Two Caviar blacks or one SSD and one green storage drive

Magma

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
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I was about to buy two of the Caviar black drives to build my usual RAID 0 for my home desktop when it occurred to me that I might actually like having one SSD for a system drive and one big storage drive instead. What got me thinking about this was the below deal on a 64GB SSD.

Buy.com special, $109.95 with $35 rebate = $74.95
http://www.buy.com/prod/kingston-64...al-solid-state-drive/q/loc/101/218194457.html

The SSD isn't SATA III, but I'm not sure that matters. My motherboard has a SATA III controller onboard, but I haven't seen anyone actually getting significant increases in speed using SATA III. My initial intent was to buy two of these SATA III 64MB cache Caviar black drives.

WD Caviar Black 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533

Now I'm thinking that I might buy the SSD linked above and whatever 1TB or bigger green drive that is cheap and has good reviews. Has anyone actually done this already that has experience to share?
 
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Sorry about that. I edited the original after you posted. I realized that I put the one I meant to put in Hot Deals in the storage forum.
 
SSD > any hard drive for OS and everyday apps No hard drive raid will match the quickness of a decent SSD at launching everyday programs.

I run OCZ Agility 64GB + 1TB 7200 rpm Samsung (games and large programs, working folders etc where random access doesn't matter) and 1.5TB WD Green for storage and libraries. I think it hits the best of all worlds, super fast random access for everyday files, fast convetional hd for games and working folders, and a low power storage drive. The only thing that annoys me a bit is the spin up delay of the WD Green but there may be an option of tweak that.
 
my current setup is a 120g OCZ vertex 2 for the OS drive and a few 1TB drives, including a WD Black as the data drives.

i have in the past run a single WD black and 3x WD Blacks in RAID0 for the OS, and i can tell you the single SSD is much snappier. you will never beat the access time or IOPS capabilities of a decent SSD.

unless you are spending more then $100 on an SSD, SATA2 vs SATA3 isnt going to matter for you.
 
Now I'm thinking that I might buy the SSD linked above and whatever 1TB or bigger green drive that is cheap and has good reviews

The standard configuration for most users is an SSD for your OS/programs and everything else on a mechanical storage drive.

As with anything else you get what ya pay for with SSDs.

I'll recommend the best 64GB SSD......Crucial C300 64GB and you can work your way back from there. :)
 
Thanks for all of the info so far. Why is that one the "best" 64GB SSD? Is it just because it is SATA III? The write speeds quoted for it don't seem great.
 
sandforce based drives (pretty sure that kingston you quoted is) have very good compression algorithms and on highly compressable data (which is what the manufacturer uses to get those numbers which makes them look better) the numbers will be much higher then on random uncompressable data. the crucial C300 uses a marvel controller, and is tested with more "random" data, so the numbers look lower when compared to a sandforce drive tested with highly compressable data.

some people call it false advertising, which it really isnt; its just using the test method that makes your product look the best. the problem is that they dont always tell you this, so when you just have a single mb/sec number for a drive, the sandforce looks faster. at work we call it engineering a test for a desired result ;)

the C300 is way faster then the kingston in practice.
 
The write speeds quoted for it don't seem great.

Many consumers are under the impression that maximum write speeds are how to compare SSDs and the Sand Force (OCZ) drives publish speeds that aren't realistic for many desktop users.

There are far better indicators of SSD performance than Sequential Read/Write speeds.
 
Great info to have. Are there any sites that do comparisons with real world data usage?
 
The standard configuration for most users is an SSD for your OS/programs and everything else on a mechanical storage drive.

As with anything else you get what ya pay for with SSDs.

I'll recommend the best 64GB SSD......Crucial C300 64GB and you can work your way back from there. :)
Thanks, Old Hippie. I picked up the drive there for $110 total ($120 minus $10 coupon code plus free shipping). It should be here in a few days. :cool:
 
I just had an 11 month old WD Black 1TB go bad on me and I replaced it with a 128gb Corsair SSD ($214) and a 1TB WD Green ($64) drive and it's working great for me. I was reluctant to go with anything smaller than 128gb for my system drive and they were a little too pricey for me last year so I waited until now to do it. Music, movies, and stuff that doesn't get run very often go on the hdd while anything that loads on startup and stuff that gets run often like Office and Photoshop go on the SSD. It's a great combination. I can't believe I waited until now to do it.
 
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