SSD limitation question?

[shevanel]

I was wondering..

If someone had a small lets say 30gb SSD, it will undoubtedly be an upgrade speed wise from any normal mechanical hdd right?

BUT

What if the size of the drive obviously caused you to have to use a larger, albeit slower drive for storage?

WOULD

the benefits of having such a fast drive be obsolete if all the games/movies/aps were installed on the mechanical HDD even though the OS was installed on the main SSD?

Thanks for any info

[hat]

Anything installed on the SSD will be faster, everything else will be the same. Try UltimateDefrag, they have a public domain version out (free). Choose the Auto defrag and in the Options list to the right, move the slider all the way to the LEFT so all the data gets placed on the outer tracks of the drive (the fastest area). That should give you a bit of a speed boost.

[lemonadesoda]

SSD does not make your PC/movies/games "go faster". It makes the interaction experience "snappier". There is zero lag associated with the (normal) windows process of loading hundreds of small files. Think seek times.

Windows and aps on the SSD; data movies games on the HDD. And with enough system ram, set up a ramdisk for even faster internet browsing.

[shevanel]

I know it doesnt make the games faster, but maybe load faster. Correct?

Im just debating on a 30GB SSD for my i7 920 machine. I currently have a 500gb 7200.11 32mb cache drive

[shevanel]

2nd time Ive heard ram disk, last time i asked someone said it was a joke.

Ramdisk?

[hat]

SSDs are faster than HDDs plain and simple. If I were you, I would load my operating system, pagefile, and programs on the SSD and let the hard drive take care of all the movies/music/games etc

[lemonadesoda]

Just do it! You will notice a huge improvement in using windows compared to a 7200.11

However, TBH, dont buy one if you are only doing it for games. You wont get instant loading. Quite a lot of the loading time is the CPU decompressing the data... not just the load time from HDD.

SSD are not hugely faster than HDDs at loading single files (like a big game asset) but are much faster when there are hundreds of files (like windows, or webcache and all those gifs.)

[shevanel]

So, SSD's are good for multiple pron slide shows set on 1 second delay?

[techspec6]

SSDs require a small amount of free space to maintain their speeds. If you get a 30GB drive and install a lot of programs, your winsxs folder will get large quickly. It stores library files for each program you install. Even simple programs get their own set.

I would suggest getting at least a 60GB drive for the OS. I just installed my laptops OS on a 30GB drive and it has a 60GB drive also for media and apps. I'm sitting at 11GB free space from a fresh installation of vista with about 15 apps installed.

If you aim at 25% drive free space for SSDs, you'll do fine. If you think you can keep the SSD slimmed back, go for the 30GB. I'd recommend the 60GB. Personally a fan of the Agility series by OCZ.

Jason