SSD or SATA HDD

[Ironcity]

A Samsung Pro 256Gb SSD SATA III sells for $240.

A WD 4TB SATA HDD sells for $290.

 

I don't know if I should get the SSD just for a faster boot and faster program loads and gaming or just go for the capacity. Any thoughts on this?

 

This is what I have now. So I can just use these for storage?

external WD 1TB My Book. HDMI

internal 2 160GB HDD's and 2 500GB HDD's, both SATA II.

 

I have never used an SSD drive before. If anyone has one of them let me know how it performs for you. I appreciate it.

 

Ironcity

Edited July 30, 2013 by Ironcity

[LaRSin]

First you won't be able to boot from any hard drive larger then 2TB, on most computers,

 

SSD drives are fast and are great for the OS as boot drive, But it's not going to help gaming once the game is loaded,

 

That samsung pro is the fastest ssd drive  ,

 

I have a ssd drive and boot my os from it ,not my games , But minds only 120,

[TecHnOBoY]

Listen to Larsin....

You need an UEFI compatible system to boot from a HD with more than 2TB.

SSD's are nice but you need to get rid of some caching functions and unneccessary
filesystem actions to keep your SSD's health. I have seen many systems with bluescreens
because the SSD sectors got destroyed by excessive write actions from Windows.

Another alternative are hybrid drives like the Seagate Momentus. This drives are "normal"
mechanical HDDs with an integrated flash cache. The data will be saved on the flash before it get's
written to the HDD. They are a little bit slower than SSDs but they have a longer life

@@LaRSin
I bought a SSD (PCIe Card) for one of our customers today. 3,2 TB, 2,8GB/s read and write.
It's one of the fastest SSD out there at the moment.
But the price... $26.400 (19.900 €) For a short moment I was thinking about...

Edited July 30, 2013 by TecHnOBoY

[fireurza]

i got a samsung 250 gb ssd and a 1tb sata hdd for about 200... should get both

[Ironcity]

@@TecHnOBoY

 

The motherboard I have has UEFI bios. Is that what you mean?

[TecHnOBoY]

@@Ironcity

 

Exactly. And your OS must support it too. Win7 should, Win8 and Linux (Ubuntu f.e) do.

 

But I see no need for a 2,5 TB boot partition. 80 GB is more than enough. Use the remaining Space of your HDD for your programs, files etc as drive D, E, whatever.

 

You can easily change the standard installation path for programs from C to whatever you want. So you don't have to change the installation path for every new installation.

 

[EDIT]

Eighty GB us more than enough. I hate this emote icon -,-

[/EDIT]

Edited July 31, 2013 by TecHnOBoY

[Xtreme]

No brainer! Get the SSD. Why do you even need 4TB unless you're doing video editing or something really heavy duty. The speed difference with an SSD is amazing!

[Xtreme]

SSD's are nice but you need to get rid of some caching functions and unneccessary

filesystem actions to keep your SSD's health.

 

 

Please elaborate, stuff like shell icon cache?

[JohnnyQuest]

i never had to get rid of anything or any functions .....or file system actions...had my 240 gig osd vertex for four years now...the only thing you have to do is turn off auto defrag as defragging ssd's will ruin them.....defrag is not needed with ssd's

[JohnnyQuest]

A Samsung Pro 256Gb SSD SATA III sells for $240.

A WD 4TB SATA HDD sells for $290.

 

I don't know if I should get the SSD just for a faster boot and faster program loads and gaming or just go for the capacity. Any thoughts on this?

 

This is what I have now. So I can just use these for storage?

external WD 1TB My Book. HDMI

internal 2 160GB HDD's and 2 500GB HDD's, both SATA II.

 

I have never used an SSD drive before. If anyone has one of them let me know how it performs for you. I appreciate it.

 

Ironcity

the difference between ssd's and hdd's is night and day...i had the western digital black 640gig...so i bought a hard drive docking station for 16 bucks...and installed my 240g ssd, i use the hdd for pics and music or movies...and i usb it ,when i need it....you can say when you get the ssd that it is faster than any hdd ever thought of being....

[rookido]

I for once, bought a crucial ssd 60 gb and 128 gb over two years ago to install wind7 for my rig.  what can I say is I never want to go back to hdd drive, except to use it for storage. Since then, crucial has several firmware updates to make it run faster, and I never bother to do it. because it never gave me any problems in term of performance. One thing if you happen to pick a ssd drive to install os system, make sure you go into the mobo bios and set sata mode configuration from "IDE" to "AHCI" or advance host control interface, if not do this it won't boot up.

[Ironcity]

I would only used the SATA HDD for storage. And use the SSD for the OS and games. Some programs. But, like Technoboy said something about setting up a boot partition and separating the install path programs. I will do some research on that. I have 2 500GB and 1TB  external pretty much full. So I need another storage drive. I don't want to get another external. I'd rather keep it on the inside. so I don't have to have it sitting around. 

[Xtreme]

 

A Samsung Pro 256Gb SSD SATA III sells for $240.

A WD 4TB SATA HDD sells for $290.

 

I don't know if I should get the SSD just for a faster boot and faster program loads and gaming or just go for the capacity. Any thoughts on this?

 

This is what I have now. So I can just use these for storage?

external WD 1TB My Book. HDMI

internal 2 160GB HDD's and 2 500GB HDD's, both SATA II.

 

I have never used an SSD drive before. If anyone has one of them let me know how it performs for you. I appreciate it.

