HTPC boot drive

[FlyingFish]

Ive just built up a htpc for downstairs And have a few questions to help improve the experience.

Following specs:

Asus P5QL/EPU mobo
Intel E7200 cpu
ATI 3870HD
500Gb Samsung F2 5400rpm quiet HDD
2Gb OCZ memory
Wifi card
Windows 7

I have everything running and installed, and have been playing around with Windows Media Center, and just now XBMC. I would like to get straight to the action as fast and as simply as possible

Thing is, booting up Win7 takes time, quite normal for a home pc probably a minute (ish). Now I would like this to happen as fast as possible so it doesnt become a chore using the HTPC (esp if its far quicker sticking a dvd in a dvdplayer)

My 500Gb hdd is partitioned into a 65GB C: drive and 400Gb D: drive.

My question is would a small (cheap) capacity SSD improve things dramatically for me?

I'm coming from a 'popcorn' which was very quick and fairly user friendly....just limiting

I've installed Win7 64, but have the 32 version and also XP Pro 32.

Thanks
Mick

 

[FlyingFish]

Why don't you just put it to sleep....thats what I do on my HTPC which just uses an old 250GB drive for the OS. Takes a few seconds to be fully operational from total shutdown. No real need for an SSD unless you're using a small case or desperately want to save power usage (but it would take a loooong time to recoup the initial cost of the SSD in electricity bills )

Wow! 1st time I've used the sleep function, just what I wanted cheers.
Great thing is its killed two birds with one stone, bootup takes only a second or so now and I can power back up from my wireless keyboard. So no more opening up the TV cabinet to press the power button.


Mick