A perception exists that you can’t use an SSD with Windows XP. Although it is true that Windows XP was not designed for SSDs and did not specifically support them, that doesn’t mean you can’t use them together. In this blog post, I will talk about the pros and cons of using an SSD with Windows XP.
Pros and cons of Windows XP on SSD
I used an SSD with Windows XP for several years. My daily driver PC during most of the XP era was a Compaq Evo with only 40 pin parallel IDE. I purchased a SATA to IDE adapter and installed a 40 GB OCZ Vertex drive and I was very happy with the result.
You can still get those adapters to use in older PCs, but for a Windows XP build today, I really recommend a third generation i5 or i7 based system. These were the last Intel processors that supported Windows XP, so large businesses bought them in huge quantities.
The caveat with these machines is that Windows XP did not ship with drivers for the SATA controllers these systems use. You can use EZ2boot to build USB media for XP with the drivers it needs to install on SATA.
The major concern today with Windows XP and SSDs is hardware support. You have to get Windows working with the SATA controllers in most cases, and the other potential issue is BIOS support for the drive sizes. Pentium 4 era hardware may not necessarily support modern SSD capacities, but those don’t make ideal Windows XP systems anyway. If you do want to use a system that old, stay with a 120 GB SSD or smaller.
Why Windows XP wasn’t recommended for SSDs and what has changed
The major reason people cautioned against using SSDs with Windows XP was because XP lacked support for TRIM. This meant the speed of the SSDs would decrease with use.
I never noticed much of a problem. Part of that maybe because of the way I used my system at the time, but similar conditions will exist today. You aren’t building a Windows XP PC to act as your daily driver. You won’t be going online with it. That means your web browser won’t be writing millions of files into its cache directories. You also won’t be receiving security updates, so you won’t have that source of write operations either.
You will create a small number of incidental files as part of your day today use of the system, but the amount of data you are creating and modifying will be relatively small.
As long as you align the SSD, the number of write operations will be low enough to mitigate the necessity of TRIM. And the speed and reliability will be much greater than anything a conventional spinning disk can deliver.
Granted, the SSD may cost more than the computer you install it in, especially if you opt for a one or two terabyte drive, but I will argue it is worthwhile. Older generations of PCs all had their day when nobody wanted them and they were essentially e-waste, but their price jumped as people became nostalgic for them. Even if it takes a little more work up front to get the SSD working, it will make your Windows XP PC much more enjoyable to use. It will boot much faster, your games will load faster, levels will load faster, and saves and restores will be much faster.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.