So I've seen recommended many times that while a standard mechanical drive is plenty fast for recording video streams, that an SSD will improve responsiveness in things like menus, mediabrowser, media libraries, etc.
All of my HTPCs have the OS on a mechanical drive. Some of the ones with older drives seem to be pretty sluggish in the menu, especially when updating guide data or sorting through large media libraries. So I thought about getting SSDs for them, but then I thought - why should I have to? Most of my HTPCs have 6-8GB of ram. They typically only use about 1-1.5 GB. That leaves 5+ GB to store any kind of library and a good amount of TV buffer in RAM. These HTPCs do nothing but WMC so no other programs going on in the background.
I know windows is supposed to pre-fetch frequently used data into RAM, but then why is the interface sluggish, and why is that helped with an SSD? Is there any way to force windows to prefetch more data and fill up the ram?
I've seen some people claim to try to put the guide data on a ramdisk, but I've never seen anyone really document the procedure or report results.
An SSD wouldn't be the worst purchase in the world but with 6 HTPCs in service over 3 houses, finding a solution without buying SSDs if there is one would be great.
All of my HTPCs have the OS on a mechanical drive. Some of the ones with older drives seem to be pretty sluggish in the menu, especially when updating guide data or sorting through large media libraries. So I thought about getting SSDs for them, but then I thought - why should I have to? Most of my HTPCs have 6-8GB of ram. They typically only use about 1-1.5 GB. That leaves 5+ GB to store any kind of library and a good amount of TV buffer in RAM. These HTPCs do nothing but WMC so no other programs going on in the background.
I know windows is supposed to pre-fetch frequently used data into RAM, but then why is the interface sluggish, and why is that helped with an SSD? Is there any way to force windows to prefetch more data and fill up the ram?
I've seen some people claim to try to put the guide data on a ramdisk, but I've never seen anyone really document the procedure or report results.
An SSD wouldn't be the worst purchase in the world but with 6 HTPCs in service over 3 houses, finding a solution without buying SSDs if there is one would be great.