[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Questions about SSD bootdrive (Page 1 of 2)
Posted: 3/14/2014 2:40:29 PM EDT
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Had a thread going asking for advice and opinions on purchasing a new desk top PC.
Ended up going with this: Dell Inspiron 3000 Intel Core i5-4440 Processor 3.1GHz Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) 8GB DDR3-1600 RAM 1TB 7,200RPM Hard Drive Intel HD DVDRW Drive 8-in-1 Media Card Reader 10/100/1000 Network 802.11n Wireless Bluetooth Display Not Included $536 including tax General, everyday use machine. Attached to my living room TV, wireless keyboard and mouse from the couch. Use consoles for gaming. A few recommended an SSD as a boot drive and it piqued my interest. Should I even bother or will performance be that noticeable? What would I want to put on this drive besides my OS? Would it be ideal to put smaller, commonly used programs on it also? How many GB would be a good starting point? |
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Quoted:
Had a thread going asking for advice and opinions on purchasing a new desk top PC. Ended up going with this: Dell Inspiron 3000 Intel Core i5-4440 Processor 3.1GHz Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) 8GB DDR3-1600 RAM 1TB 7,200RPM Hard Drive Intel HD DVDRW Drive 8-in-1 Media Card Reader 10/100/1000 Network 802.11n Wireless Bluetooth Display Not Included $536 including tax General, everyday use machine. Attached to my living room TV, wireless keyboard and mouse from the couch. Use consoles for gaming. A few recommended an SSD as a boot drive and it piqued my interest. Should I even bother or will performance be that noticeable? What would I want to put on this drive besides my OS? Would it be ideal to put smaller, commonly used programs on it also? How many GB would be a good starting point? The performance jump will be astonishing. I have an old Thinkpad X41 and it brought my boot time down to 7 seconds (Fedora + Cinnamon). I'd put the OS on it and install all your software to it as well. Keep a slower drive around for big media files etc if needed. Size needed depends on what you need to install. |
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The performance jump will be astonishing. I have an old Thinkpad X41 and it brought my boot time down to 7 seconds (Fedora + Cinnamon). I'd put the OS on it and install all your software to it as well. Keep a slower drive around for big media files etc if needed. Size needed depends on what you need to install. Quoted:
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Had a thread going asking for advice and opinions on purchasing a new desk top PC. Ended up going with this: Dell Inspiron 3000 Intel Core i5-4440 Processor 3.1GHz Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) 8GB DDR3-1600 RAM 1TB 7,200RPM Hard Drive Intel HD DVDRW Drive 8-in-1 Media Card Reader 10/100/1000 Network 802.11n Wireless Bluetooth Display Not Included $536 including tax General, everyday use machine. Attached to my living room TV, wireless keyboard and mouse from the couch. Use consoles for gaming. A few recommended an SSD as a boot drive and it piqued my interest. Should I even bother or will performance be that noticeable? What would I want to put on this drive besides my OS? Would it be ideal to put smaller, commonly used programs on it also? How many GB would be a good starting point? The performance jump will be astonishing. I have an old Thinkpad X41 and it brought my boot time down to 7 seconds (Fedora + Cinnamon). I'd put the OS on it and install all your software to it as well. Keep a slower drive around for big media files etc if needed. Size needed depends on what you need to install. I intend to keep the 1 TB drive for storage. So the SSD boot drive would contain my OS and all software? |
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I intend to keep the 1 TB drive for storage. So the SSD boot drive would contain my OS and all software? Quoted:
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Had a thread going asking for advice and opinions on purchasing a new desk top PC. Ended up going with this: Dell Inspiron 3000 Intel Core i5-4440 Processor 3.1GHz Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) 8GB DDR3-1600 RAM 1TB 7,200RPM Hard Drive Intel HD DVDRW Drive 8-in-1 Media Card Reader 10/100/1000 Network 802.11n Wireless Bluetooth Display Not Included $536 including tax General, everyday use machine. Attached to my living room TV, wireless keyboard and mouse from the couch. Use consoles for gaming. A few recommended an SSD as a boot drive and it piqued my interest. Should I even bother or will performance be that noticeable? What would I want to put on this drive besides my OS? Would it be ideal to put smaller, commonly used programs on it also? How many GB would be a good starting point? The performance jump will be astonishing. I have an old Thinkpad X41 and it brought my boot time down to 7 seconds (Fedora + Cinnamon). I'd put the OS on it and install all your software to it as well. Keep a slower drive around for big media files etc if needed. Size needed depends on what you need to install. I intend to keep the 1 TB drive for storage. So the SSD boot drive would contain my OS and all software? Yes, install the SSD in SATA0 on the motherboard and load the OS on it. Everything will be installed under the OS's directory tree and on the SSD. Then add the 1Tb as a secondary drive and store your files/media/etc on it instead of in My Documents, My Music etc. When you boot or launch/use a program it will be awesome, and when you open a media file from the 1tb it doesn't matter as much since they either get loaded into RAM or buffered anyway. |
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vast improvement , I "refurb" my older sata laptops with Samsung ssds. my argument is at $200 ssd vs $1700 new laptop.
