Question 1

Can this product be used in a desktop rig or only a laptop or both?

Accepted Answer

The ARC100 can be used in both desktops or laptops. However if your desktop doesn't have a 2.5in drive bay you will need an adapter plate so it can be mounted in a 3.5in bay. I'll also throw in that this drive is Great it performs just as advertised.

Question 2

Does this product come with a cradle to mount it in a normal hard drive bay on a desktop computer?

Accepted Answer

in all honesty I don't remember if it did since it's been 7 months ago and the build that I used it for I put in a rosswill external usb hub with sd card reader.  I put the ssd drive in the hub and so far the person I built the tower for has no complaints to date.

Question 3

Can a solid state drive replace disk harddrive in a Toshiba satellite Laptop?

Accepted Answer

The short answer is yes. Replacement of your old drive will be the same as any other 2.5" drive. I've even taken images of spinning platter disks and placed that image on SSDs that replaced them making the transition quick and easy.

Question 4

Does this SSD come with a SATA III cable to connect to the motherboard?

Accepted Answer

Just comes alone in a lil'blue box. Order a cable also if you don't already have one. The ARC 100 is a nice solid ssd :)

Question 5

Will this work on a desktop?

Accepted Answer

Yes, I'm using mine as my boot drive in my Windows Home Server 2011 boot drive.  Keep in mind that desktop chassis do not have mounting positions for 2.5 inch hard drives.  Newegg sells 2.5 in to 3.5 inch adapters.  You mount this unit in the adapter, then the combo adapter/drive mount into a 3.5 inch hard point in your chassis.  
Ensure you have an open SATA port on the mother board to plug this unit into, doesn't come with a SATA cable so you'll need one of those as well.  Additionally you'll need a SATA style power connector to provide 5 volts for the drive.
One last thing, you'll need an available 3.5 inch mounting location in you chassis.  Good luck

Question 6

Does this ssd come with the 2.5 to 3.5 adpter ?

Accepted Answer

No when i purchased the SSD it simply came with just the SSD, luckily i had an adapter already on hand.

Question 7

I'm hesitant on buying an SSD, because my power goes out a lot. After doing some reading, it seems a lot of SSD's stop functioning properly. Does this one have any type of power protection?

Accepted Answer

Typically consumer grade SSDs do not have power loss write protection - just like HDD's.  If power is a problem you should really be using a UPS.  Drives aren't the only components that suffer.  Its amazing how a simple UPS will extend the life of almost all electronics that utilize AC power.

Question 8

Is this backwards compatible with 3gb transfer?

Accepted Answer

If you are talking about the SATA 2 interface speed of 3Gb/s, then yes it is compatible. It will just run at the speed of the SATA 2 interface.

Question 9

If I replace a SATA3 drive on a Windows 7 OEM system, will I have to re-activate my copy of Windows, and if so, will this be a problem?

Accepted Answer

It depends on how you get Win7 on the new drive.

If you do a fresh install of Win7 from your Win7 install disc, then yes you have to reactivate it. Its a new install. With a fresh OS you will have to reinstall all programs and drivers from scratch. Sometimes it may be useful to do a fresh install. Over time, Windows is prone to getting cluttered up and it may bog down with unneeded junk. A fresh install is way faster than a clone because you're running a fresh copy of Windows, no junk that has accumulated over the years. Thats the upside for a fresh install.

If you clone your OS from your old drive to the new drive you do not have to reactivate it. The cloned OS will contain all information. It'll be just like the OS on your old drive, except its been copied over to the new drive. All of your files and settings will be there fully intact. The advantage to cloning is that you're up and running quickly. No need to reinstall everything. All of your files and settings are just how you left them.

Question 10

Does this SSD controller support Device Sleep?

Accepted Answer

I dug into the specs of the controller more and this controller does NOT in fact support devsleep. Unless there was an update somewhere, but the first version certainly does not.

Questions & Answers