A few weeks ago I saw a a good deal on a 80gb Solid State Disk (SSD) from Dane Elec at NewEgg (officially “DANE-ELEC DA-SDM25-80G-N-T-MK 1.8″ with 2.5″ adapter SSD Migration Kit”).

The unit is actually an Intel X18-M SSD in a 1.8″ to 2.5″ SATA adapter.

It only cost $149, so I got one.

I had high hopes for improved disk performance and faster startup & shutdown.

Well, my hopes were dashed.

There were two problems encountered …

1. While the unit LOOKED like it would fit fine in a standard 2.5″ SATA drive bay, it didn’t.   Whenever I installed it into my laptop it was quite loose.   And the SATA connectors never locked into the laptop.   I couldn’t get the laptop to even recognize the drive was installed.
2. I underestimated my storage requirements … my current drive is 160gb, divided up between Windows 7 & Ubuntu Linux.   I thought the Ubuntu partition was a lot larger than it really is.   I was planning on moving the Ubuntu partition to another drive (to go in the modular bay), but 80gb was not large enough to hold all my data.

Initially I thought problem 1 might have been a manufacturing defect … so I tried to arrange a replacement return with NewEgg.   They gave me an RMA, but they apparently didn’t have enough in stock, so they just issued a refund.

I still like the idea of getting a SSD for my laptop, as I suspect I’m going to have to keep it for a while (until I find a new laptop that I like).