Considering buying an SSD, a few dumb questions

[CurseTheSky]

The X-25M is finally down to a "reasonable" price, and OCZ's Vertex series are tempting. I'm starting to get the itch, just like most of us hardware enthusiasts do.

Right now I'm using a 150 GB Raptor X for OS / games, and a 640 GB WD for storage. I only have about 60 GB free on the Raptor, but a lot of that is restore points (is there a setting to automatically delete them after a period of time?)

If I grab a 30 GB Vertex, I'm not going to have much room left after installing Vista. I've heard of others installing games and other applications on secondary hard drives - is it really that simple? Just specify a different drive to install it to, and Windows will recognize the rest? Additionally, is there a way to tell Vista where to store restore points instead of the OS drive? I'm a programmer and I've been working with computers for years, but I've only recently bothered putting a second hard drive in a computer for storage, so I've never put much thought into these things.

Finally, given that I may have all three drives available, how should I set them up? SSD for OS, Raptor for games and applications, and 640 GB for storage? Is the Raptor even going to be worth keeping in this computer, or should I use it elsewhere? Will I see an improvement on anything other than just boot time, or will games and applications theoretically start / load maps faster as well, since they'll be on their own drive?

Thanks.

 

[alcoholbob]

You need your applications and games on your SSD in order to derive the performance advantages.Data is being loaded to your RAM from the hard drive where the data resides.

Honestly I wouldn't get less than 120GB (2x60 or single 120) if you plan on installing a decent number of applications on it.

I picked up a Vertex which I should be getting today.

Currently all my stuff is on a WD 300GB Raptor, a WD 2TB, and a WD 74GB Raptor (just a torrenting drive). On my 300GB Raptor: I have a new install of Windows 7 Beta, some benchmark programs, MS Office, and my steam games (Crysis, Dawn of War 2, Empire Total War, Crysis, TF2, Counterstrike Source). That's IT. And it's used up 70GB. (with a 6GB pagefile included).

 

[CurseTheSky]

You have roughly the same amount installed as I do. I also like to have the flexibility of installing more without having to uninstall things that I'm currently using, though.

That's disappointing. Anything in the 120+ GB range is EXPENSIVE.

 

[ochadd]

From my experience
11GB = Windows and apps
11GB = 2nd Windows and apps
5GB = Linux Boot
15GB = GTA4 and future bloated games
5GB = Average game

I've always got 3-4 games installed at a given time and don't use any other massive software installs. A single 30GB drive is impossibly small these days. If you dual boot you will have nothing but operating systems on it. If you can't get your games on there you would have to be willing to drop $100+ just to boot faster and shave 5-20 seconds off of app load times. 60GB would be the absolute bare minimum my setup could work with and would likely get into trouble with that.

IMHO someone who does not have to read minimum system requirements is an enthusiast. We don't buy expensive parts to be forced to pick and chose the things we do with our rigs. I refuse to look at install sizes regardless of how much I drool over these SSDs. Hopefully before the end of the year a 120GB Vertex+ will be in raptor pricing territory.