For example, after tweaking, I can hit the power button, login to the domain , connect to my homepage in ie and open outlook in about 62 seconds. not bad for a 4 year old laptop. eta-ive been using the samsungs for about 2 years now with 0 failures. As I tell people, it will change your standards. 
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| +1 on the ssd. i run Debian on a Crucial and an i7, even with an encrypted drive I regularly see sub-10 sec bootups... to desktop. as fast as I can click the chrome icon i'm browsing the net. huge difference. also have them in my work lapper... also an i7, 16 gb ram and a pair of ssds, even running too many browser windows, at least one chunky VM, eclipse and spotify it's more performant than many actual web servers I have to work on. |
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Everything you need to know about SSDs. Stay away from Kingston. I presently have a Samsung EVO http://www.overclock.net/t/1179518/seans-ssd-buyers-guide-information-thread http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/seans-windows-7-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds |
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Everything you need to know about SSDs. Stay away from Kingston. I presently have a Samsung EVO http://www.overclock.net/t/1179518/seans-ssd-buyers-guide-information-thread http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/seans-windows-7-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds Perfect, thanks |
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An absolute steal right now
Just be sure to move the swap file over to your storage drive |
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Once you go ssd, you never go back. I bought my first one in November. My second one in December, and I am contemplating my third one. Samsung or Intel, with a lean towards Samsung. Ignore all other brands. This. I will never own another computer without a SSD (or better next-gen tech, maybe.) I could do a fresh install of XP in twelve minutes. No noise comes from the drive, which is a plus. I hate to other people's computers now, and mine is probably eight years old. |
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Another +1 for SSD's.
My primary laptop has an i5 3337U / 8GB RAM Windows 8. Boots in about 9 seconds off a 120GB Samsung 840 EVO. Then pull your optical drive out, and replace it with a 1TB HDD for all your stuff. My Windowa 7 laptop (3rd Gen i7/8GB RAM) boots in about 15 seconds. |
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I just built an i7 3770k based desktop with a OCZ Vertex 450 Series 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive and 16GB (4x4GB) of RAM and this thing is smoking fast. Roughly 8 - 10 seconds to log in screen after pushing the power button.
