SSD Boot Drive

lol, i dont like the wiring job they did. If thats what they did with samsung, what would they do with intels? thats contrary though to what some people have said, that raiding more than 2 drives may/would decrease performance.
 
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One last question although the sammy has twice the space. The OCZ vertex 30Gb is about the same price. Is it that much faster?
 
One last question although the sammy has twice the space. The OCZ vertex 30Gb is about the same price. Is it that much faster?

It's a hard one to answer really.. Technically it can do more Input/Output operations and gives the around the same sequential read and write speeds as 2 Sammys in RAID.

In real world the difference will only be felt if your copying stuff to your SSD (which you will find yourself rarely doing once setup). Windows will probably start a few seconds faster, and some apps a few seconds faster here and there.
 
Well I boot to a fully useable state in around 30 seconds on my SSD's, I believe the Vertex would startup a few seconds faster eitherway they're much much faster than my old hdd's which took a full minute longer to boot. You'll just notice apps and stuff just launch much faster ALSO..

I don't know if anybody else has this experience, but I find just navigating windows to be much more snappier.. Even navigating my old HDD's is now faster o_O. I'm not really sure how that works, maybe the SSD tweaker tool helped as well.

The old hdd will now be faster cos it now doesn't run the os plus it doesn't need to do any seeking/housekeeping cos of that so basically is just waiting for what you want to do it all the time and doing almost nothing else/well very much limited in use :)
 
how many samsung drives would you have to raid together to get 500Mb/sec Lejimster? Has anyone actually achieved those rates?

I know the 2Gb/sec has been mentioned, but it took 24 Samsung drives to do that on 3 controllers. I've seen quite a few folk getting in excess of 600Mb/sec on the OCZ forum. But these guys have money to burn, spending it on proper RAID cards which alone cost £150-£300.

But yeah, you could probably hit 500Mb/sec with 2 x 120Gb Vertex's.
 
What would performance be like with a 30gb ssd boot drive and all apps/games installed on a good old fashioned mechanical 7200RMP drive?

Worth it? Or would that miss all the performance benefit if everything is running off the slower drive?
 
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Aono, I would personally say its not really worth doing it that way. You'd end up having to access the old HDD even on startup, which will slow down your bootup. You'd lose most of the advantages of having a SSD. I would say 60Gb is your minimum to notice a big difference. It is possible to do it with 30Gb and installing your apps to the SSD too, but you'd be tight for space all the time and windows would probably start complaining :).
 
yeah i have to side with lejimster on that Aono, you probably would be defeating the point of having SSD's if you did it that way. Even though you're OS would be on the SSD's it would be held up by having to access the mechanical drive whenever you use one of the apps, which you'd probably notice more at start up. What you would probably be better doing is just using a mechanical drive as a storage drive for iso's, video's, mp3's etc.... and loading all of your apps onto a single/raided ssd.

I'd also advise strongly against 30GB drives aswell if i were honest, but that's me. Keep in mind that 3 raided 30Gb drives, whilst quite fast would still give you less than 90GB storage space which is'nt a lot these days keeping in mind that if you install games that a lot of them are dual layer (6GB+) lately + OS and Apps + any downloads + formatted space. you'll be through that it no time. Also keep in mind that if you raid drives together the raid volume will use the lowest volume drive in the raid, 2 64GB drives and 1 30GB drive will still only yield 90GB space. If however you bought 64GB as your first drive then that would be adequate enough to use as a boot drive and provide you with a good start point to think about raiding. 60/64GB is a good size to raid from since it is a common sized ssd and 2 or 3 raided ssd's of 60/64GB would still give you 120/128GB storage space which is still substantially more than 2 raided 30's at the cost of some slight performance loss (depending on the SSD's manufacturer, for example a fast 30GB vertex drive is as much as, if not more costly than, a 64GB samsung drive but the samsung drive is slightly slower) but would also probably save you quite a bit of money in the long term.
 
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yeah i have to side with lejimster on that Aono, you probably would be defeating the point of having SSD's if you did it that way. Even though you're OS would be on the SSD's it would be held up by having to access the mechanical drive whenever you use one of the apps, which you'd probably notice more at start up. What you would probably be better doing is just using a mechanical drive as a storage drive for iso's, video's, mp3's etc.... and loading all of your apps onto a single/raided ssd.

I'd also advise strongly against 30GB drives aswell if i were honest, but that's me. Keep in mind that 3 raided 30Gb drives, whilst quite fast would still give you less than 90GB storage space which is'nt a lot these days keeping in mind that if you install games that a lot of them are dual layer (6GB+) lately + OS and Apps + any downloads + formatted space. you'll be through that it no time. Also keep in mind that if you raid drives together the raid volume will use the lowest volume drive in the raid, 2 64GB drives and 1 30GB drive will still only yield 90GB space. If however you bought 64GB as your first drive then that would be adequate enough to use as a boot drive and provide you with a good start point to think about raiding. 60/64GB is a good size to raid from since it is a common sized ssd and 2 or 3 raided ssd's of 60/64GB would still give you 120/128GB storage space which is still substantially more than 2 raided 30's at the cost of some slight performance loss (depending on the SSD's manufacturer, for example a fast 30GB vertex drive is as much as, if not more costly than, a 64GB samsung drive but the samsung drive is slightly slower) but would also probably save you quite a bit of money in the long term.

