Upgrading a VAIO TXN15P to SSD

I have a Sony VAIO TX series laptop that I bought in 2005 and has served me so well, I decided to upgrage the stock Toshiba 80GB 4200 RPM hard drive (that might be coming close to the end of its service life) with one of the new solid-state drives.

The 32GB Mtron South Korean drive comes in a ZIF interface version which is required for the TXN15P and can now be obtained for less than $300. The faster load times and lower power requirements are certainly attractive features of an SSD but Mtron's reportedly 140 year service life at 50GB data transfer per day makes the possibility of keeping this computer for the rest of my service life a real possibility.

The 1.8" PATA Mtron SSD drive is called MOBI 3000

It comes in a plastic case wrapped in an anti-static plastic sleeve.

Installation is very easy. The VAIO is opened by first removing the battery and 9 screws from the laptop's bottom. Next, remove the keyboard by gently prying down the top edge of the keyboard to free it from the upper case cover. Disconnect the keyboard's flat connector and remove the remaining screw that holds the top and bottom case halves.

The Case should easily separate at this point. Two more flat ribbon connectors are next removed.
The larger one requires a locking bar to be rotated to unlock the cable.
The upper case half should now be lifted up and laid against the screen.

The Toshiba hard drive is retained beneath a metal frame that is freed by removing four screws.
The ZIF connector is a pressure-fitting for the ribbon cable that can be gently removed by pulling the cable out of the ZIF socket. Open the SDD envelope taking static discharge precautions. Fortuantely there are no exposed circuitry like larger 2.5 and 3.5" drives. Insert the flat ribbon cable into the SSD's ZIF connector until firmly seated and place the four black rubber shock mounts to the four corners of the drive. Place the drive into the space previously occupied by the HDD as shown here:

Then screw down the metal frame to complete the installation. Return all ribbon cables to the respective connectors, re-install the keyboard and screw down the upper and lower halves of the case with the 9 screws. Insert the battery, turn the laptop on and go into setup.

You should see that the "Hard Disk Drive" now reports 32GB.
Use the VAIO Recovery DVD to reinstall Windows XP and you're finished!

Performance:

Bootup time is dramatically improved. I'm up to desktop in about 15 seconds provided the WIFI is turned off and Windows is not trying to install an update, which you'll get a lot in the first couple days after a new install. Adding a bunch of extra fonts will add to boot up time considerably.

Opening Windows Explorer to view drive contents is instantaneous.
Opening applications is amazingly fast. Office Word 2003 was taking 12-15 seconds to come up with the HDD, now it's in less than 3 seconds.

The biggest drawback with the SSD was dealing with over a 50% cut in disk space. Going from 80GB to 32GB is tough, but fortunately the TXN15 has an SD slot that can take advantage of the new 16GB chips that are now available for less than $30. I've got four such chips which hold data files (Word .doc, .txt, databases, VB project source files, etc) that give me 48GB on line and another 48GB on hold that can be swapped in as I need them.

I converted an old PCMCI memory card into a holder to conveniently store 3 SD cards right in the laptop!