SSD Setup

[TW]Fox · 25 Dec 2011 at 10:38

Hi guys..

Just got an OCZ Vertex 3 90Gb.

I'd like to take advantage of the SSD caching feature of my Z68 motherboard but I am aware that I can only use 64Gb for this purpose.

Therefore I was going to partition the drive and use one as a boot partition and the remaining space for caching but was unsure how much space to allocate each purpose?

Any ideas?

The plan is that I'd have an SSD partition for a boot drive with just Windows on it, and an SSD-cached RAID-0 Array with all my games on..

This seems more flexible to me than just using the SSD as a boot and selected games drive?

[TW]Fox · 25 Dec 2011 at 13:38

I've gone for a 64gb cache and a 20gb additional drive. I felt this was more useful than a 20gb cache and a 64gb additional drive?

20gb seems a bit small for the cache.

Tute · 26 Dec 2011 at 13:38

The larger you make the SSD cache, the less chance of a cache "miss" that's going to send the kernel back to the mechanical drive to get it's data.

So you've got it right, you want to have as much cache as you can.

HangTime · 26 Dec 2011 at 23:49

Sounds good although be aware that 20GB is cutting it a bit fine for a W7x64 boot drive, you'll likely have to farm all your apps, user folders etc off onto another drive. I'd want 30GB minimum personally to give a bit of leeway.
My Windows folder alone is over 22GB although that's not to say that isn't largely caused by it getting filled up with crap (WinSxS etc) over time.

Bubo · 27 Dec 2011 at 00:41

When I was looking into ssd's before buying one there was some advice that you should leave a certain amount of the drive empty so that it has enough space to do its trim or wear level or some such, can't remember exactly the reason now, but it was said that this would improve performance in the long run. On a 120 gig drive say it was advised to always have 20 gig free on the drive, which some people made a 20 gig partition and never used it. Does this apply to an ssd used as a cache drive, partially or otherwise?