OK what should i spend my money on?

[Alloneword]

My set up is as follows:
Asus P5E3 Premium with a Q9550 @2.83Ghz
8GB RAM
ATI Radeon 6450 (Fanless)
Simple 5.1 Creative sound card
Adaptec 1430 controller
Asus U3S6
WD 640GB Black (OS C Drive)
WD 7500GB Black (OS D Drive)
3 x WD 1TB Black's
2 x Samsung 2TB
2 x 3TB Black's
500GB (ripped out of Sky box)
Corsair HX750
Fractal Design Define XL R2
Win 7 U x64

Now I'm no gamer as you can see I'm more interested in a quiet rig as it's just a foot or so from my ear, so investing a a better GPU is pointless for me.

Now i have about £300-£400 on some kind of upgrade and my thoughts were to go along the lines of 2 new SSD's for the OS.

The way i work my system is too have Win7x64 on both C & D drives but 99% of the time i boot into D drive and use that, however i have win7 on C drive in case something goes wrong with my D drive that way i can boot into C and get off what i need that i may not have backed up already, it's just a safety net for me.

So given my current C drive only has 50GB on it I was thinking a small 120GB would be fine and for my larger D drive which has 80GB on it now a larger 240GB would be fine.

Do you think given the money i have spending on the SSD's is the best bet? My HDD do tend to be my bottle necks from what i can see but I'm open to other suggestions, if you need any more info from me just ask.


All1

 

[kram2803]

SSD is pretty much essential nowadays at least for some people who wants that extra speed for OS and specially for particular software.

Is dual boot necessary?

So what kind of tasks do you usually do?

 

[Alloneword]

Is dual boot necessary?

It is for me my data is fairly important, I take an image every single day and back up important files/folders using an app that runs twice a day, it's just a case of i'd rather be safe then sorry, I know it's costs me more and makes things a bit more complicated but i'm very anal about my data

So what kind of tasks do you usually do?

The most demanding work on do on my system is video encoding which of course would warrant more investment in motherboard/CPU but I'm happy with the time it takes to do my encoding so decided not to go down that route.

All1

 

[kram2803]

It is for me my data is fairly important, I take an image every single day and back up important files/folders using an app that runs twice a day, it's just a case of i'd rather be safe then sorry, I know it's costs me more and makes things a bit more complicated but i'm very anal about my data

Are your drives on RAID? or have you tried running them on RAID?

The most demanding work on do on my system is video encoding which of course would warrant more investment in motherboard/CPU but I'm happy with the time it takes to do my encoding so decided not to go down that route.

All1

But wouldn't be best to get new motherboard and cpu if you're encoding as you need more power.

Or why not get a dedicated home server? You have plenty of drives to support it also it'd be safer for your files in case both of your OS suddenly fails.

 

[Alloneword]

Are your drives on RAID? or have you tried running them on RAID?

No they are not raided in way just simple setup.

Or why not get a dedicated home server? You have plenty of drives to support it also it'd be safer for your files in case both of your OS suddenly fails.

To be honest I must have a problem with my brain to some degree as i have never been able to get my head round networking/networks/servers/dns/firewalls/ip address etc etc, i'd love to be able to have all my media on some kind of server but it just escapes me and trust me i have tried to understand it.

All1

 

[hakank68]

SSD is pretty much essential nowadays at least for some people who wants that extra speed for OS and specially for particular software.

Is dual boot necessary?

So what kind of tasks do you usually do?

Agree, the first thing you should look at buying is an ssd

 

[Alloneword]

As i say the most demanding thing i do is video encoding so i thought about new motherboard and CPU/RAM but to be honest I'm fairly happy with the amount of time things take to encode, so put that on the back burner hence i was thinking SSD given both of you agree then i'll go down that route now, and place my order before the end of the week.

All1

 

[unleashed]

How much data do you have and do you have offsite backups?

 

[Alloneword]

How much data do you have and do you have offsite backups?

My daily x 2 back ups of files and folder is about 9GB each, my images are about 60GB each, and i upload to the cloud about once a month the 9GB set which is rarred (store) and par2 files made as well, so in total about 10GB goes up once a month.

All1

 

[unleashed]

My daily x 2 back ups of files and folder is about 9GB each, my images are about 60GB each, and i upload to the cloud about once a month the 9GB set which is rarred (store) and par2 files made as well, so in total about 10GB goes up once a month.

All1

Looks like you have effective backups so no need to spend there. Looks like a SSD would be a good choice if you have money to spare.

 

[FloydCaplee]

I think it is for me my data is fairly important, I take an image every single day and back up important files/folders using an app that runs twice a day. Thanks to all who join this discussion.