Replacing a Toshiba Satellite A100 Hard Drive with an SSD

This is a step by step on how to replace the internal hard drive of a Toshiba Satellite A100-376 with a stock off the shelf SATA SSD drive. In my case I chose a Kingston 240GB ssdNOW V300 that is in the sub 100€ price point. But if you shop around you might be able to get the SSD even cheaper.

Here we go: 5 steps to install an SSD.

1 – Prepare the windows partition by cleanig it and defraging the Hard drive using your preferred tools.

2 – Clone it using the Clonezilla Live CD (great little tool)

The Toshiba Satellite A100 is an old machine, but still very capable, and most important it is VERY EASY TO UPGRADE. You just remove the screws, pull the tab and the hard drive is disconnected. Perfect.

3 – Remove the Hard Drive

4 – Install the SSD

5 – Reboot.

If you only use Windows, then check the Disk Management to format the extended space for extra space.

If using other OSes (like… Linux maybe) then use the gparted live cd to resize partitions so you can use the entire disk.

In my case I’m using Linux Mint along side a windows partition (YES, WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED?). After resizing I could not boot because grub could not find the partitions (DAMN MACHINES). THIS MEANS I had to boot from the original Mint Live CD and reinstall grub following the instructions on the Mint community website!

sudo mount /dev/sdXY /mnt
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sdX

In my case X was “a” and Y was “6”, replace your according to your drive… be warned. Use fdisk -l to find out.

and after rebooting into my Mint I just entered into the terminal

sudo update-grub

to be sure that Mint it was! With SSD prices coming down, there’s no reason to still be using the old hard drives.

SSD – When will the prices come down?

The price per Gig of SSD Drives is too high. I was reading about the performance gains of the MacBook / Pros reported by Macworld and couldn’t stop thinking why haven’t SSD thrown the old spinning HD to the history shelves? Usually when a new technology is so much better the the old one it just replaces the old one. Look at CDs and K7s for example, or MP3 based players vs CDs and vs Mini Disks. So, why aren’t SSD totally replacing HDs in computers? Are the prices being kept artificially high so companies can milk early adopters?

Uma tarde de Upgrades ao Macbook.

O que vou descrever pode envolver algumas actividades ilegais e portanto façam-nas se não tiverem problemas com a legalidade da coisa no país onde vivem.

O que motivou a efectuar o seguinte foi verificar a possibilidade e a facilidade com que os donos de um Macbook podem fazer um upgrade ao seu computador sem terem que recorrer ao serviço de terceiros. Para além do mais é um excelente projecto de fim de semana.

Como sabem tenho um MacBook CoreDuo de primeira geração com o Tiger 10.4.11, 2Gb de Ram e um disco de 60Gb… Seria bom conseguir fazer um upgrade a isto… talvez meter-lhe o Leopard e se possível mexer no disco que é manifestamente insuficiente. Mas pus-me a pensar se seria possível fazer isto sem gastar mais dinheiro.

Primeiro problema – Leopard. Não o comprei, mas o Macbook Pro que encomendei a semana passada já traz o 10.5.2 – Será que é possível utilizar os discos de instalação do MBP para colocar o Leopard no Macbook?

Experimentei e Não dá! Os discos são específicos para um tipo de Hardware e não funcionam noutra linha de macs…

Não desisti e pus-me a pensar! E se…

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