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HD or SSD upgrade for desktop?

K

Kiri

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 10, 2008
Messages
176
Hi,
Currently my desktop system is running a pair of 640GB Western Digital WD6400AAKS drives, and I would like to add some more space and also get some more speed if I can.
At first I was thinking of adding another standard HD, but then thought I might be better off getting a SSD and fresh installing win7 and my apps on it. That would leave me with the 2 drives I currently have free to use exclusively for storage.

My other system specs are:

Core i7 920
Asus P6T motherboard
6GB OCZ DDR3 1600 RAM (3x2GB)
HD 4870 1GB Video Card
2x WD6400AAKS 640GB drives (not RAID)
Corsair 650TX PSU

The system is about 2.5 years old and I use it for video and photo editing (photoshop, premiere, etc), and occasional gaming. But recently I have felt that it is quite sluggish. Although a fresh install of win7 might fix that.

What do you think my best upgrade path would be in terms of data storage (with the aim of also increasing performance)?

Any specific drive recommendations are also very welcome.
Thanks!
 
The sensible way to do both would be to get 2 more WD6400AAKS's and run RAID 5 on the 4 drives. But I know that a good SSD blows away 4 WD Black 640GB's in RAID 5 on a hardware RAID card :p So it really depends on if you value storage room more than performance, and what your budget is.

Another cheap way to increase performance is just adding more RAM. 3 sticks of 4GB 1600 costs under $50 now and because Windows uses all spare RAM to cache disk activity, any RAM you don't use increases your disk performance.
 
hmm RAID scares me a little. lol ><
I could probably do it if it is really worth it though.

Ram is also a good idea, thanks. In fact, I'm thinking now that SSD and more RAM might be the way to go. Any specific recommendations?
 
What kind of budget? I'd recommend getting at least a 120GB SSD if you are going to get one - smaller drives can be a hassle to manage space on (depending on how many programs/games you regularly use). I'd look at either the Crucial M4 or the Samsung 830 - fast, reliable, and well-priced.
 
I'm actually thinking of going with an A-Data 120gb (AS510S3-120GM-C). It has a good price where I am.
 
The greatest way to see a speed increase (and you will see it) is the SSD. 120G is a good size. With most folks it'll do the Win7 OS and most (if not all) of their apps. I don't remember if the P6T has SATAIII or not. If it does, go that route. If not, a SATAII SSD will be cheaper, but slower than SATAIII, and you might consider 250G just because it'll be cheaper than its SATAIII brother.

About HDDs and RAID: I agree with your line of thought to use them for data. For me the next question is how you backup and I'll assume you have that problem addressed. Several RAID options can allow you better performance but they do not approach that of SSDs.

Since you're not using RAID that implies to me you need ~1.2T for storage. If that space is sufficient for now you might just stop with an SSD.

I've used RAID for years and if it suits your needs then I wouldn't hesitate to suggest it. But it will required you to move data around to build the RAID setup, maybe another reason not to change.

RAID was developed to enhance HD performance and safety against data loss. A little background for you to consider:

- RAID 0 using your 2 drives would give you the same available space and double the speed (this speed increase is fine but nothing like a SSD). One drive fails, you've lost your data --- have you backed up?
- RAID 5 as suggest by Xeth is a good option, it provides protection against a HD failure at the cost of some HD space and speed isn't quite as fast as RAID0.

Those aren't the only RAID options available but a little time with google will tell you more than you wanted to know.
 
deeppow, thanks for the thoughts. I actually bought the A-Data 120gb SSD and installed it last night.
I have finished installing win7 on it and it seems to be working well. I did not change it to ahci in the bios though, as some guides suggested. I didn't want to mess up my other two HDDs by doing this. Is that likely to be a problem?
Also, for some reason, windows decided to partition the SSD into two parts: The main partition, and a 100mb "system partition". Is that normal for SSDs?

I've decided to use my existing HDDs as standard data and storage drives. Not in RAID, just as normal. I don't really do any backing up... I really should, I know.
 
Trying to enable ACHI after installing Win7 can cause problems. I don't remember the details but as I remember it can be done by hand later (need to make registry changes) but do a google to check for the needed info.

Win7 does create the extra partition, it is normal.

Backing up just depends on the damage a data loss would cause. It is your call.
 
Kiri said:
deeppow, thanks for the thoughts. I actually bought the A-Data 120gb SSD and installed it last night.
I have finished installing win7 on it and it seems to be working well. I did not change it to ahci in the bios though, as some guides suggested. I didn't want to mess up my other two HDDs by doing this. Is that likely to be a problem?
Also, for some reason, windows decided to partition the SSD into two parts: The main partition, and a 100mb "system partition". Is that normal for SSDs?

I've decided to use my existing HDDs as standard data and storage drives. Not in RAID, just as normal. I don't really do any backing up... I really should, I know.
Click to expand...

The two partitions are normal for Windows 7 installs. Generally you SHOULD enable AHCI before install of 7 on the SSD. It will not in any way mess up the existing hard drives. Ideally you would disconnect the other hard drives, connect only SSD, enable AHCI, install windows, then shut down and reconnect the other drives.

Having said that you CAN (and you should) enable AHCI after the fact but it requires a registry tweak.Just follow this guide:
http://www.ithinkdiff.com/how-to-enable-ahci-in-windows-7-rc-after-installation/ Remember after making the registry change to restart and change to AHCI mode in your BIOS, and start up again.

PS- consider simply using one of your existing drives as a data storage drive, and the second one as a backup drive for the first one (not raid, just a backup drive). Use any number of backup software utilities for this (i like crashplan) or even you built in windows backup utility. ANY backup is better than no backup!!
 
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