AAO 120GB HDD possible to upgrade to SSD?

Hi, I finally got my AAO put back together and up and running, now I did not experience ANY problem at all. No stuttering, no nothing. Vista seems to boot up in just under 25 sec at cold boot (timed it right at the point I press the button, which includes all the slow POST and stuff.) Everything seems to be very fast. I also ran ATTO benchmark. I got unbelievable results. Although small files the SSD did lack behind but it is a known issue with them. With 64kb plus on ATTO I was able to achieve what OCZ claimed. I ran the test side by side with my Raptor and it was way above what the raptor could perform. Now I really don't know what the issue is but I'll show the steps here. BTW, using a external DVD ROM seems to solve a lot of issue over using a Flash to install, not sure for the reason but lots of user reported that.

Steps:
1. vLited my Vista Ultimate x86.
2. Integrated SP1.
3. Removed ALL but Intel Matrix drivers (for the SATA controller, I don't like to comment too much on other things I removed because its on the user)
4. DO remove superfetch, defrag, and a few other useless things. Compiled SP1 Vista Ultimate at 1.45GB
5. Implemented Intels latest Mobile 945GME Express Chipset driver (You can find one on their site that's zipped. Just install both HDMI and the regular graphic driver)
6. Implemented Realtek LAN driver (available at realtek.com) and atheros WLAN driver (use XP version thats provided by Acer)
7. I did not do a unattended for personal reasons...
8. Updated BIOS to 0.3114 (Latest official driver)
9. Poped disc in and started installing.
10. NOTE: SCREEN will go BLANK at the "complete installation" process. Just hang tight and sit still. It'll restart and everything will be fine. Booted up and first thing I did was remove pagefile. Restart, and deleted pagefile.sys.
11. Installed all the updates.
12. I also disabled blinking screen issues that all the laptops have. Its within task scheduler and its a schedule called TMM.

Up until now. No bad effects at all. Shut down takes merely 5-10 seconds. Very happy. I hope this helped out some of you guys. One thing to note. The Core SSD I got did come with a USB slot when they said only the v2 does. So perhaps I could have goten a prototype from a batch of their newer SSDs. Not sure on that.

 

After that postive note I think I will reimage mine... I have enjoyed the lower temps quite a bit. Made me def want to stick with the SSD even if there was no performance gain.

Note: Some of the V1 Core series are being shipped with the USB port. See the OCZ user forums for more information. They have posted multiple times about this change.

 

One thing to take note is I've already updated the BIOS to the newer version (released yesterday) Directly accessible from acerpanam.com (NA acer support site). The current and most satisfying version of vLite is actually a version with SP1 integrated and very minor mods. I found that if there are things removed from the beginning it messes up how windows update work (eg. some updates will not update properly)

IMPORTANT: DO NOT UPDATE ATHEROS WLAN DRIVER WITH WINDOWS UPDATE. USE THE VERSION PROVIDED FOR XP FROM ACER'S SITE. WU'S VERSION WILL CAUSE STUTTERING. STUTTERING IS CAUSED BY MOMENTS OF DISCONNECTIONS.

I also did not slipstream intel's GPU driver because if I did it will cause it to ask me for permission to start everytime i restarted. I find slipstreaming the sd card reader, wlan, and lan without a problem. I did remove some apps that are pretty standalone. So far have no issue with WU, and it runs very quickly. I did however manually disabled defrag, offline files, superfetch, pagefile, system restore, hibernation, and also TMM(the thing that makes ur screen blink everytime you start up). I wouldn't recommend removing those permanently because it somehow seems to cause windows to have issue updating itself. Hope that helps. =)

 

This thread seems to have the best information on swapping a hard drive in a Aspire One with an SSD drive. However, this thread has been quiet for awhile. Can anyone that has swapped their hard drive with an SSD give us a general update? I have been reading all the forums referenced such as anandtech and Tom's Hardware. I am debating about getting an Aspire One with a hard drive and replacing the hard drive with an SSD. I am just not sure how feasible it is right now to do that.

 

Hi, it's been quiet because not many seems to be interested in doing it, but personally I've done it on my AAO and i'm satisfied with it. However, I'd probably be interested to know how long it'd take for Vista to boot on the regular 120GB. Now, on performance spec, my AAO boots Vista within 35 sec (From moment I press power button), and shuts down in less then 15. I did find a few downside to using SSD though. SSD wear level increases if you have pagefile enabled, which means the computer is constantly writing in the same area of the SSD. Therefore, you'll have to turn it off in order to have your SSD to be long lasting. The downside to this is because the limitation of 1GB addition to the onboard 512MB, running without any pagefile means a major slowdown when you have more programs running. (Actually, it will impact anti-virus software a LOT which is my main concern, but running multiple software will have the same impact) Therefore, I actually bought a 4GB SDHC and formated that 4GB with NTFS and allocated all 4GB to ReadyBoost, that way there is atleast something like a pagefile for the system to dump temporary files or processed thread into that. Installing the SSD was no problem because there isn't any physical modding required, however, it is very troublesome to set up your windows so it runs it smoothly. Hope that clears some stuff up for you, cheers.

P.S. My SSD on benchmark softwares shows the expected performance (Read and Write are both at listed specification of the SSD), however, without a HDD version of the AAO and the same OS running I can't really compare the result, but it does do the job well atleast. I also added a heatsink on top of the northbridge and have AAO running fanless. It does not generate ANY noise at all during use. (The bluetooth I added recently does though)

 

Interesting thread: users 'updating' from a 120GB HDD to a SSD (didn't check capacity).

Shock resistance aside, I was under the impression Windows performed very poorly in SSD drives due to it's many writings to the disk, and due to SSD's slow write speeds: thus the reason why Acer bothered to put a HDD in the Windows version of the AA1.

How do you compare performance in both types of storage devices?

Thanks.
Joe.

 

I won't be able to tell you at this moment the difference in speed in SSD and a regular magnetic, but I have another AAO shipping my way so I'll be able to test them side by side, I'm going to install the full verison of vista on the HDD while my SSD is on a slipstreamed version that removed all the unnecessary things for SSD to perform better. The reason why Acer put in a HDD for their XP version is because their so called SSD is just almost like a bunch of thumb drive put together... Got a pathetic low read/write speed on them. My SSD performs much much better against those and they are very comparable to regular HDD. I'll keep you guys updated as soon as I have my HDD version here.

 

A real SSD as sold by the major companies such as sandisk, samsung, etc are not limited-write devices. In fact, they have been tested to write many millions of times so they can be used in a regular HDD application with a "normal" operating system. The SSD in the One is a simplified, cheap version of these high end SSDs and as such is poor performing and maybe not as robust. The solid state drives to avoid using with pagefile are CF, USB, and SD.

 

Just a bump for this. I recently bought an aao with the 160 hd as it was going cheap but I think a reasonable ssd would really be the best drive for this type of netbook. Swapping to one of the better ssds that are out now sounds a good idea but they are expensive so far. How are the people who have done this getting on with them now they have been using them for a while?