Separate SSD and HD or a hybrid drive?

[JEDI]

for my next Win7 desktop, I want a faster bootup.

a small SSD (32gig?) for just win7 + pagefile, and a separate hd
or
hybrid drive?

 

[corkyg]

I use a Samsung 356GB 830 Pro as boot drive and a Seagate 320GB hybrid for data. Works fine. Before the SSD, I used the hybrid as boot drive and a WDC Scorpio black as data. It is now a backup drive. Current bootup is very fast.

 

[aigomorla]

u will not be able to do much on a 32gig ssd.

Infact, you'll be near maximum cap on the SSD that you will degrade the performance on it greatly as SSD's like to stay no more then 70% full.

i wouldnt even consider looking at a SSD lower then 120GB.... unless u know exactly what your gonna do with storage space.

 

[JEDI]

u will not be able to do much on a 32gig ssd.

Infact, you'll be near maximum cap on the SSD that you will degrade the performance on it greatly as SSD's like to stay no more then 70% full.

i wouldnt even consider looking at a SSD lower then 120GB.... unless u know exactly what your gonna do with storage space.

the 32gig ssd is just for win7 and swap file.
programs and data on regular hd

or should I just get a hybrid drive?

 

[Essence_of_War]

Infact, you'll be near maximum cap on the SSD that you will degrade the performance on it greatly as SSD's like to stay no more then 70% full.

i wouldnt even consider looking at a SSD lower then 120GB

This. :thumbsup:

32 GB SSD is just too small. 64GB might be ok for just OS and page file. But the combination of price/GB, overall price, and performance, are just so much better in the 120->256 GB range. I'd go with something in that range and you'll be able to have all of your non-game applications on the SSD as well. Boot will be fast, and overall performance will be greatly improved.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Get the 120/128GB ssd. Having office apps and web browser on ssd is too wonderful.

 

[mfenn]

If you can't afford more than a 32GB SSD, just save up until you can get at least ~128GB one IMHO. Tiny SSDs are slow to begin with, and get slower as you fill them up. Additionally, there isn't much of a market for them, so they don't get the newer controllers for the most part.

 

[Cerb]

for my next Win7 desktop, I want a faster bootup.

a small SSD (32gig?) for just win7 + pagefile, and a separate hd
or
hybrid drive?

As flash gets smaller, it gets denser, and so the chips being made have a higher minimum capacity. The result? Smaller drives have fewer chips, and fewer dies per chip, so they can't speed things up as much by spreading the accesses across the dies. On top of that, you'll reach 100% full steady state really quickly, and be stuck micromanaging your files on the SSD.

Still faster than a HDD, yes, but you should just spend a bit more and get a 120-256GB SSD, instead. In fact, going with Windows 8, you could get near-SSD boot speeds with an HDD (basically halfway implementing hibernate).

Unless you're using it just for SRT (which you aren't), go for 120GB+.

Hybrid drives should stay in notebooks. They don't offer the advantages of caching with more user info, like SRT and ExpressCache have, and only the upcoming WD does anything more than putting small random accesses on a tiny slow single flash package.

 

[Charlie98]

I wouldnt even consider looking at a SSD lower then 120GB....

You speaketh the truth!

The 80% rule is true as well... I had my 64GB Agility3 at about 75% and it really hit the slow lane. I wiped it and put it in my HTPC... it's at 50% now and runs like it should. Don't compromise with a small SSD... it's not worth it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I made the "mistake" of buying five 30GB OCZ Agility drives for my first SSDs. I had planned on setting up two identical RAID-0 arrays on two P35 / ICH9R boards. But soon discovered that without TRIM, in a week's time, the performance of the array had degraded below that of a single drive.

So much for that idea.

So I was running them as single drives. Win7 64-bit will install, leaving about 2GB or less space, after the hibernate and pagefile on a 8GB system.

They are faster than a HDD, but not by as huge an amount as you might think.

I bought two 60GB Adata drives, and four 50GB Vertex 2 refurbs, for use as boot drives. I wouldn't go less than 50-60GB for a boot drive. For only one drive in the system, 120GB as the minimum, but prefer 240GB or larger, if you can afford it.