Dumb ???'s 1st SSD on HTPC

[mikeford]

I am about to rework or build a new HTPC, it will run Win7 I think ultimate 64, so far I've been using media center, and utorrent, Chrome, and very light gaming with all mail and normal PC activity on a different system.

Samsung 840 120GB, 2x 2TB WD Red in a AMD SB700 raid mirror, and 3x 2TB Seagate "former" raid drives stored offline and only connected for periodic backup, combined with backing up to DVD or maybe BluRay when it gets cheaper.

Will it extend the life the 840 to keep it as empty as possible, or can I fill it up 90%?

How much effort should I put into reducing writes to the 840?

Should I try to put the paging swap file on the raid?

Should I max the ram and maybe create a small ram disk so I can spin down the raid drives and avoid writes to the 840?

 

[groberts101]

I would seriously only worry about going to all that trouble if you want the drive to last for MUCH more than 5 years.

But.. just keep in mind that the system you have it in will likely be replaced by another faster hand-me-down by then.. not to mention we'll probably be on sata 16G and that drive will be considered an old antique as well. lol

PS. if you have extra ram?.. use it for the swap as it will be fastest there. Second best would be to keep it on the SSD. HDD based swaps would be considered only as a last resort in my book.