 

Ironcity

the difference between ssd's and hdd's is night and day...i had the western digital black 640gig...so i bought a hard drive docking station for 16 bucks...and installed my 240g ssd, i use the hdd for pics and music or movies...and i usb it ,when i need it....you can say when you get the ssd that it is faster than any hdd ever thought of being....

 

That is EXACTLY what I tell my customers to do. If their case will accommodate a HDD, I install it and remap "Library" (docs, etc) to go there. There is nothing like having bloatass Windows installed to an SSD! I've upgraded a few systems for people using their old computers, i.e. old Core2, as long as they have at least 2GB of RAM, Win7 hauls ass with an SSD. I also love the Windows 7 Family Pack! You can get 3 licenses for about $100 and then divvy them out to customers at $50 each.....and everyone is happy!

[Xtreme]

I for once, bought a crucial ssd 60 gb and 128 gb over two years ago to install wind7 for my rig.  what can I say is I never want to go back to hdd drive, except to use it for storage. Since then, crucial has several firmware updates to make it run faster, and I never bother to do it. because it never gave me any problems in term of performance. One thing if you happen to pick a ssd drive to install os system, make sure you go into the mobo bios and set sata mode configuration from "IDE" to "AHCI" or advance host control interface, if not do this it won't boot up.

 

Watch the older Crucial 60GB SSD! It's a great drive, but it has a serious bug with the original firmware that will cause it to BSOD:

 

http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/17/2713178/crucial-m4-ssd-firmware-update-fixes-recurring-bsod

[Xtreme]

I would only used the SATA HDD for storage. And use the SSD for the OS and games. Some programs. But, like Technoboy said something about setting up a boot partition and separating the install path programs. I will do some research on that. I have 2 500GB and 1TB  external pretty much full. So I need another storage drive. I don't want to get another external. I'd rather keep it on the inside. so I don't have to have it sitting around. 

 

Just curious....how the hell do you fill up that much drive space?

[rookido]

I guess un-compressed videos and photos suck up a lot of storage space?

[ChknFngr]

for my part i run on a pci-e ssd card for the OS, best investment ever, period.

nowadays a simple ssd is faster than mine but hey it never failed and runs great.

 

i have for the moment a lot of drives in the case, but im gona clean everything this next few weeks.

my plant is to have everything more organized.

 

i will have :

- ssd for OS

- a 500G caviar black for programs.

- a 500G caviar black for cache (need for video editing and other photoshop and stuff that i need for work)

- a few 1T or 2T for datas.

 

- my Synology with 2x 3T with a WD RED drives for back up and storage (and linked to a personal cloud server for security) and video, music sharing with every pc, tv, phone in the house.

 

will never go back to hdd for the OS, NEVER

[Renegade0260]

I've just moved from an Intel X25 160gb SSD to a Samsung 840 Pro 256/260GB and also have a low power 2GB HDD (WD green) for mass storage (downloads/movies/music etc...). Boot and install all software (except X-plane as it's 60GB) on the SSD. Note: Mate sure you have AHCI mode (not Legacy or IDE mode) on you SATA controller, and also make sure it's not a dodgey Marvell SATA chip who's driver doesn't support TRIM in Windows 7/8.

 

One thing to note about the Samsung SSD which is great, is that it comes with software to clone your existing boot drive (as long as there is enough space on the SSD of cause). It ran perfectly on my Windows 7 PC, but bare in mind you may have to re-activate Windows after cloning it to a new drive, I was fine as I have a retail copy of Windows 7, but OEM or cracked copies might have problems.

[Ironcity]

@@rookido Good thing you let me know 'bout that. Thanks

[Ironcity]

@@Xtreme From using Demonoid for over ten years. I download a lot of stuff.

[Ironcity]

@@Renegade0260 This is the mobo I have. I looked and seems like most of the chipsets are Intel. ASRock Z87 Extreme6. I didn't see any Marvel.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157371

[Ironcity]

@@TecHnOBoY Hey Techno, I also found this link that explains changing the drive letters for program installs to another HDD so I don't kill the Silicone in the SSD. What do you think?

 

http://www.overclock.net/t/664738/how-to-setup-ssd-boot-drive-with-secondary-hard-disc-optimization

 

Thanks for the info brother...

[TecHnOBoY]

@@Ironcity

 

I have Never done this before. This is a nice how to. This solves your AppData problem and many of the caching operations Windows or other programs do on your C drive. But it can lead into (maybe solvable) problems like this guy had with Outlook after he changed his profile path. Some programs may expect your profile on C: and ignore the registry changes. This may cause trouble during the setup or running a program.

CoD 5 f.e stores your profile and the maps within the AppData folder.

As far as I know this path is hardcoded as "C:\Users...blah" in the setup script. It is possible to change this later. They should have made it with relative or system paths like %WINDOWS%

 

You may also change the location of your SWAP file to another drive.

 

 

The AppData folder can become very big and you'll save space for programs you need the speed advantage of an SSD for. But you will lose a bit of this advantage for Windows operations (Faster boot but your profile files are located on the slower HDD for example)

 

Over all it seems to be a compromise.

[Renegade0260]

Your motherboard chipset/SATA controller should be fine

 

Never run a swap file on an SSD. Make sure you use control panel to manually set the page file settings. If you have 8GB RAM or more, I would recommend switching page file off entirely, unless you have a very memory hungry application which needs it.

Edited August 5, 2013 by Renegade0260

[Ironcity]

@@Renegade0260

I would have it off. And I will have 16Gb of RAM to start.

DO you mean not to do on the link I posted above?