Dell Inspiron 1521

I read somewhere that it may be possible with certain cards depending on whether or not the card uses PCI or USB data lines.

What I had read is someone used a 500 gig card, but I don't remember where I read it and googling doesn't seem to bring up the website I read it on.

Maybe I read what I saw wrong.

Don't really need to do it, but figured it would be an easy way to get extra storage.

Since that question has been answered I have another.

Is the optional bluetooth module (mine doesn't have it) capable of sending music to a bluetooth receiver and if so will the audio be high quality?

Hi jmcinvale,

Dell Inspiron 1521 system cannot be configured with mSATA card. 

Get a SSD that's 2.5" and not mSATA as mSATA is not compatible with this system.

I was thinking of that, but I don't want a SSD as my main drive quite yet.

The system won't take any other type of SSD than a 2.5" one - and since there's just one bay inside, the hard drive needs to be replaced to upgrade to an SSD.

The answer to the bluetooth question depends on the bluetooth card you have (or purchase).

The whole point on have a SSD is to install Windows on it so it boots faster and in general performs better. One other option is to convert your optical drive into a HDD bay for your HDD and put the 2.5" SSD in the original bay. The original bay being faster and hence better for the SSD and better for the boot drive.

The bluetooth card would be the one that connects to the small connector on the top side of the laptop under the cover that has the power and media buttons on it unless I can get a better bluetooth card that will fit in one of the free slots near the WI-FI card.

The main reason I don't want a SSD right now is I've heard they have a limited number of read/write cycles.

The read/write limitation is inherent to flash memory -- just as susceptibility to heat and shock are the downsides of conventional hard drive.  SSD manufacturers currently warrant their drives for as long or longer than hard drive manufactuers -- so, you have nothing to worry about for 3-5 years either way -- and 3-5 years is far beyond the useful lifetime of the 1521.

SSD technology appears headed toward direct PCIe connections and newer formats such as NGFF -- I wouldn't even count on using a 2015 SSD in a new system a year or two down the road.

Oh ok.

I just can't see using a SSD when it most likely will not last as long as a regular hard drive.

I have a 13 year old Windows XP system where I replaced the original working hard drives about a year or two ago in order to get more storage and make it faster given the original drives used the IDE interface.

13 years is amazing life for a drive.  You're lucky to get 3-5 out of today's high-capacity mobile drives.

And anything over 5 is on very borrowed time.

Regardless whether you buy a mechanical HDD or a SSD you should always be prepared for it to fail. Backing up data on multiple drives and cloud storage is recommended.

If you install a SSD into your system and then install Windows 10 you will get a significant boost in system performance.

I guess it helps that the drives were in a desktop system.

I already have Windows 10 technical preview installed on a hard drive I removed from an HP Windows 7 laptop with a bad motherboard.

For now I install the windows 10 hard drive once a day to check for updates and play around with it a bit.

So far I like Windows 10.

I am thinking of upgrading the processor in this Dell with this one 2.3Ghz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-66 Dual-Core CPU Processor

then I'll upgrade to 4 gigs of RAM and I should be all set for Windows 10. Windows 10 works fine now, but I always like to have a computer's performance maxed out whenever possible.

This laptop along with some other computer stuff including the 7 laptop and three XP systems was given to me for free by my uncle.

The initial problem was it wouldn't boot and needed Vista reinstalled. Found a bad memory module. Lo and behold in the computer stuff I got were two 1 gig memory modules of the same manufacturer that fit this laptop.

I installed one at first, but then remembered best performance comes with matched memory so I installed the other one as well.

Had to replace the battery as well so I found a 9 cell battery pack on Amazon.

Will need to eventually replace the screen hinges as there is some back and forth play in the screen, but it don't really bother me at the moment.

So far I have been well pleased with this laptop and for what I use it for (mostly internet stuff) it does quite well.

Main reason foe getting this going is my XP system has been really slow the last few months for no reason. So what I've done is relegated the XP system to more of a server type role with all my important folders on the desktop shared on the network. I then created shortcuts on the laptop to those folders.

I did download a program called Dell Inspiron/Latitude/Precision fan control which gives me full control of the fan speed and what temperatures the fan goes from slow to fast. Helps to keep the laptop cooler which is a very good thing.