Switching to SSD. Large vs 2 small's

leemonk

leemonk

leemonk

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13 Aug 2006
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114
Hi,

I am thinking of moving to SSD's and also upgrading to Windows 7. I was wondering what the best way of doign this was.

Should I get a small storage size for the OS and the same or larger for apps and games or should I just get one large one, spending as much as I can on a single unit?

Regards

Lee
 
The best GB/£ is with the 120GB ssd drives and above. £50-60 buys you 60GB and £80-90 buys 120GB drives. (not inlcluding the value 120GB drives -which still outclass trad HDD's- like the sandisk ultra or kingston v100 which can be bought for about £65)
 
the price of the 120/128gb ssds isnt much more than the 60gb so id go for those for your os and have double the storage,for your storage hdd id choose a big 2tb or 3tb drive
 
I'm glad I decided to go with the 240GB, at about £150. Mine is a family PC and all sorts of junk gets stuck onto C: until I relocate it every so often.
 
yer i would say 256 ish is soon to be a minimum easy to fill stuff up even if u put all the mostly unsuded stuff on other drives
 
Thanks for all the responses.

I guess I'll pick up two 120's

The reason I was asking is that I normally try and keep my OS HD small and seperate from games, movies etc etc.

I only really play two games currently, would there be any problem locating them on teh same HD as the OS? If not, then i can probably get away with only buying one.

Regards
 
No problem in doing that no, I've got a 128Gb SSD as my boot drive and also have got BF3 installed on it.
Then Docs/Media on a 1Tb and Steam on a 512Gb HDD.
 
I feel so old fashion being able to have everything on a single 120GB SSD.

What 2 games would you have installed? Also not all games noticeable benefit from a SSD if cost is a consideration.
 
nkata said:
I'm glad I decided to go with the 240GB, at about £150. Mine is a family PC and all sorts of junk gets stuck onto C: until I relocate it every so often.
Click to expand...

How?

Set Documents/Pictures/Videos/Desktop/Downloads to your data drive and unless people are manually extracting to the C:\, you shouldn't get much **** on there..
 
I tend to agree with bledd.

A 128GB for OS and re-direct all your other stuff to mech drives (or maybe even a couple of other SSD's if your feeling rich). That way if your boot disk goes FUBAR, all you have to do is recover this, as your user data / games etc. is stored elsewhere (obviously you would be backing up all this as well).

My boot drive is a 128GB Vertex 4 and even with quite a few test/benchmark apps etc. stored on it, it's not even half full.

Though there are many variations of how to managed your storage. All with advantages / disadvantages.
 
No sense in me starting another thread asking the exact same question as the original 1st poster (leemonk).

If you look at my signature you will see what motherboard and cpu I have, and its pretty top notch, well I think so anyway, lol.

So as you can see, the motherboard is prep'd and ready to take on the best of the best and fastest SSD's.

Right now I am sitting with two standard old style sata hard-drives, ones a 500GB and ones a 1TB drive, ones newer than the other, but anyways, forget them as I would happily get rid of the old dinasaurs, drill several holes right through them and thats it, no data will ever come off them, LOL.

Anyway,
I am running windows 7 x64.
Ive always liked to have one drive as my main drive (windows drive) and one as my backup drive that I keep all the garbage on, lol, and I think its best I keep it that way.

The main windows drive will have windows obviously and the usual run of the mill applications installed on it and some large sized games (3 or 4 at most).

The other drive will be purely for backing stuff up onto, all the old junk of the day as ya do, lol.

I have approx £320 to spend although I could maybe push it a little more or maybe less if possible, I am wanting the the largest capacity and fastest SSD's for my board (http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8Z77V_DELUXE/) within my price range-ish and circumstances I have just explained.(I know SSD's run at different speeds obviously).

I should mention that I have a coolermaster HAF932 case too, so I think (not sure ?) if I buy ssd's I might need to get a bit of kit to fit them in, so maybe thats worth considering too, eh ?

I will leave it up to you guys to consider what you think is best for my needs please.

Thank You. ;)
 
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scotslad

Considering your price range I would suggest something like:

1) Crucial M4 512GB (or an OCZ Agility 4 512GB) + a decent 1/2TB mechanical drive for your backups

2) Though my preferred (from a personal point of view) suggestion would be:
- 128GB OCZ Vertex 4 for system/boot +
- 256GB OCZ Vertex 4 for your games +
- decent 1/2TB mechanical drive for your backups

The Crucial drives are decent enough, though on paper the Vertex 4 are faster. Though in day to day use, I suspect you would not really notice the difference.

There are so many different permutations here and pretty much everyone has their favourite / preferred solutions.

Only my personal experience / preference, but keeping your boot drive separate from your data (I include games in this) is for the reason I gave above (IE. That way if your boot disk goes FUBAR, all you have to do is recover this and your data is safe / separate). Also a lot easier when it comes to re-installing your OS, or moving to a new OS (Windows 8 anyone!), as all your data / games (STEAM folder etc.) are on other drives and don't need re-installing, or recovering from backups.