I dint think it's as critical to run all apps off the ssd. I mean if you did happen to have an app on hdd for subsequent access you have superfetch to help plus I think it depends what/ how much you use the app.

Now for ssd bootup speed and you have limited space just make sure the apps don't run on bootup. Use msconfig and disable them - obviously some you might need on startup so put them on ssd. The others on hdd with like I say limited space and also program use/ type for example games or apps that I only play every now and again wouldn't bother me not on ssd.

Some apps don't take long to open but some do for example photoshop so ssd would help a lot there.

Obviously it's best to put all apps on the ssd but with limited space I think it's fine.
 
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I just think use common sense.

If you use a game a lot then I would like it on ssd.

It depends on what you mainly use comp for.

If it's mainly games then I would make sure I have at least 120gb ssds.

What do you want the speed increase on?

Booting up and general nippiness is the advantage of ssd so if you use an app a lot then imo gave it/them on ssd.
 
So its ok to put games on a large HDD but any apps that will be used at start up install onto SSD?

Theres nothing stopping you doing that. Infact thats what I'll be doing when I run low on SSD space. That is until 1TB SSD's at a reasonable price come on the market :).
 
I have an ssd and it's good to not have too many apps running off the old hdd at once. The more you do the slower the system / negates the advantages of ssd.
I think if you use the desktop a lot then most if not all apps onto ssd on there.

I have steam and it doesn't bother me not running off the ssd.

If you also play heavilt the odd game then run it off the ssd... Well I would. :)
 
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I use my pc for gaming mostly. Do you know with steam if i can say install games i dont play much onto hdd and install the games i play a lot on ssd?
 
Well not sure about steam but with games it's not as important to have them run off the ssd.

Just make the most of the ssd.

If you can't run the game off the ssd i wouldn't worry too much.

I have dead space on my old hdd and there wouldn't be any difference loading it on ssd or hdd tbo. They both take a while to load up, like I say it's all about that instant access/nippiness which IMO would mainly show in desktop use. :)
 
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and i've just found another reason not to rely to much on raid....

it's great when it's up and running, make no mistake about it, but...

my mainboards raid system just went down on my maind system. First off the motherboard kept telling me that their was a problem with sata port 1, so i ditched the raid setup restoring single disk state in the raid menu, and in the bios.

Now however, i tried installing windows vista and the system reported that their was a problem with the raid setup so i ditched that and now that i am trying to install windows xp it is telling me that my hard disks may be badly damaged which i dont believe so ive now got to wait for a couple of hours for my pc to carry out a full format... which is just pi**ing me off.

On reflection of raid, you would probably be better going for a single, large SSD such as the Samsung 128GB or titan G.skill one unless you can survive adequately on 64gb which is'nt too shabby but i would still avoid anything less than 60GB and dont rely on raid too much.

If what i have already tried does'nt work i don't know what i will do because the sata ports in the bios are detecting the hard drives but it's just not copying data to them. I think it is a good job that i have that samsung F1 as a fall back drive because it looks like i will have to install windows xp onto that and format both of the SSD's through that drive since i really, really don't believe that either of the SSD's a defective, 1 fair enough but both? especially when they're less than 3 weeks old? I don't think so.
 
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and i've just found another reason not to rely to much on raid....

it's great when it's up and running, make no mistake about it, but...

my mainboards raid system just went down on my maind system. First off the motherboard kept telling me that their was a problem with sata port 1, so i ditched the raid setup restoring single disk state in the raid menu, and in the bios.

Now however, i tried installing windows vista and the system reported that their was a problem with the raid setup so i ditched that and now that i am trying to install windows xp it is telling me that my hard disks may be badly damaged which i dont believe so ive now got to wait for a couple of hours for my pc to carry out a full format... which is just pi**ing me off.

On reflection of raid, you would probably be better going for a single, large SSD such as the Samsung 128GB or titan G.skill one unless you can survive adequately on 64gb which is'nt too shabby but i would still avoid anything less than 60GB and dont rely on raid too much.

If what i have already tried does'nt work i don't know what i will do because the sata ports in the bios are detecting the hard drives but it's just not copying data to them. I think it is a good job that i have that samsung F1 as a fall back drive because it looks like i will have to install windows xp onto that and format both of the SSD's through that drive since i really, really don't believe that either of the SSD's a defective, 1 fair enough but both? especially when they're less than 3 weeks old? I don't think so.

Oh mate what a nightmare.:( I had a nightmare too on mine. What mobo do you have ?


All the positives of ssd for me personally is all based on a single ssd cos of that.
I was thinking of getting a raid card cos of probs on my mobo but it's more 'pay out.'
 
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