[aab1]

I know someone that wants to speed up his old laptop that has no SATA. Is there any such thing as an IDE SSD drive? If so that's the easiest solution.

Otherwise, he told me he'd be willing to have the SSD externally by USB, but could it be the bootable system drive if it's external? I did explain his laptop would not boot without the drive connected and he's ok with that. I did verify that his system has USB 2.0 so it will be a dramatic improvement in speed if he can boot from an external SSD drive.

The laptop is a Thinkpad T30 if that matters.

Thanks

 

[aab1]

IDE SSDs seem very hard to find and seem more expensive than SATA SSDs. Would the laptop be able to boot from an external USB SSD?

 

[aab1]

I just realized his laptop has XP and not enough RAM for Windows 7.

Is it worth putting an SSD without having TRIM support? I read it will degrade faster, but how much faster?

Thanks

 

[aab1]

So should I tell him there's no hope of speeding up his laptop and he should get a new laptop instead?

He wanted to spend up to $100 to upgrade it.

Or could I find 1 GB RAM (making his laptop Windows 7 compatible) + an SSD for around $100 and would that be worth it?