OK, first post, please be kind.
I have an old Pentium M Dell. Rather than toss it, I replaced XP with Mint 18.3 MATE 32 bit (19.3, didn't work, for whatever reason). I was able to reclaim a bunch of HD space that was partitioned off for some reason, and it works, pretty great. Not a dual boot, just erased XP and installed Mint on a single partition (as far as I know).
I thought, only thing that would be better, would be if I could put in an SSD, but PATA drives are too scarce and expensive for that machine.
So for 20 bucks I picked up a used Dell Precision m4300. Has some weird BIOS stuff where I'm continually having to clear the security password but otherwise cleaned up OK (dead CMOS battery?) Has a HD running Windows 10, coreDuo, and some kind of old NVIDIA card which I have not had the chance to trip over the drivers for yet.
What I wish to do, is replace that HD with a brand new out of the box SSD, copy nothing, install Mint and have it work just as great, only faster.
Spent $25 on a Crucial BX500 120gb SSD. Put it in the SATA slot expecting to install from USB boot, but drive was not seen. So I used a USB to SATA adapter to partition and initialize using Acronis on a Windows computer. But installing it in the SATA HD slot and booting Mint from USB, I still cannot get it to recognize. Which means I cannot install Mint (or I thought I might try out Fedora) on it.
Micron (Crucial) customer service chat says, "We do NOT support Linux".
So it is going back.
My question then, what SSD vendors best support Linux? I do NOT need much storage, decidedly shopping the <$30 120gb zone. Just want it to install and work with a minimum of fuss as the only drive in this laptop. No multiple partitions, nothing fancy.
Would love some specific rec's on makers and models. Kingston, PNY, ADATA seem to be among the options for small capacity internal SSD's that I'm seeing. Any of them easy and reliable? I have seen love for Crucial too, not out of the question to just get a dud drive, happened with a Samsung on my Mac years ago.
Also, any guaranteed way to get the darn thing to recognize and install?
Many thanks!
(Sent from my ancient Dell running Mint 18.3 and Opera)
I have an old Pentium M Dell. Rather than toss it, I replaced XP with Mint 18.3 MATE 32 bit (19.3, didn't work, for whatever reason). I was able to reclaim a bunch of HD space that was partitioned off for some reason, and it works, pretty great. Not a dual boot, just erased XP and installed Mint on a single partition (as far as I know).
I thought, only thing that would be better, would be if I could put in an SSD, but PATA drives are too scarce and expensive for that machine.
So for 20 bucks I picked up a used Dell Precision m4300. Has some weird BIOS stuff where I'm continually having to clear the security password but otherwise cleaned up OK (dead CMOS battery?) Has a HD running Windows 10, coreDuo, and some kind of old NVIDIA card which I have not had the chance to trip over the drivers for yet.
What I wish to do, is replace that HD with a brand new out of the box SSD, copy nothing, install Mint and have it work just as great, only faster.
Spent $25 on a Crucial BX500 120gb SSD. Put it in the SATA slot expecting to install from USB boot, but drive was not seen. So I used a USB to SATA adapter to partition and initialize using Acronis on a Windows computer. But installing it in the SATA HD slot and booting Mint from USB, I still cannot get it to recognize. Which means I cannot install Mint (or I thought I might try out Fedora) on it.
Micron (Crucial) customer service chat says, "We do NOT support Linux".
So it is going back.
My question then, what SSD vendors best support Linux? I do NOT need much storage, decidedly shopping the <$30 120gb zone. Just want it to install and work with a minimum of fuss as the only drive in this laptop. No multiple partitions, nothing fancy.
Would love some specific rec's on makers and models. Kingston, PNY, ADATA seem to be among the options for small capacity internal SSD's that I'm seeing. Any of them easy and reliable? I have seen love for Crucial too, not out of the question to just get a dud drive, happened with a Samsung on my Mac years ago.
Also, any guaranteed way to get the darn thing to recognize and install?
Many thanks!
(Sent from my ancient Dell running Mint 18.3 and Opera)