Any reason to go for a HDD over a SSD when i only need 60gb of space?

Woody_FX · 27 Feb 2012 at 09:21

Hi guys,

I'm putting together a system to install Win7 and 1 game (Guild Wars 2).
No music, videos etc etc.

I wont need much space, so I am considering buying a SSD (60gb) and running everything off of that. Hopefully it will be quick boot up times and generally good performance in game when I need to load sections/levels/maps.

So given that I don't need much disc space, is there any reason I should not got for a SSD?

And can you please recommend me a good SSD to go with some Z68 mobo, that's not going to be too expensive. In or abouts £50 would be a sweet spot.

Any gernal advice/warnings would be very welcome.

Thanks,
Brian

Ben Cole · 27 Feb 2012 at 10:28

The only reason in my mind is cost.

djxput · 27 Feb 2012 at 10:31

Ben Cole said:
The only reason in my mind is cost.

Was going to say the same thing - and a slight lean toward reliability - Ive been able to pull off data off failed HDs before but havnt heard much in terms of doing that with a SSD.

Woody_FX · 27 Feb 2012 at 10:34

What is the power consumption and heat like off an SSD?

ThomBassmonkey · 27 Feb 2012 at 10:45

I'd imagine power and heat would be less as there's no moving parts.

Also worth remembering that there's less noise with an SSD.

As for what SSD to get, I got the M4 which a lot of people recommend on here and I've had no problems with it. The firmware update took 2 minutes and had no issues either. Everything installed and ran perfectly straight off the bat.

durbs · 27 Feb 2012 at 11:20

Yeah, power draw, heat and noise is reduced pretty drastically. So if you only need 60GB then there is no reason whatsoever to go for a HDD. The 60 gig SSD's are cheap these days. Reliability wise, you'll take full backups and have a warrantly so wouldn't worry.

I went for a 64GB M4 as a Z68 cache drive and its been no bother at all so would recommend that.

Elric · 27 Feb 2012 at 11:30

if you're going Z68, get the 60GB SSD and something like a 500GB HDD and make use of the SRT Cache. Best of both worlds.

Just using a 60GB drive for Win7 will run out of space pretty quickly. If you dont want to have the two drives, and just want the SSD, get a larger SSD instead.

Woody_FX · 27 Feb 2012 at 11:31

durbs said:
I went for a 64GB M4 as a Z68 cache drive and its been no bother at all so would recommend that.

What do you mean by 'cache drive' ?

Is this some speical config you do for z68 mobo?

Randomface74 · 27 Feb 2012 at 11:33

I've never met anyone who's had a 60GB drive who hasn't filled it within 6 months and replaced it with more capacity.

For that reason, I'd never buy a drive that small.

Elric · 27 Feb 2012 at 11:38

Exactly.

For Intel RST, look here.

xsistor · 27 Feb 2012 at 12:19

I bet Win7 + GW2 will easily top 60GB.

Last time I tried Win7 ultimate on an SSD it alone came to 40GB... An new MMO should easily hit 20GB... If not at launch, then in time with expansions and patches.

Ben Cole · 27 Feb 2012 at 12:21

That's odd. I've got W7 Ultimate on my media PC with a 30Gb SSD and there's still plenty of space.

Ben Cole · 27 Feb 2012 at 12:23

billysielu said:
I've never met anyone who's had a 60GB drive who hasn't filled it within 6 months and replaced it with more capacity.

For that reason, I'd never buy a drive that small.

I've had a 60Gb in my Windows laptop for over a year with no issues. Use NAS for anything I want to access or keep.

Also had a 30Gb SSD in my media PC for a while with no issues.

Elric · 27 Feb 2012 at 13:53

Then you're one of the lucky few who are very strict on where their data is stored. Most people will fill that 60GB in a short timeframe.

Woody_FX · 27 Feb 2012 at 14:09

ok you guys convinced me to go with SSD

I'll see what OCUK got to sell around the 60gb range.

philds · 27 Feb 2012 at 15:59

Just be sure turn off hibernation and reduce the paging file to recover some space, I just built a PC with 16GB of RAM and as soon as I got W7 up and running I noticed 40GB of my 128GB SSD was already used up. I was shocked at first but then saw pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys were massive! I can't remember how much Windows decided to use for the pagefile.sys but it was something near the whole 16GB as was the hiberfil.sys

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/819-hibernate-enable-disable.html

reddev85 · 27 Feb 2012 at 20:01

I have a 256GB SSD and it is 65% filled. I would go through 64GB in a flash (no pun intended)