If you had a 30GB SSD what would you use it for?

ToejaM

ToejaM

ToejaM

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I'm contemplating picking up a 30gb SSD for my brother and for my gf so their games load quicker.

I was wondering, would you use the SSD purely for the games installation or would you still have your OS on there? Baring in mind you'd still have the HDD thats being used at the moment.

I'm thinking win7 is around 11gig right, and on a 30gb hdd you dont get the entire 30gb?

Would a full drive also function slower?
 
I can't help with all of your questions, and I'm not at home so I can't check the size of my W7 install (will try to remember to edit later). I did have a 60GB SSD and found that it was far too small for windows and minimal programs. You can tweak the W7 install size, but I think with the standard settings it can take 20GB+, and you'd want to keep a bit free on top of that if running as your OS drive. You get the full amount of advertised space - 30GB drives are 32GB in traditional terms.
 
The only use I can think of for a Drive that small is a Scratch Disk for Photoshop/After Effects.
 
I think you'd find a 30GB SSD to be too small for general use.

A 60GB SSD does nicely for a W7 boot drive. I've got 25GB free on mine, which I think is fairly typical.
 
I'd use it as a coaster.

Seriously I found 64gb just right for an OS drive. 30gb would be really pushing it imo.
 
Games don't really benefit THAT much from an SSD really. Not enough to bother moving them anyway. Unless it's something like WoW which is constantly loading the game world.

If I had a 30GB one, I would use it as a save disk for recording game videos. If I made things like that. Or, possibly a second OS drive, for a dual boot system. If I didn't want to partition my current SSD.
 
Aye just looking it over, my win7 folder is 16gig, l4d2 is 7.4gig + bf3 is 11gb, a 30gig definately wouldnt be enough for two decent games + an os, I guess a 60gb would be better.

At the moment I have a 180gb, win7 + dead island + cs: s + cod: bo + dirt3 + killing floor + bf3 + l4d2 + sc2 and I have 40gig free.

Dont play 4 of those games often but they're still used so I keep them installed. I dont think I'd personally manage with a 60gig.

I just know that my brother would play bf3 + l4d2 + sc2 and probably nothing else untill swtor/diablo3 is out and perhaps mw3 if it turns out to be good but would definately play those other games often.

I think a 60gig would be manageable.. just. Tis personally why I went for a 180 so I didnt have to constantly manage the drive heh.

Win7: 16
L4D2: 8
SC2: 10
BF3: 11
= 45gig

So yeah definately a 60gig would be where I should be looking.

The load times in bf3 for a hdd are atrocious.. I could never have a mechanical drive for my games+os now. I so wish I'd never swapped heh. I hate missing out on starting where I want in games, gives good advantages in pvp games like eq2 aswell.
 
I'd use it as a boot drive of course.

I have 10GB free of a 34GB hard drive with Win7 Ultimate fully updated, firefox openoffice etc etc, plus big installs of visual studio 2010 and sql server 2008.

30gb not enough for win7 = utter nonsense. i think people misunderstand the concept of 'boot drive'. it does not mean windows + games + photoshop + backups
 
If I had a 30GB SSD I would either,

- use it in my PC, as a boot drive and install few big apps like Photoshop on it and practically everything else on the hard drive.

- use it in my netbook and use a lightweight Linux distro (or Windows and store everything else on an external drive) - this is what I'm doing with my 32GB OCZ SSD in my netbook now.

I would recommend 60GB or more, so you don't have to worry as much about remaining free space.
 
Boot drive. You would notice the biggest improvement here rather than for games (for which you would need a bigger drive).

Ditto Z68 and Smart Response for which a 30GB SSD just wouldn't be enough. There is a good review on anandtech of this feature.
 
ToejaMz0r said:
If you had a 30GB SSD what would you use it for?
Click to expand...

well, i do have a 30gb ssd

i use it for Windows 7 and for a few key apps (chrome, vlc, etc)

im using 14gb of it and im quite happy with it - i dont feel a need to upgrade

i reinstall windows every 6 months so keep it fresh and small install size :)
 
I have a 30gb ssd drive, if it's a OCZ drive like mine then it will be 29.7gb formatted.
Installed a windows 7 x64 lite version which had a lot of junk removed and is only 4.5gb for the full install (can remove features if you want yourself with a program). I've also got Origin, BF3 11ish gb and some movie codecs with 8.49gb still free :D.

This is going to tide me over until I see a nice priced 128gb ssd.
 
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I have to agree with the general consensus that 30GB is too little for a general system drive, but I have 30GB OS drives on my HTPC and Laptop. They dont have much on them and for win7, office and a few other basic programs there's plenty of space.

Hawker
 
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