SSD + Flash Memory

[Peter Tsang]

Hi folks,

Now that my system is installed with a SSD, which is great, the boot time is much much faster, and loading application, game and others are also swiftly done, it's really worth the money.

However, it's a small drive, only 60GB. Actually I'm moving back to XP instead of Vista in order to get some more space to use.

As Flash Memory is not Holy expensive, I'm just wondering if it worths the money to invest into this type of fast memory device. One thing which I'm not sure is that the speed will or will not be reduced by access via USB 2.0 port?

Thanks in advance,
Peter

 

[Hagar]

I have a 60Gb (55.9 formatted) and I only put windows on it. This gives me 21.9Gb used with an 8Gb pagefile. Windows and essential files only uses 13.9Gb therefore. This is for Windows 7 ultimate retail. XP will be much harder to use with an SSD due to lack of support for TRIM etc.
I have moved windows documents, pictures, music to my HDD and all programs are installed on HDD (500Gb WD). You still get fast boots and programs do load quickly even from the HDD as the system is on the SSD.

Flash memory is good for storage but USB2 cramps its style to 480Mbits/sec or 60Mbytes/sec compared with an SSD of say 200+Mbytes/sec or a HDD of 50-100Mbytes/sec. Not a huge improvement if any.

For a 60Gb SSD I would just put the OS on it and everything else on a reasonably fast HDD. When prices get more believable for larger SSD we can revert to a better strategy.

Having started computing with 1Mb ram and 40Mb HDD it is a bit like going back to juggling memory / disk resources to fit.