[OLD MODEL] Crucial M500 240GB mSATA Internal Solid State Drive CT240M500SSD3

The Dell D420 was a workhorse laptop for many businesses. I don't think Dell has made as good a laptop since, but it has become aged and slower over the past few years and in need of a boost. The D420 has a native zif interface for the HDD, for which there are very few direct interface SSDs. However, there are several mSATA to zif adapter cards (sold on Amazon Micro SATA Cables - mSATA SSD to 40 Pin ZIF Adapter Card as Toshiba or Hitachi ZIF HDD and cheaper on Ebay if you can wait for the china shipment) that expand the selection of SSDs, making it easier to find a good deal on a drive. The msata card screws on top of the adapter and uses the same cable as the HDD. (In my case I purchased a new cable from ebay for a few bucks or here on amazon For DELL Latitude D420 D430 Hard Drive Connector Cable). The combination adapter and msata drive are considerably smaller than the original drive space, so it kinda floats in the rubber HDD pocket. I was worried about it bouncing around inside but it is so incredibly light it actually doesn't move very much nor make any sound. I may place a small foam spacer inside once I figure out how much heat it is producing so I can adjust accordingly. Start up is 30-40% faster, and performance is noticably faster, and the machine is quieter too.I would recommend installing the OS from scratch (I'm using Windows 7), ensuring you have the latest BIOS from dell (A06), rather than a clone of your old harddrive. Optimal data orgainzation may be slightly different on an SSD, plus you get rid of all the junk you don't need anymore. However if you have tons of software and keys that you can't find, you may be better off with the clone option (just wouldn't be my first choice).Overall very happy with this drive. I'm not sure why it didn't work for other people with D420, too bad for them. My guess would be putting the cable in backwards (even I did that my first try until I saw a picture of it done correctly) or not being on the most recent BIOS version. I have 3 other d420s that I will be upgrading soon, perhaps with the 240gb version if the price comes down again. I will update as needed.

If you're in the market for a consumer-grade SSD, in either mSATA or standard SATA, can't think of a reason to go with anything other than the Crucial M500 (unless you're looking at a small capacity drive, more on that in a moment). The benchmarks on these drives put them in the top of their class, and the price-per-gigabyte is about as good as it currently gets. Super fast read, super fast write (can't wait to get a second and put them in a raid0). My system boots in seconds, load times in games are a thing of the past.A note on capacity. SSDs are made of an array of NAND flash chips. These chips have been manufactured at increasingly high densities, meaning more data capacity per chip. Bigger chips mean more capacity BUT, this comes at the expense of performance in the smaller capacities. The controller that links these chips together and performs all the read/write operations on them has a given number of channels with which it can communicate with flash chips, and these channels work in parallel. Think of it like how a 2 lane highway can be crowded and slow, but if you expand to 4 lanes, traffic starts flowing faster. Same idea here. But, since a given product line is generally manufactured all using the same chips and the same controller, that means the low capacity drives have fewer channels to work with. Your best option is the drive that fully populates the controller's available lanes, which means bigger is faster, all other things being equal. With this model, I wouldn't especially recommend anything below the 240GB. If you want a small drive with good performance, find an older, cheaper model that used smaller flash chips. You may be able to get something with same capacity, better performance, and a lower price point. In other words, SSDs are complicated, do your homework.