Full SSD or VR

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vroom_skies

[H]ard|Gawd
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Sep 25, 2005
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Hey there you guys,

I have a:
- Vertex 2 60 Gig
- VeloRaptor 150 Gig

I'm in the process of building a new tower and my desktop right now has the VR and the SSD is in my laptop. I can't decided if I want to move the SSD to my desktop and throw a 7200 disk back in my laptop.
Here are some facts:
- Both machines will be running Win7 Pro (my desktop right now is XP)
- I'm using 100 Gigs on my VR, with a 50 Gig temp picture folder. I don't have an issue not having that on the boot drive, so lets assume I'm using 50 Gigs for a boot drive. This is on XP mind you with limited game installs.

I'd rather have all programs/ apps installed on the main boot disk, so even if I could fit everything on the 60 Gig SSD (which I probably can't), how would a basically full Vertex 2 run?

So should I just stick with the VR for now or?

If you have any other configurations I should think of please post them up.

Thanks
 
I'm starting to lean more towards the VR (just for sheer storage). With game installs being the size they are I'd have no room on a 60 Gig SSD, but I'd still like to get opinions.
I'd really like to know how bad the Vertex 2 suffers when it has less then 5-10% free space left.
 
vroom_skies said:
I'm starting to lean more towards the VR (just for sheer storage). With game installs being the size they are I'd have no room on a 60 Gig SSD, but I'd still like to get opinions.
I'd really like to know how bad the Vertex 2 suffers when it has less then 5-10% free space left.
Click to expand...

Actually, SSDs don't suffer anywhere near as much as conventional hard drives with less than 5 to 10 percent space left.

As for the 150GB VR, it is now a total ripoff at this point: It is of an older design whose sequential transfer speed is actually slower than many of the current-generation 7200 RPM hard drives with even larger capacities on the market - and whose price is nearly as high as a 2TB hard drive that performs as fast as or faster than the 150GB VR sequentially. Heck, even a 5400 RPM 2TB Samsung F4EG delivers a faster sequential transfer speed than the 150GB VR. Worst of all, no mechanical hard drive delivers anywhere near as quick of an access speed as the slowest of SSDs.

But then again, you already have a 150GB VR. Well, in this case, then it's still a poor compromise between a full SSD and a much cheaper 7200 or 5400 RPM hard drive. I don't know where the 150GB VR will fit in a desktop system these days.
 
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For you, SSD in laptop makes more sense, buy another SSD for desktop. Or yes, stick with VR for the desktop. Important point. If your games are on the same drive as the OS, then the drive will always be slower then a dedicated drive for games only. (Unless you dont do any other things in the back ground, like say torrent or antivirusn while gaming)

In general:
The way hard drives are made now, it can be argued that you can buy a WD Caviar Black 2TB drive, Only use say 450GB (short stroke) and it will be faster then the VR in many things. It will still be slower in access times however, but not by too much. You gain the extra space though

If you really can't afford another SSD, dont look for one. It is as simple as that. SSD is for enthusiats/deep pocket people. I think you should have it for an OS, but for games etc, if you dont need it, can't afford it, then you shouldn't get it.
 
Thanks for the replies you two.
I know I said I wasn't going to do this at first, but I'm thinking it over again.
That would be running the OS on the SSD only and using the VR to house the games and other apps. If I was going to go that route though, it would feel like such a waste for the 60 Gigs on the SSD. Since the OS would use less then 20 Gigs.
Would there be anything else that you guys would put on the SSD instead of on the VR?
 
Put the OS and your most commonly used apps/games on the SSD. Use symlinks to push the other stuff off to the platter drive.
 
Forceman has some good advice, do that.

But to give you an idea, i have a 80GB SSD for OS and I had only 30 GB free on it up until fairly recently.
imagine bog downloads and other things. If you're good about keeping the drive nice and tidy, maybe you can get away with a 40 GB drive. I'm not.
 
Forceman said:
Put the OS and your most commonly used apps/games on the SSD. Use symlinks to push the other stuff off to the platter drive.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't the point of using the SSD for boot and then the VR for games and commonly used apps be to get the most speed? Correct me if I'm wrong, but as stated above you'll get better performance out of games/ apps if they are installed not on the OS drive. In this case the VR, which I would assume would be the best of both worlds.

The only thing I don't like is this- assuming that the above is true why wouldn't I install my OS on the SSD and then everything else on the VR? Based upon my thinking that would give the best overall performance. The only thing I don't really like is that I would be using the 60 Gig SSD for less then 20 Gigs.

So is my reasoning correct? Or would there be other programs that you would install on the SSD?
 
vroom_skies said:
Wouldn't the point of using the SSD for boot and then the VR for games and commonly used apps be to get the most speed? Correct me if I'm wrong, but as stated above you'll get better performance out of games/ apps if they are installed not on the OS drive. In this case the VR, which I would assume would be the best of both worlds.

The only thing I don't like is this- assuming that the above is true why wouldn't I install my OS on the SSD and then everything else on the VR? Based upon my thinking that would give the best overall performance. The only thing I don't really like is that I would be using the 60 Gig SSD for less then 20 Gigs.

So is my reasoning correct? Or would there be other programs that you would install on the SSD?
Click to expand...

The SSD is so insanely much faster than a platter drive, any platter drive, that it is always better to put stuff on the SSD. I'm not sure I buy the whole "separate hard drive for OS and games" argument, but in any case that would only be valid when comparing like hard drives - here you are comparing apples and rocket ships.
 
Thanks for that Forceman.

Does anyone have any benchmarks/ reviews for having the SSD as the OS drive and then programs/ games on a separate disk? I've heard the argument go both ways, but have never seen anything to back claims up.
 
Forceman said:
The SSD is so insanely much faster than a platter drive, any platter drive, that it is always better to put stuff on the SSD. I'm not sure I buy the whole "separate hard drive for OS and games" argument, but in any case that would only be valid when comparing like hard drives - here you are comparing apples and rocket ships.
Click to expand...

I have no benchmarks but I second this answer. Put the stuff you want fastest on the fastest drive.

Also the motivation for putting the OS and apps on different drives does not really apply to SSDs. The reason is hard drives have access times > 10ms while SSDs have 0.2 ms access times. For hard drives it takes longer to switch back and forth from different areas of the disk while this really is not the case with SSDs.
 
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