Contents of an SSD

[RandL]

I reviewed several threads on this subject. Many of them are 2002-2005 vintage and others focus on size or speed. I will be building a Trading computer and needed to be FAST for data acquisition (particularly when the market is moving fast). This has locked-up my current machine twice.

I thought to get a 128GB SSD and load Windows 7 64 bit AND all my Programs in it but got a recommendation as follows:

"I'd just put the OS on the SSD... Put your apps on a hard drive..That way you can read and write to both the hard drive and the SSD at the same time..
You don't want a queue to be forming for data requests anywhere.. SSDs are fast at random access, but they're not so hot at sequential access compared to a modern 7200RPM hard drive... You don't want your OS read commands to be delayed by application read commands..
Since applications reference shared libraries (DLLs in your Windows folder).. When they start up, they'll be pulling tons of data from their application folder and also tons of data from your OS in shared libs.. If you break that up to put your OS on one drive and your apps on another you can get the combined read performance of BOTH... If you put both your apps and your OS on the SSD.. Then there will be a bit of a queue as the applications will be loading both the shared Windows libs and their data files from the same drive.. The SSD might be great at that kind of random access, but you're still creating a bit of a potential bottleneck there that you can eliminate by using a hard drive in addition to the SSD."
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Any thoughts on the above recommendation?

A Second Question: Since my data contents are pretty much leveled off at 20GB. Would I benefit my having a second SSD just for data and forgo of the Hard Disk?

I need help in order to size my SSD and load it with the items that will help the machine's performance, as data loads show up.

 

[Cerb]

Newer SSDs leave HDDs far behind in sequential and random transfer. There is no need to get a HDD, unless you need more storage space for a given cost.

Intel 320 and Crucial M4 are both easy choices (I'm assuming you'll be doing many small reads and writes): fairly low write amplification, pretty good performance when not given idle time for GC, and good track records of actual use, including bug fixes (SSD controllers are a fast-moving technology right now, so by using one, you may have the occasional early adopter issue, and no high performance SSDs have been 100% problem free for 100% of users).

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...iews/45718-crucial-m4-256gb-ssd-review-6.html
Here's a review with tests that also compares against a Velociraptor.
1. The Velicraptor is still faster than most mechanical HDDs.
2. Notice that they can almost all handle >300MB/s (3Gbps SATA) peak sequential transfer. Intel's 320 series maxes out at 3Gbps, but that's still fast.
3. Notice how the 4k (generally worst-case random access) tests with a high queue depth (32QD) are just mindbogglingly fast compared to the rather speedy mechanical drive.
4. 512k (not a worst-case scenario for HDDs) is still much higher than the speedy WD HDD.

For Windows 7, make sure to turn AHCI on before you boot the disc, and partition and format the disc from the installer (that way, NCQ gets turned on by default, and you'll get an aligned partition).