Replacing laptop HD with SSD...any caveats?

[airmotive]

So I'm planning on updating the Fujitsu laptop from Vista to 7 (free upgrade I never used), and I figured I might as well replace the HD with a 120G SSD.

I've been looking around....

Some SSDs are marketed specifically for laptops, others not....even though they're the same physical size. Is there anything special about a "laptop" SSD as opposed to a plain old "internal" SSD? Or is it just marketing?

Also, this laptop has a feature that detects if the computer is falling and will park the hard drive arm to prevent damage if the computer is dropped. Will this cause problems if I install an SSD? The 'drop detection' is pretty sensitive and will park the hard drive if, say, I'm using my computer on a plane and we hit some moderate turbulence.

Any experiences?

[stooxie]

I would get the best one you can find for the money and not worry about it being "laptop specific." I have never heard of that.

I have placed SSDs in laptops and they've all worked. The KEY is Googling the darn thing first to see how many hits you get on firmware problems or problems with your target OS.

Other than that, as long as the form factor (2.5") and interface (SATA 1.5, 3.0, 6.0) is correct or higher you should be fine.

The drive can and will ignore any requests to park heads or things that don't have any equiv on the SSD side.

Welcome to a new world, brother. SSD is a one way ticket to glory.

-Stooxie

[g29andy]

Just did this with a Dell Latitude e4300. I went with a Samsung 128 GB SATA II from Newegg, since my mobo doesn't support SATA III. I had to change the SATA setting in BIOS to AHCI. Did a clean install of Win 7 on the SSD.

Even though it's not a SATA III drive, it's still noticeably faster than the HD it came with. Programs launch faster, bootup much faster.

Haven't had it long enough to have a problem.

[stooxie]

Even though it's not a SATA III drive, it's still noticeably faster than the HD it came with. Programs launch faster, bootup much faster.

Haven't had it long enough to have a problem.

I agree, having the fastest interface is, imho, not the top priority. The true, true benefit to the SSD is the 10X faster access time and that will be there regardless of having a 3Gb or 6Gb interface.

-Stooxie