I dropped in a 1Tb WD black drive for data and Acronis image. |
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I'm interested in this.... My laptop is slow and old. Where can I go to get some pointers in doing this? I'm not too knowledgable on computer stuff. Get a Samsung SSd drive. Get a usb based hard drive caddy or connector. Download the free data transfer software from Samsung, connect new SSd via usb and transfer data to it. Shut down and replace old drive with new SSd. There are slightly better methods that involve reinstalling the OS but this works fine for most users. |
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I have a friend who's good with computers. I have two SSD's in a RAID 1 set-up.  Do you have a raid card that has the ability to read different parts of the data you requested from each drive? You certainly haven't increased the write speed; you will actually have a write speed penalty even with a high end card RAID 1 ssd arrays in a workstation generally make little sense |
Don't do that |
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Everything you need to know about SSDs. Stay away from Kingston. I presently have a Samsung EVO http://www.overclock.net/t/1179518/seans-ssd-buyers-guide-information-thread http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/seans-windows-7-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds Dammit! Left the house before I read this and came back with a Kingston. A quick search enlightened me, pretty shady to say the least. Guess it was priced at $.50 a GB for a reason. Luckily the store is close by and I'm not in any hurry here, cuz this is definitely going back. |
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I intend to keep the 1 TB drive for storage. So the SSD boot drive would contain my OS and all software? Depending on the size of your drive and how much software you install you may want to be very picky what software you put on the SSD. You can install Software to any directory even the slave drives. |
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Yes, install the SSD in SATA0 on the motherboard and load the OS on it. Everything will be installed under the OS's directory tree and on the SSD. Then add the 1Tb as a secondary drive and store your files/media/etc on it instead of in My Documents, My Music etc. When you boot or launch/use a program it will be awesome, and when you open a media file from the 1tb it doesn't matter as much since they either get loaded into RAM or buffered anyway. you can map my docs/my music/ desktop etc to any directory you want. you just rename the path and the computer works with my desktop my docs my music etc normally it just houses the data elsewhere. As easy as Right click > properties > location |
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Quoted: 250 GB SSDs are approaching $100 now. OP, I'd recommend getting a 250 GB SSD Quoted: Quoted: With the software and OS I'm pushing 50 gb. I went with the 120gb. I don't play video games so I wont have to worry about maxing out the ssd. 250 GB SSDs are approaching $100 now. OP, I'd recommend getting a 250 GB SSD |
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Quoted: you can map my docs/my music/ desktop etc to any directory you want. you just rename the path and the computer works with my desktop my docs my music etc normally it just houses the data elsewhere. As easy as Right click > properties > location Quoted: Quoted: Yes, install the SSD in SATA0 on the motherboard and load the OS on it. Everything will be installed under the OS's directory tree and on the SSD. Then add the 1Tb as a secondary drive and store your files/media/etc on it instead of in My Documents, My Music etc. When you boot or launch/use a program it will be awesome, and when you open a media file from the 1tb it doesn't matter as much since they either get loaded into RAM or buffered anyway. you can map my docs/my music/ desktop etc to any directory you want. you just rename the path and the computer works with my desktop my docs my music etc normally it just houses the data elsewhere. As easy as Right click > properties > location In the two links I posted earlier there is a batch file that will relocate all the user folders to another drive you select. If you are somewhat computer literate you will be able to do it this way during installation. I am not very computer savy and I was able to do it. |
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I can't believe no one has invoked ARFCOM's mantra: "Get both." As others have suggested, the ideal setup is an SSD for OS and apps and a much larger rotating disk for media and other files.
ETA: OK, so I missed it, someone did suggest it already. It's still a great way to go. |
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I'd recommend getting the Samsung Pro series. It uses MLC memory chips which are superior to TLC chips. If you can't afford drives with MLC, get the Samsung EVO. If you can't afford the EVO, save up and wait until you can. Purchased the EVO this morning from Amazon. Using accumulated points on my Amazon card, was able to slash the price by nearly half. If it weren't for the heads up in an earlier post, I'd have installed that Kingston I picked up yesterday. So yeah, this site gives me many hare-brained ideas on how to spend my money, there are the times it helps me to spend it wisely. |
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Quoted: I have a 120gb SSD boot drive, but I never put any games on it because I'm concerned with their number of read/write cycles burning out the drive. Valid concern or not? Kharn |
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Yep, get at least a 250gb drive. You might consider slightly larger also, prices are not unreasonable. I've only got 31gb free on a 250gb SSD right now after uninstalling a couple of things.
Also, if you have both 6 and 3gbps SATA ports make sure you plug the SSD into one of the 6gbps ones. Even if you have to move a mechanical drive off it. I've been contemplating getting two 750gb SSDs and setting them up as RAID 0 for my primary drive. |
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Don't worry about it and just do it. Quoted:
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I have a 120gb SSD boot drive, but I never put any games on it because I'm concerned with their number of read/write cycles burning out the drive. Valid concern or not? Kharn Don't worry about it and just do it. +1. SSD has changed home computing. Machines are faster, quieter, more responsive. I have a custom built PC that runs under 21dB on full power settings. You cannot hear it if you tried. |
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Another +1 for Samsung EVO. I got the 120GB one and its enough, but if your a gamer get the 250GB. I've got a 120GB EVO. I have Windows 8, Office 2013 Professional Plus, Flight Simulator X, League of Legends, and all of my other programs installed to the SSD. I'm using about 69GB at the moment. Not sure how much space modern games take up. Is it more than 5GB per install??? |