SSD drives - system or data?

[ry ry]

Yo. I bought a small 120g sata3 sandisk SSD drive a minute ago (because they're p.cheap) with the intention of using it as a system partition, however i was talking to some colleagues and they were all using theirs as their 'media' (games, music, porn) partitions because they were noticing better performance doing it that way around, verses what i assume will be the extreme anal pain of moving the windows install across in exchange for faster boot times and a nippy page file.

More specifically, will putting Eve on it give me any performance increase on session change or whatever?

all this stuff is pretty much greek to me, and you lot probably know a bit about this stuff - what is the best way to go here?

[Stoffl]

Your colleagues are either retarded or filthy rich.
I'm rooting for the former.

Use ssd for system and like eve or other games where loading times are crucial.

tappin dat talk

[ry ry]

apart from boot times, will i see any performance uptick in general use just from having windows on the ssd?

[Zekk Pacus]

Yes and no. System is more 'responsive' which sounds like the world's greatest kool-aid but it's true. A 120GB SSD is more than enough for games and Windows, I have Win7 and 5/6 big games on mine at any one time with about 25GB free. Just keep all your media on a traditional HD, sounds like your colleagues sniff all the glue.

[Stoffl]

what zekk said.

tappin dat talk

[Cosmin]

What I would do is buy 2-4 120GB SSDs and RAID 0 them all for a partition that would contain the OS, main used programs (be it Office stuff or Photoshop) and some games that greatly benefit those speeds. For instance, I was told the grid loads faster for instance in Eve when using a SSD and it certainly seems so in busy market hubs.

This, of course, is a solution for desktop computers or laptop computers that can equip 2-3 SSDs and it's actually cheaper when using the right drives than a bigger SSD in the first place. Also, because of the way the capacities are mentioned by the producers (as in 128GB being 119GB when formatted), it would yield a slightly higher storage space in the end.


To answer the OP, you should cram on the SSD the OS (mandatory) and any programs that would benefit the speeds and still fit the SSD. Also install SSDLife to see how the drive is doing and whether TRIM is activated or not the easy way. Any media is bound to stay on a HDD.

[Ruri]

If the drives are cheap as you say, why not get two and use the second for data and program storage?

Also I don't know what Zekk's definition of "big game" is but I have several installs that are over 20GB, trying to keep them on a 120GB drive with Win7 would be madness.

[ry ry]

they're not cheap cheap dude, it still costs more than a packet of crisps.

spending ~£270 on 4 SSD drives seems a bit steep to make eve session changes a bit smoother.

[Pattern]

£270 for 4 SSDs?

Link?

[ry ry]

http://www.ebuyer.com/370160-sandisk...dssdx-120g-g25

except i clearly can't count, it's £13 more than that for 4.

you could go for this http://www.ebuyer.com/288065-sandisk...dssdh-120g-g25 which is cheaper but is like half the speed (sataII).

[Pattern]

400-500gb for ±£290.

Pretty cheap IMO.

[Bombcrater]

I'm going to disagree with Cosmin here. Raiding modern SSDs is a waste of time, it doesn't improve responsiveness much at all. Going from very fast disk performance to very, very fast generally doesn't make a huge impact for a typical desktop mix of apps and games.

256GB drives can be had for about £125 now. Just get one of those and whack Windows and as many apps as will fit on to it, leaving videos, music, etc, on the hard drive.

[Rudolf Miller]

I gotta say, that flood that knocked HDD manufacturing off course sure had some lovely implications for the SSD market.

Fucking loving these prices.

[Cool09]

Why even put media on the SSD, its not like you change songs or movies every second. You click play, maybe wait 1/2 a second, then it plays. It's not like it is going to play any faster....

"Sweet man, I can watch movies twice as fast now!" wut

[Stoffl]

they're not cheap cheap dude, it still costs more than a packet of crisps.

spending ~£270 on 4 SSD drives seems a bit steep to make eve session changes a bit smoother.

Yeah just ignore that. LOL 4 ssds in raid. He's either trolling or Lord Neckbeard Beardneck, Duke of Neckbeardshire.


Im using a 120GB Vertex II as Win7 System drive, also gaemz.

[Zekk Pacus]

If the drives are cheap as you say, why not get two and use the second for data and program storage?

Also I don't know what Zekk's definition of "big game" is but I have several installs that are over 20GB, trying to keep them on a 120GB drive with Win7 would be madness.

What's actually on my SSD at the moment, gamewise:

Fallout 3
Mass Effect 3
Team Fortress 2
Counter-Strike: Source
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
League Of Legends
Dota 2
Civilization V
Football Manager 2012

Currently have 17.9GB free. To be honest I'm looking to add a 240GB drive as secondary program storage. Also ry, http://www.stefanjones.ca/steam/ is your friend, allows you to move Steam games back and forth between drives.

[Mashie Saldana]

What I would do is buy 2-4 120GB SSDs and RAID 0 them all for a partition that would contain the OS, main used programs (be it Office stuff or Photoshop) and some games that greatly benefit those speeds. For instance, I was told the grid loads faster for instance in Eve when using a SSD and it certainly seems so in busy market hubs.

Very bad idea, you have no TRIM support when the SSDs are running RAID so they will get quite a bit slower over time. Also I'm not entierly sure why you would need 2GB/s transfer speed instead of the usual 500MB/s.

[dpidcoe]

This, of course, is a solution for desktop computers or laptop computers that can equip 2-3 SSDs and it's actually cheaper when using the right drives than a bigger SSD in the first place. Also, because of the way the capacities are mentioned by the producers (as in 128GB being 119GB when formatted), it would yield a slightly higher storage space in the end.

Wait, are you implying that its the formatting that causes drives to be smaller than advertised, rather than the way that the sleazebags in marketing redefined what a gigabyte is?

[Verizana]

Very bad idea, you have no TRIM support when the SSDs are running RAID

For the record this is wrong. TRIM supports raid.

[Waagaa]

SSD = OS / Apps / Games, because those benefit most from random access performance.
Also, if you code, put your source code on there..

RAIDing 550 MB/sec SSDs won't give you much of a real life gain in performance, because you simply don't need that raw throughput when doing random accessy stuff..