What Drives?

paullewis323 · 26 May 2012 at 11:26

Hi guys

Just completed my new gaming rig, see sig below:-

Have a Crucial 128GB SSD for O/S, not sure if its gonna be big enough as just with O/S on is almost 80GB already

Need another fast drive for gaming, to install games on

And a 1TB or greater drive for reliable storage

Was thinking of a Crucial RealSSD M4 256GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT256M4SSD2) for my gaming drive and a Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD1002FAEX)

What you guys think about that storage setup?

Was thinking of maybe using the 256GB SSD as my O/S drive and formatting and using the 128GB SSD as my gaming drive

What way round would you guys go?

Lew

Surveyor · 26 May 2012 at 11:56

You should be able to free up a fair bit of space on the SSD you already have.

16GB of RAM will be giving you a large page file and reserve 16GB for hibernation.

You can adjust the Page File to a much smaller size and disable hibernation if you don't use it.

Open an elevated Command Prompt with administrator rights by typing Cmd in Start Search, and then hit Ctrl + Shift + Enter keyboard shortcut.

Or select Run as Administrator from the Cmd in search results.

Type the following command and hit Enter: powercfg /hibernate off

Sean's Windows 7 Install & Optimization Guide for SSDs & HDDs

DazQ87 · 26 May 2012 at 14:56

Sorry for hijack!
I was also thinking of reducing my pagefile size, at the minute mine is set to 8GBs, which seems excessive, what would be seen as a good amount to set it to?

LexLuthor · 26 May 2012 at 15:24

Test both drives, and use for OS/programs the one with best 4K scores..
I have 117GB of C: drive, and have +50% free space available, after OS+programs+BF3, so I think you should be fine with either drive you set as your primary one.
For games drive, instead getting another SSD (too expensives here, in my country), I grab a Seagate Hybrid drive, which gives me the amount of space from mechanical drives, with a bit of the SSDs performance..
Of course, those kind of drives are faster only with the same type of files accessed everytime, so fits to a games drives characteristics because of the 4GB SSD cache..

But, if you can, get another SSD for games drive..
Remember something: SSD are the future, so for the years to come, you'll still have those drives no matter what other upgrades you'll do on your plataform..

Best regards..

AllBodies · 26 May 2012 at 16:26

Unless you have loads of money to burn then I'd recommend just sticking with your single SSD. 128 GB should be absolutely fine, unless you're planning on cluttering it with dozens of games at once, it shouldn't be out of the question to only have 10 or less games on it at a time, as I personally probably only play 4 games at a time (not literally at the same time haha).

As for the HDD, this is faster and substantially cheaper:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-257-SE&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1279

The only disadvantage it has is that is has a 2 year warranty instead of 5, but if you want more speed and to save money, then go for the Seagate.

EDIT: Also if you really want more SSD room, then I would wait if I were you, because you'll be able to cope with 128GB for a bit, and then over the next 2-3 months we should be seeing new faster stuff arriving.