Installing an OCZ Vertex 2 SSD in an HP Mini 210
You may recall that I upgraded the RAM on my HP Mini 210 to its maximum 2GB back in March – a process that, thanks to the Mini being incredibly fussy with its memory took no less than three attempts in all.
Around a month ago I realised I wasn’t really using the Mini as much as I had thought I would when I first bought it, and after some thought I decided it was because the machine just wasn’t quick enough even with the RAM upgrade. Booting up and logging in took a few minutes and launching Firefox once I was in seemed to take just as long. This meant the machine wasn’t really the convenient there-when-you-need-it computer that I had intended for it to be. This was a shame because the machine itself is really nice – both aesthetically and ergonomically.
My initial attempt at working around the hardware’s limitations was to install Jolicloud, a Linux operating system that uses HTML5 apps to breathe life into older hardware with its modest system requirements. While Jolicloud was significantly faster to use than Windows, I wasn’t entirely happy with this solution as a) I actually really like Windows 7; and b) most of Jolicloud’s “apps” are actually just website bookmarks which to me just seems like cheating.
So, what I did was perhaps a little crazy – I ordered an OCZ Vertex 2 SSD from Scan. I already had a Vertex 3 in my desktop and a Vertex 2 in my laptop and had been incredibly impressed with them both – indeed, the Vertex 2 in my laptop had transformed the machine beyond recognition just a few months before.
The drive arrived a few days later and I quickly set about installing it. I had also ordered a USB3 caddy from eBay to turn the old drive into a portable HDD, and while Windows was installing again on the Mini I setup my new portable HDD as a portable development drive with all of my work mirrored on it from SVN.
Before taking out the original HDD I ran a benchmark which I also ran on the Vertex once the Mini was all set up. The results are quite amazing: with a linear read speed of just over 30MB/sec, a random read speed of just over 3MB/sec and an average access time of 8.74ms the original drive scored 3,637 points. The Vertex performed on an entirely different level with a linear read speed of nearly 134MB/sec, a random read speed of nearly 53MB/sec and an average access time of just 0.27ms to post a score of 495,793.
The Mini now feels like a different machine. It boots in seconds, logs in instantly and opens Firefox pretty much as soon as I’ve released the mouse button. I now use it all the time! According to Windows Experience Index, the bottleneck is now the CPU with a score of 2.4; the SSD has a score of 7.7 and everything else on the machine sits between 3 and 5. I can’t upgrade the CPU as it’s soldered to the motherboard, but to be honest there’s no need to – the Mini was intended as a convenient web browser and emailer, not a gaming rig, and it now does both of those tasks (and a few more besides) pretty much instantly so who cares if the balance of power is a little uneven inside?
The Vertex was perhaps overkill on a 1.6ghz single-core netbook like this, but what a difference it’s made! Also, I can always swap things around again if/when I get another machine in a few years as it’s not like the Vertex has been welded in or anything. Or at least that’s how I justify it to myself!
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