Cant justify price of SSD is a WD VR a good compromise?

413x

413x

413x

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ive been booting from a seagate 1.5tb 7200.11 w7 64bit and it seems pretty slow!

in looking for a way to speed things up i looked at SSDs, but the capacity i need is just too expensive to justify!

so ive gone with a WD VR 10'000 RPM 300GB HDD

how much performance increase can i expect to see, and is it a worth while upgrade?
 
The VR is a very good boot drive but an SSD offers noticibly superior performance. If capacity is an issue you can run a large storage drive alongside an SSD without any issues, which is what many of us do. You are saving a little by going for the VR but for a few quid more I'd have gone for the SSD. Having said that I used a VR as an OS drive myself for some time and was very happy with it. I still use it to ease some of the write activity to the SSD, so pagefile, PS scratch disk, internet downloads, etc all reside on the VR.
 
The two technologies don't really compare. A velociraptor will be a little faster than a regular hard drive, but nothing like the switch to a good SSD (particularly for OS use).

How much space do you really need for the OS and appliations? Would 64 or 128Gb be enough? Obviously you wouldn't use the SSD for storage as that would be a complete waste its potential.
 
Ziggy4 said:
You are saving a little by going for the VR but for a few quid more I'd have gone for the SSD. Having said that I used a VR as an OS drive myself for some time and was very happy with it. I still use it to ease some of the write activity to the SSD, so pagefile, PS scratch disk, internet downloads, etc all reside on the VR.
Click to expand...

Same here..
 
the smallest i could justify is 64gb and 128 would be preferable, but i dont think the pricce is right as yet, so will use the VR for now and go SSD when they come down, they are getting on for £200 at the 128 capacity too much
 
Do you really need all that capacity for a boot drive? I realise everyone's usage differs but I would say I make heavy use of the OS volume in terms of applications and my current space usage is just under 20 GB. The 300 GB VR costs around £180 which is only slightly less than an 80 GB Intel SSD. Almost of all of the 64 GB SSDs cost less!

You already own a good large capacity storage drive which means you are unlikely to run out of space. I'm not saying the VR is a bad drive. Hell, I love my own but it was bought before the days of mainstream SSD availability, and in terms of performance my Intel SSDs wipe the floor with it. I immediately noticed a significant step up in performance when I switched to SSD and you don't need any bechmarking tools to prove the case. The system is so much more responsive and apps launch in the blink of an eye.

The VR is a very good mechanical drive and arguably the best single drive option for an OS volume but it is relatively expensive, especially compared to the current selection of 64 / 80 GB SSDs.
 
al4x said:
i got the VR for £100 with 3 yrs warranty, thats way cheaper than a 80GB SSD
Click to expand...
Sure it's not the 150 GB model? The 300 GB that you mentioned in the OP is nearly £200. Also it should have a 5 year warranty from WD as standard since it is an enterprise class drive. I have heard tales of people finding 'cheap' Raptors and Velociraptors online only to be sent some knockoff clone so be wary if that is the case.
 
al4x said:
i got the VR for £100 with 3 yrs warranty, thats way cheaper than a 80GB SSD
Click to expand...

80GB Intel G2 is less than twice the price, and anything you put on it will be at LEAST twice as fast to load, then theres the access times to consider which makes the system hundreds of times more responsive especially when you've got multiple apps running.
Then you throw in the fact that they are silent and VR's are noisy as hell.

The only downside is space, and it doesn't take much organisation to only keep the apps and games you are currently playing on the SSD and move old stuff onto your bulk storage drive.
 
I bought a cheapo Intel 40gb ssd and used it for games and apps. Installed Win7 photoshop and a few games with 5gb to spare. Just store all my stuff on a 1tb F1 drive. Its the way to go.

When I have more money I'll just RAID0 another one for extra speed. Why not do this? even cheaper than a raptor which is old tech.
 
I agonised over it for ages but snapped and bought a 64Gb Kingston SSD earlier this week.
I'm so glad I did as the difference is amazing. It is so noticeably faster in almost all operations that when I go back to anything with a mechanical drive it is painful!

Seriously, get a small SSD for your OS and maybe a couple of favourite games/apps and dump the rest on a second har drive.
It's a relatively big investment, but the benefits are real.
 
been off for a few days

the 300GB WD VR is genuine, [checked serial number and warranty on WD site, all legit] havent migrated over yet tho

the 40gb is def too small, i would be constantly removing/adding stuff, the kingston does appear the cheapest but im guessing it wont be long before these are at £100 for 128gb
 
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