Which SSD(s) to go for?

fross

fross

fross

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Hi all,

I was thinking of upgrading my harddrives (going to a raid 10 of 1Tbs from my 2 current ones), but have been reading about SSDs, and partially inspired by the inclusion of two in raid 0 on overclockers' insane 4.5k pre-built machine, have decided to get one.

At a first glance, my windows/program files directories take about 30 gigs between them. Unfortunately, my games directories take about another 80 gigs, and music software (cubase etc) another 5 gig, though I doubt these would be particularly sped up expect for the scratch drive.

I am thinking of trying something sneaky with my games directories, some of which (Warhammer, TF2 and the like) I would like to give as big a boost as possible, others (Civilisation, Pirates, etc) probably are not as demanding. As most of those are on Steam, I was thinking of using an NTFS Junction Link to keep some of them off the SSD and on my regular drive, leaving room for the ones that need it. Anyone have experience of this, particularly with regard to Steam?

Onto the drives themselves, I was originally hoping for a 64G SSD but that seems like it wouldn't be enough, 128G seems more like it. The G.Skill Falson seems like the most solid bet, but it's sold out here (and more expensive elsewhere it seems!). Two 64G drives aren't *much* too much more, would the performance of those in Raid 0 be a huge step up from one 128G on its own?

Thanks in advance, guys
 
you would see a big increase in loading games & getting on the map/server in just one SSD. Don't forget that if you went for 2 in RAID then you won't be able to use TRIM until it is supported.

if you wanted all that on a 128gb drive then you are just scraping it with some extra space.. 2 x 128gb drives are obviously very costly too so maybe you can get away with the one.

a lot of files used to be messy and still are on my 1TB drive, i find the more space you have then you tend not to delete things aswell so everything just gets cluttered everywhere. Just need to be a bit more careful with these drives :)
 
Thanks for the tips, guys. I think I will get one 128G, probably the G.Skill Falcon, using NTFS junctions to split large directories (e.g. Steam) to choose what goes on there and what doesn't.
 
Yeah the GSkill Faklcon is a good choice.

As Perfect Chaos said SSD's just require a bit more discipline regarding what you store on them etc - it's not too different from a few years ago before we all had access to Tb sized drives for reasonable money and had to be careful about which games we had loaded etc - we've been completely spoilt by having oodles of space ;)
 
128gb should be able to fit games(steam), OS and programs use an second disk for any static files (files that are not needed to load stuff up or any big files)
 
I have recently installed the 128GB GSkill Falcon and am really impressed with it. Speed is fantastic and I have all the impartant stuff on it with space to spare. As FaceplantSi and Perfect Chaos say, you just need to be a bit more careful where you store things.

You wont be dissapointed.
 
Thanks for the advice guys, will be getting the 128G Falcon as soon as it's in stock.

The main thing i have a problem with however, is my Steam directory is about 80 gigs. I want to speed up some games (CSS, TF2, L4D etc) but not others (Civilisation, Pirates, etc). They are all in the same directory of course as Steam puts them together.

I read you can use an NTFS "Junction Link" to have one directory point somewhere else completely, and was thinking of having those directories for the games I dont want to speed up on the regular drive, using a junction link to make them appear in the same directory structure for steam.

Anyone else tried this or have a view on splitting things out this way?
 
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