Recommendations please...re SSD and plain HDD

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magoo

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Building new system for my son.
I am stupid about drives, never had more than 2 in any box and I don't care about doing RAID.

If I buy a SSD and a "normal" larger HDD for storage, how do I set up the SSD? What size SSD? What kind[brand]

I envision SSD of OS and drivers,etc. but do I put game programs on there? itunes? other shit? or should all his everyday stuff be loaded on the SATA HDD?

I really appreciate any advice, and please keep it simple.:D
 
I have an 80GB SSD on which I have Win7 and my applications. I have a fair number of applications, including larger ones like Photoshop and may other photo and video processing tools. I think the load came out to something like 30GB which default (ie. 4GB for me) sized paging files and hibernation files included.

Since the early 90s I have always put games on a different partition, at least, because of the large and variable size. I am not a fanatic gamer and it isn't my priority - I bought an SSD for general OS and application performance not exclusively to speed up my games. As such, my games are still on my HDD. Not to mention the fact that my installed game base is larger than the entire SSD right now.

I have, however, used LSE (Link Shell Extension) to bring the files belonging to one game used the most on the system back to the SSD for reasons of speed. The game still believes it is installed to the HDD (D: ) but I used LSE to make those symlinks back to the actual files which I copied to the SSD (C: ). This allows an increase in performance for that one game which is used daily and all the rest still sit on the HDD. With that one game copied over my space used has jumped from <50% to somewhere in the 70s%. I've heard it's best to always leave the SSD load leveling room to play with an never exceed 80% full so, basically, with just that one game it's now "full". Games can be huge, and I'd leave them on HDD and selectively move candidates to SSD as required. Also, since the OS and everything else is on SSD the HDD is really only tasked with data and gaming activity - it's still faster than it was when I was on one HDD.

I chose the Intel G2 SSDs based on random, small IO performance, support for TRIM, and various other factors at the time. I don't think you could go "wrong" with an Intel G2 but I think there are some units pulling ahead of the Intel at the present time.
 
If you're using Vista: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2009/08/27/ssd-performance-tweaks-for-vista/
If you're using Windows 7, it has SSD TRIM support built in already.

If your son is big on music, make sure the iTunes or WMP library is hosted on the spindle drive, as it may take up too much space on the SSD drive, which should be used mostly to boot the PC and to load applications faster. All applications should be installed on the SSD, but not all the data: My MP3s alone take 124GB.

If you are building now (kudos to you!), definitely go with a USB 3.0 and SATA III motherboard with eSATA. I would also suggest the Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB. It does fill quickly with vidcasts, home videos and movies. It probably looks like I am running ads for that drive, but it's just that it's the only SATA III drive in all of Seagate's range.

I would also strongly recommend to have an extra disk on an external eSATA connector. You should teach your son the importance of backups. DVD backups are just not big enough for today's storage capacities, and they prevent backups from being automated. It takes just 2 minutes to automate daily backups with the Backup and Restore application.
USB 3.0 is able to deliver enough power to get rid of the external disk case's 12V adapter, except I don't think any external case support this feature yet, so eSATA seems to be the best bet. Backup and Restore requires a separate disk for the backups.

Personally, I wouldn't use a SSD at the current pricing and storage capacity. A single SATA III disk is quite the beast already, the Barracuda has a big fat 64MB cache and what's a SSD if not memory chips? You also won't need a 2.5"/3.5" adapter or screwing your SSD disk to the side of the disk cage, and you must not forget that it's the dad's machine that should have the costly extras! ^-^
SSD drives probably require more maintenance to keep them with enough free space, such as deleting the temporary Internet files, unused files, etc. Not as frequently when you have 8 times more space.

A good reason to use a SSD is if your son does a lot of 3D rendering (architecture, design) and video editing. Having a fast disk in addition to a fast CPU does make a difference. But don't take my word for it, check around if there are performance benchmarks for such applications if relevant. You should move the source and rendered final files to the SATA drive, of course.
 
Thank you.

I honestly decided to do what you describe, because the SSDs are just too pricey for what they can do for me.

I stuck with WD blacks and added him a couple TB of space, with a "smaller" OS disc.

I think that will be the best alternative. Both new Discs cost less than 150 dollars.:D
 
Hope the "smaller" OS disk is still big enough.
I built one such machine for my sister, but her kids ended up saturating the system disk with huge game installs. The bloody things now come in several DVDs per game... ^-^
 
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