SSD for Win XP based TriCaster (I know)

[hotpocket800]

So i know this question has been beaten around the bush a lot but i want it settled once and for all. Here goes:

 

At my school, we do broadcasting of a daily show for school events, football games, etc. using a tricaster (model number idk).

It runs windows xp and is sooooo slow with a ??GB SATA HDD (probably 5200rpm).

 

Heres the thing: this baby is very expensive and cant be replaced due to our interfaces (controllers, XLR connectors) that we dont want to have to throw away.

 

Long story short, we want to keep our tricaster, but do minor maintenece (upgrade ram/and add an ssd)

 

I already know about turning off defrag scheduling and using 3rd party trim scheduling, but:

 

QUESTIONS:

1. What else would i need to do to make an SSD compatible?

2. Does any particular ssd play nice with XP?

[Godlygamer23]

You will need a program to run the Trim command because Windows XP doesn't support SSDs and therefore doesn't support Trim.

[Goodman2265]

Ive seen videos with SSD's with Windows XP, by the looks of it any SSD should be fine

[hotpocket800]

kk. but i mean besides trim scheduling, do i need to worry about anything else?

[Godlygamer23]

kk. but i mean besides trim scheduling, do i need to worry about anything else?

I don't think so.

[Curufinwe_wins]

kk. but i mean besides trim scheduling, do i need to worry about anything else?

Your mobo may be sata gen 2 only which would limit the ssd to 370 or so MB/s. It's still ok, but you shouldn't worry about super fast ssds.

[brwainer]

I haven't used a Tricaster since High School, and ours had Vista on it, but as long as the SSD is larger than the existing HDD and you make sure to clone it exactly (I mean so that it still boots up, some clone methods require you to run the "Repair Installation" tool from a windows install disk in order to fix the bootloader) then I don't see a problem. You might also see if the SSD manufacturer has software available for XP to manage the garbage collection / TRIM for you. If not I wouldn't worry too much about TRIM as long as you get a newer SSD from one of the major brands - they all have steady state (i.e. Without TRIM) performance that will still be much better than a HDD. And also an SSD without TRIM mainly slows down in write speed, not read speed.

Bonus option: once you get the Tricaster working from the SSD, see if there is space inside to mount a second drive, or get a USB enclosure for the old hard drive. But make sure to erase the hard drive, as I'm not sure what the boot order on a tricaster is - it might have USB set before the internal disk.