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SSD for OS drive only?

A

AgentCipher

Member
Hey guys,

I know that SSD drives have insanely high performance boosts over the traditional magnetic head drives, but compared to the cost per gigabyte of the magnetics, I can't justify getting a large SSD.

Because of this, I was wondering whether I should get a small-ish SSD (maybe 64 gigs) to launch my programs and my operating system, and get a 1 terabyte drive for my miscellaneous files, storage, and etc.

I'm basically curious to know if this will yield an increase in speeds, or if the occasional communication between drives will equate to a negligible net increase.
 
Most SSD performance is application loading. If all your apps are on your SSD ... they will load faster. How often do you access your storage/misc files? Probably not often. And music/movies won't play any faster off an SSD than a magnetic drive. The reason some people get larger SSDs (with the exception of having ridiculous amounts of games/apps) is because higher density SSDs tend to be a little faster. Get what you can afford.
 
depends on how cheap you go, many cheap ones had nice figures when empty, and with artificial read/writes where nothing was mixed. performace real world less impressive.
if you get an intel or such sure. os app launching will be fast.
 
I have a 30gb ssd ocz vertex for OS and a 1tb and 750gb drives for storage. I love it. A 64gb ssd would be great for the OS. Go for it, you won't regret it.
 
Originally posted by: AgentCipher

I'm basically curious to know if this will yield an increase in speeds, or if the occasional communication between drives will equate to a negligible net increase.
Click to expand...

This will definitely not be an issue. In fact, just the opposite: your computer will now be able to access program files and data files simultaneously instead of sequentially because it doesn't have to move the head around the drive. This is a good thing.

For the most part, it is only application loads that are significantly effected by your SSD; data files are typically so small that it isn't an issue, except for files like media files where playback time per byte is much larger than access time, so it's not an issue. For any user files that you really want to get snappy, you can allows move then onto your SSD (if they won't waste space) and create a shortcut from Users/You/Documents/YouGetMyPoint to it. Moving /Users from C: to D: (or E: or whatever) is easy, but google it to find out how.
 
I basically have this set-up with an 80GB intel g2 drive. The only thing that is slow is when I haven't used the computer in a while and am accessing something on the 1TB drive so it has to spin up, for instance when I am video editing and all the project's media files are on the 1TB drive. Even though the video editor app is on the SSD it is slowed by the spinning up time of the 1TB. This is very minor though and I wholeheartedly recommend this set-up!
 
That's the only thing I'd get an SSD for now. An OCZ Agility 64GB for OS, apps and games, and a quiet as it gets Samsung F2 EcoGreen HD502HI single platter 500GB 5400RPM drive for storage. Well actually I have enough storage as it is so I don't need a new storage drive 😛
 
Originally posted by: OILFIELDTRASH
I have a 30gb ssd ocz vertex for OS and a 1tb and 750gb drives for storage. I love it. A 64gb ssd would be great for the OS. Go for it, you won't regret it.
Click to expand...

I have this setup too, but with the 60gb vertex. Much faster than any other hard drive I have had.
 
Originally posted by: OILFIELDTRASH
I have a 30gb ssd ocz vertex for OS and a 1tb and 750gb drives for storage. I love it. A 64gb ssd would be great for the OS. Go for it, you won't regret it.
Click to expand...

30 gigs must be a tight fight for an OS partition + apps.
 
80GB should definitely provide plenty of space for an OS and apps. You could even go so far as to buy a 300GB VelociRaptor to store temporary stuff on as well. Actually, for the price you'd spend on a VelociRaptor, you could probably just buy another SSD.

I currently have a 300GB VelociRaptor, and 2 1tb drives that I'll use in conjunction with an SSD once I get one.
 
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