I have this laptop from like 2012 that I use a lot and I can even say it's my main Linux machine. It's got 8 Gb of RAM and a dedicated GPU so it's not bad but it has an HDD so slow it takes what seems to be 30-60 seconds to launch a web browser. I guess it's 5400 RPM. I want to finally buy an SSD for the machine.
However I noticed that all of the brand new ones that are available in my area are either SATA3 (for SATA) or PCIe 3/4 (for M.2). The laptop obviously supports none of these standards.
Will such an SSD work or do I have to search for a used one with an older standard (like SATA2)? Adapters might be a problem to get because I'm not a customer of marketplaces I can get them from so I'm afraid of getting scammed or just not figuring out the purchase procedure.
Well the reports I've seen said there were improvements. I have another machine from roughly the same era and its HDD performs much better (to the point I don't even want to upgrade it much) so I'd say the attempt is worth it.