Would you run a pc on SSD only?

Once upon a time computers had very little physical memory but programmers wanted to write programs (you youngsters call them apps) that could access large data sets and have multiple ones running concurrently. A job of the operating system was to provide essentially limitless "virtual" memory. This is organised as "pages" and when a program is no longer accessing a part of the data it can be swapped (copied) out to disk so the memory can be used by another program.

However, when it is needed again the program will stall until it can be read back from disk. If you have lots of Windows programs open and wake one up sometimes you can see this disk activity.

So why on earth would you spend so much on a super fast SSD and not actually use it to speed up your PC (by either trying to shrink the pagefile or placing it on a slower disk). Are we frightened of writing to the SSD? If it's going to "wear out" so quickly then why buy such expensive things?

Many myths do seem to get propagated and repeated. Instead read: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx
 
In general wear limits won't be reached before even some of the slower upgraders replace the SSD, although due to the amount of ram I have I don't have a pagefile active any way.
 
Not until the bigger SSD drives have become cheaper and longer lasting.

Not enough space to store my files and programs on :)
 
ussff said:
Thanks for the link - good solid facts :cool:
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For those that haven't clicked:
Windows 7’s default behavior is to operate efficiently on SSDs without requiring any customer intervention

Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?
Yes. Most pagefile operations are small random reads or larger sequential writes, both of which are types of operations that SSDs handle well.
In fact, given typical pagefile reference patterns and the favorable performance characteristics SSDs have on those patterns, there are few files better than the pagefile to place on an SSD.

Are there any concerns regarding the Hibernate file and SSDs?
No, hiberfile.sys is written to and read from sequentially and in large chunks, and thus can be placed on either HDDs or SSDs.
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http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx
 
Just leave pagefile on, I've left it on for mine (although shrunk from 16gb to 4gb) and I still have 8 years left on it, which is more than enough time until I upgrade to a bigger SSD. Might as well take advantage of the speed, recent SSDs have very good garbage collection, so it won't affect the life that much.

Only thing I disabled is hibernation, it takes a good chunk of space...
 
AllBodies said:
Why would you do it that way around when the m4 is faster for game reads?
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Ease of use really. I can just install all my games on 1 drive and keep everything else on another.

They are both SSD's afterall. In realistic terms between the two I would imagine loading times are within a second or 2 of each other, and a MASSIVE improvement over a mechanical drive.
 
Since making the switch, and investing in a good nas I could do without the mechanical drive in my pc right now. I probably won't replace it if it dies. My NAS takes care of storage and the ssd everything else. Happy days.
 
Chris_83 said:
Ease of use really. I can just install all my games on 1 drive and keep everything else on another.

They are both SSD's afterall. In realistic terms between the two I would imagine loading times are within a second or 2 of each other, and a MASSIVE improvement over a mechanical drive.
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Yes this is true. And if all you have on the other is games then that does make sense yeah.
 
Yeah I plan to purchase a 120GB SSD and with the purchase of a new NAS, I'll pretty much be fine. I'll store the hundreds of GB of media on the NAS, stream over Gigabit and for everything else like games it can just sit on the SSD, I don't have many games anyway.
 
This is def. the optimum architecture. Some people will swear blind they need 512GB++ of SSD and others only 30GB. A possible reason to go for 256GB instead if you can find one on offer at cheaper than twice a 128GB is that often they seem to bench better than the 128GB models.
 
SSD only is optimal IMO because although I run my OS from SSD I still get occasional lag from the mechanical storage drives.

Biggest problem of course is the size of SSD, although things are improving with 250GB now becoming affordable.
 
Chris_83 said:
At the end of the day it depends how much space you really use
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This.
I have large amounts of photo/video data which eats up the Gbz so I have the M4 as the boot with a 1Tb HDD for documents. Also got my older 60Gb Agility 3 for steam/games which I'm playing now with a 500Gb HDD for other games. The mechanical drives shut off after 10 minutes of inactivity so noise isn't really an issue for me there.

But would I run my PC with only SSDs? If I could then absolutely! :D
 
Now that I hve the windforce GTX670, my PC is very quiet and I can really hear the mechanical drives. If I didn't need the 1TB space, I would seriously consider getting a 256GB SSD.
 
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