I have a Samsung laptop, about 4 or 5 years old. It has a 2 1/2" sata hard drive

Is it possible to just buy an ssd drive and put it in? Will it work in this computer?

Yes you can purchase a new SSD and install it in your laptop. Most SSD's work right out of the box.

Is the 2 1/2" sata hard drive that's still in place; still working?

I have heard several Linux podcasters report that they have replaced the stock HDD with SSD drives. I think that the sizes of hard drive bays have become pretty much standardized. You would need to proceed carefully and make sure that SSD drive you have selected is compatible.

These articles may help:
http://www.ocsmag.com/2016/04/30/usi...ives-on-linux/
http://www.seagate.com/do-more/upgra...ssd-master-dm/

Thanks!
Yes the old drive is still working. It's just, a friend bought a new Samsung laptop with an ssd drive. It starts Windoze 10 in about 10 seconds! Ok, it has newer processors and so, but that is fast! I thought maybe I would try an ssd in this old laptop, see how fast Ubuntu starts.

Any particular brand to recommend? I'm looking at this one:

1 members found this post helpful.

You're Welcome.

The one your looking at looks good.

I stick with Toshiba but you don't have to.

The top 3 SSD drives are here. Looks like Toshiba, Crucial and the new Samsung SSD 850 pro sounds nice too but expensive.
https://www.cnet.com/topics/storage/...d-storage/ssd/
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-ssds,3891.html

Ubuntu on an SSD will probably boot really fast.

Hi,
Most 'SSD' can direct replace a 'HDD' as long as the interfaces are equivalent. You state a SATA but at what speed? Please provide the Samsung Laptop model number. If the 'HDD' height has a large 2 1/2 footprint then you might need to use a shim with the 'SSD'.

For future post composition I suggest that you look at; http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...#faq_lqwelcome

And; How to Ask Questions the Smart Way so you can compose a thorough informational post.

If you do a LQ Search for your topic of 'SSD' replacement of 'HDD' you will find many threads with this topic.

EDIT: I purchase my 'SSD' from Newegg at a great sale price. Look here for comparisons http://promotions.newegg.com/NEemail...50aWVyLmNvbQ==

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!

You don't want MSATA. YOu want a 2.5" SATA drive. The mSATA would require an adapter to directly replace a traditional hard drive.

And yes, they do drastically speed up booting/shutdown. My oldest system I have (Latitude E5430, 4 generations old laptop with 5 generations old processor) boots in 12-14 seconds, shuts down in 4 after replacing the traditional hard drive with a SSD.

When you buy a new SSD also consider HOW you're going to transfer the image from the old disk to the new one. In general it will be a bit of a pain in the rear if your SSD is of smaller capacity then your current drive.

You may also find that a USB to SATA cable will be handy as ideally you'll want to directly copy from one to the other.

I'd personally recommend booting and using Clonezilla to clone from the source to the new SSD.

If you've a large enough external hard-disk then you could also use Clonezilla to clone from the source drive to the external drive, then put the new SSD in, reboot with Clonezilla and then "restore" from the external drive to the new SSD. (I did this yesterday when I upgraded my laptop from a 128Gb SSD to a new Sandisk 480Gb SSD)

There's a bunch of other things to consider when you've the new drive, such as how to make use of any additional space that's available on it. Depending on what file system you're using already this may be as easy as using the free space as part of LVM or you may need to re-partition your drive and extend the existing file system accordingly.

It should fit and function just fine. Your laptop will likely improve battery life too. Now keeping your windows install on the new "hardware" might be difficult since microsoft likes to harass their customers (durn pirates). But it should function just fine. As long as the size and connectors and stuff line up. Some laptops have odd sizes like 1.8" drives, but it's mostly standardized these days.

I fairly recently swapped the spinny drive in my cheapo (well, not as cheap as it ought to be but that's a long story) Centrino-based laptop and now it's silent and boots very quickly. I bought a 140GB SSD for about £75 and I'm seriously considering buying another one for my bigger laptop and, even, for more /home storage on my desktop -- I don't actually recall the make of SSD I bought but I don't think it much matters given how incredibly fast, silent and convenient they are. (A look at my Amazon history tells me it's a Sandisk 240GB and now costs a few pound more.)

See if the OEM offered a ssd option. If so then you could be more assured it will work correctly. Every once in a while you get a ssd that doesn't work well with older stuff. Yours should be new enough.