Good luck.

PS. A lot of SSD's (most?) come with some sort of backplate that screws onto the SSD (OCZ's drives do at least) and this then allows it to fit into a standard HD bay.
 
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thanks mate,

is that OCZ 256GB Vertex 4 SSD about as fast as they get for my new motherboard, yea mate ?

If so, what about I just use that "OCZ 256GB Vertex 4 SSD" as my main windows drive with the couple of games etc I would have on it and use the newest and largest of my old sata drives as the backup drive, its a 1TB western digital ( http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers...aviar-black-sata-3.0-gb/s-and-6.0-gb/s-drives ) mines is the WD1002FAEX model.

What you think about that setup, would I still have a flying machine of a system bearing in mind the old sata drive would purely be for backing up loads and loads of rubbish anyway, I could also even keep the old 500GB hard drive too as a 2nd storage device I guess, no big deal, just thinking along the lines now of maybe saving over £100 and giving the wife and early birthday present or summit, lol, would have been good to get rid of both old sata drives but really as you say, whats the point if they/it could just be used for backup which isnt really that important anyway.

The most important thing for me is just getting the machine flying, know what I mean ?

Hows that sound and look to you and you guys in the know ?

p.s
I dont see that kit with the OCZ 256GB Vertex 4 SSD to make it fit in the HAF932, you sure it comes with it ? or maybe I am just looking in the wrong place, I dunno ?

Thanks ;)
 
scotslad

"is that OCZ 256GB Vertex 4 SSD about as fast as they get" at the moment it's probably the fastest drive out there.

Your suggestion sounds fine. The WD black drives are pretty good (I've got a couple sitting in my cupboard).

The OCZ drives come with a metal backplate that is stuck to the bottom of the box that the SSD comes in. It just screws to the SSD and this should allow you to fit it in a standard HD bay (if a mech. drive fits, so should this).

Any SSD will be pretty impressive over a mechanical HD. At the moment, I would say the OCZ Vertex 4 is one of the best out there. Though nothing wrong with Crucial, Samsung or pretty much any of the other makes.

Good luck.

PS. I shall be adding a OCZ Vertex 4 256GB myself for my games folder soon.

PPS. If you do go the SSD route. I would suggest a read through the SSD FAQ on one of the makers WEB sites (OCZ also has one) prior to installing, as SSD's are not quite so "plug and play" are mech. HD's. No big deal, but forewarned, is for-armed. And if you do get a Vertex 4... Initially attach it as a secondary drive to your current system, download OCZ's Toolbox for the drive, check the firmware version and upgrade it to the latest version if necessary. As version 1.5 has BIG performance increase in the writes! My drive came with firmware version 1.3, so it was a two stage process to upgrade first to v1.4, then to v1.5 (dead easy to do). And if you do run any speed test programs (AS SSD, ATTO, or CDM), pay heed to the comments about not going too mad and running them numerous times (as this can degrade performance).
 
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thanks a lot mikeO,;)

I think I will defo be going for the OCZ 256GB Vertex 4 SSD then ;) (unless someone else butts in with another suggestion as they sometimes do, lol lol :)

I found a review for the ocz drive on youtube, hope its ok to post, here it is >>>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcFyKom7MBk

as far as the firmware upgrades are concerened and all that jazz, I shall wait till I get the thing In hopefully a couple of weeks and then raise that question again to make sure I dont mess anything up ;)

p.s
regarding the firmware upgrade, heres another usefull link >>> http://www.ocztechnology.com/ssd_tools/OCZ_Vertex_4_and_Agility_4/
 
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So just to double check, are we all settled on the "OCZ Vertex 4 Series 256 GB" for all the circumstances and hardware etc I have just explained becuase I am just about to order one of these things, I wouldnt like to order one and then someone says no no no, you should have went for this and that etc, I know its only £200-ish, but still, its a lot of money for a little bit of kit, just wanting to make sure.

So please, if anyone else has any other ideas then this is the time to please post up, thanks;)
 
leemonk said:
Thanks for all the responses.

I guess I'll pick up two 120's

The reason I was asking is that I normally try and keep my OS HD small and seperate from games, movies etc etc.
Click to expand...

With SSD I don't think having stuff on the same HD as the OS is such a big deal, on mechanical drives more of an issue perhaps in terms of potential I/O contention. Obviously there are other considerations like wanting to keep things separate for cosmetic reasons but experience tells me when the other 120GB drive runs out of room you'll start putting stuff on the OS drive anyway.

Personally I'd always take 1 big drive over 2 small drives unless setting up RAID, apart from anything else it means less power drain, less space taken in case, less ports used on mobo etc (important when you add more drives in future as you will inevitably do given how 'small' SSDs are).
 
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