if anyone knows how much a laptop of this spec would be worth if I sold it on? It is in good condition, no bumps or scratches really. I'm not trying to sell it on here it's my brother is wanting to buy it from me for his college work, what price should I give him?

[BigIan88]

Price checks are'nt permitted buddy,

The best bet you have is to either list it on an auction site or local listings or simply wait it out until you have access to the trading post on the forums then sell it at a price you think is fair - if people think it isnt they will be more than vocal to let you know

[Joshimitsu91]

Thanks for the tip I wasn't aware of that My bad!

[ChewieUK]

I peronally don't recommend SSDs in single drive laptops. Constant writing/deleting of temp files and trimming will reduce the lifespan of the drive but there doesn't currently seem to be any data to indicate by how much (well, there wasn't when I was researching for my Agility3). Also, performance will degrade over time depending how much free space is left on the drive so filling 90GB of a 120GB SSD will cause more apparent speed loss than 90GB on a 240GB drive.
Before buying the SSD, go through Programs and Features and uninstall everything you won't be installing after the upgrade, and check how much space you'd be using. I'm currently using ~68GB on my system drive with all tempfiles, pagefile and user folder on a separate HDD.
For trimming to work properly you need to set the drive to AHCI mode in the BIOS. Without trim, performance will be limited; still faster than a HDD, but not as good as it could be. Currently, Windows7 is the only Windows OS that natively supports the trim command.
If you have installed Windows 7 with the drive mounted in IDE mode, you need to enable AHCI drivers before changing the mode in BIOS. Run the M$FixIt found in this article before changing the BIOS setting: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

If your Viao uses a recovery partition, as SniperDude says, it's best to clone that partition to one of the same size on the new drive and hit F10 to run it at boot.
Clonezilla (available on many live boot discs) is an easy to use program to accomplish this.
Whether you're installing an SSD or re-installing on your existing HDD, make sure to BACKUP EVERYTHING before you start so at least you can restore if it goes breasts-up. Clonezilla again.

Hope this is helpful, and good luck.