Technical > PC Hardware Discussion/Reviews > New to SSD...Questions!

New to SSD...Questions!

probably because one would not be able to take full advantage of all the speed advantages of an SSD if one installed the OS on a conventional HDD. Intel SRT is a good compromise though not available for all platforms including the new Sandy Bridge-E X79 (or none Z68 chipsets).

reply to mattrixx
The hoops are only relevant to how much stuff you're trying to put on there. Consider getting a bigger SSD or another. Anything you want sped up on access times you put on the SSD, and if you run out of space you scale accordingly and get another or remove stuff.

I do exactly what you're saying except my OS and a few select programs are on my puny 60GB SSD. The advantages are, the OS loads faster and is snappier generally, depending on what it's accessing. I have other progs like my steam games on a HDD, only due to space but It's not like I lose fps or anything significant, just pretty much load times. Since the HDD can handle the thruput, but if you got some fragmented 5% free HDD it's not gonna run well and will be the bottleneck seeking all over the place.

HDDs and SSDs are still the bottleneck on any PC last I checked, anything to speed them up will show improvement since the other hardware can support whatever the drives can put out.

access times and thruput

Not sure why you need pointed out the advantages, you seem knowledgeable on the subject or maybe you have a more defined question that you're leading to.
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Let me tell you what Melba Toast is packin' right here, all right. We got 4:11 Positrac outback, 750 double pumper, Edelbrock intake, bored over 30, 11 to 1 pop-up pistons, turbo-jet 390 horsepower. We're talkin' some funkin' muscle.
-Wooderson

reply to mattrixx
About all it will speed up is windows loading... word might take 1second to load over 2.5 seconds... etc

If you have enough system ram and do not use the swap file... ssds do not show HUGE improvements once you are up and running.

You will get a ton of people saying omg ssd is amazing fast... I'll tell you between them and my WD black... you might see stuff open/load 20% faster on the ssd... Windows maybe 300%

reply to mattrixx
It's really all about what YOU want, and which programs YOU wish to go fast.

Example:

I have a 240GB Mushkin SSD loaded with Windows 7, and Office 2010, because that's what I use 99% of the time. Still have way over 1/2 of the drive empty. I have a few programs on a 1TB HDD that I infrequently use, with shortcuts to them on my Desktop.

My son, on the other hand, plays WOW, and has his OS loaded on a HDD, and WOW and all patches on a 128GB Intel SSD EXCLUSIVELY! That's pretty much all he does with it.

There are no rules, it's just a matter of deciding, and prioritizing which programs you want, that would take advantage of the SSD speed.
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Come fold for a cure with us @ Team Helix.

reply to mattrixx
Or one could use 1 SSD for the OS, AV and few select programs.
Another SSD specifically for games
And a HDD partitioned. 1 side for regular programs the other side for backups. (in my case that HDD is a Raptor)
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Last night I saw a naked cowgirl, she was floatin across the ceilin

reply to rusdi
The necessity of "prioritizing", likely comes from the relatively diminutive size of SSD units. While this is unlikely to change in the short term, there is apparently a minor issue with buying some larger SSD units (beyond the cost):

quote:

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I noted their 480GB* models are listed as having the same high IOPS specs, which we figure must be a misprint since *any* SandForce 2281 SSD with a capacity greater than 256GB will see a dip in 4K IOPS performance. This is due to the way the SF controller handles the mapping of LBA's. To double capacity from 240GB to 480GB, the SandForce controller's finite number of allocations must be reconfigured to utilize 8KB blocks (up from the standard 4KB - intentionally matched to the NTFS 4KB cluster size). This negatively impacts IOPS performance as a 4KB random write translates to the equivalent of an 8KB random write once the added overhead is taken into account.

If this is a truly hard limit, a 1TB SandForce 2281 SSD would have to again redouble its allocation unit to 16KB and would then be theoretically kneecapped to an again-halved ~20,000 4KB random writes.

*I confirmed the Force 3 and Force GT have specs of 50,000 and 55,000 random write IOPS on their respective listings over at Newegg.

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reply to WutanG

In my case I started off with a cheapish 64GB Kingston SSDNow V series SNV425-S2 unit and installed the OS on it as well as the applications I wanted. When it started to feel cramped I simply bought another of the same model (cheaper by then) and formed a RAID 0 array 2x64 for a total of 128GB. Its now part of a 3x64 + 1x60GB RAID 0 array for a total of 240GB of storage.

reply to mattrixx
I speculating now but the reason I think it is more advantageous to put the OS on the SSD is that the programs sometimes uses shared .DLL windows files, or other files unknown and will need to seek them. If the programs didn't call out to a DLL per say on Windows and was self contained folder that'd be different. But it seems programs made for Windows call out for these DLL, etc files hence why it's better to put the OS on a SSD.
--
Let me tell you what Melba Toast is packin' right here, all right. We got 4:11 Positrac outback, 750 double pumper, Edelbrock intake, bored over 30, 11 to 1 pop-up pistons, turbo-jet 390 horsepower. We're talkin' some funkin' muscle.
-Wooderson

reply to mattrixx
"Back to my devils advocate question: Why not install those Applications you desire to take advantage of the benefits of an SSD rather than installing an Operating System?
Is it truly more beneficial to have the O.S. installed on a (small) SSD?"

In your instance, if you don't turn off, or reboot your computer very often, yes placing the OS on the mechanical HDD and more frequently used programs on the SSD would be advantageous to some degree. However, many programs rely on Windows root drive to be installed to, (no option offered to install elsewhere but to C:/). I'm not sure you can get around this. I may be in error in this assumption, perhaps someone with more knowledge about program installation, and pointing to executable on different drives can answer that.

EDIT: What WutanG said.
--
Come fold for a cure with us @ Team Helix.

reply to mattrixx
I installed an SSD as the OS drive in one of my dedicated Windows 7 Media Center systems recently. It was giving me some problems so I decided to reconfigure it. Media Center is part of the Windows 7 Ultimate OS install in this case so I couldn’t just divide or arbitrarily decide the installation location independent of the OS installation. Even if I could I wouldn’t since I wanted the OS and Media Center on the SSD for faster overall performance. I set the recording location to the installed conventional 1TB HDD which is ideal for a number of different reasons.

reply to mattrixx
Well, after questioning how best to use an SSD, I decided one 64GB SSD was NOT going to cut it if I was to Install Win7 and any desired (mostly video) Programs.
I purchased another exact same Crucial M4 64GB SSD and went the RAID 0 "Striped" route for the boot drive, now with an effective 128GB RAID 0 setup,
adding a 500GB HDD afterwards for storage.

Now this was ALL NEW to me having never attempted a RAID config before, and I was surprised at how relatively easy it was supposed to be to setup after watching several U-Tubes.

I first had a physical problem connecting the two SSD drives in a caddy one on top of the other, then realizing there was NO way I was going to be able to put both SATA 3 right angle "L-connectors" on each SSD, since both cable`s right angle connectors were also right on top of each other! Switching them around and putting the right angle connector on the MB wasn't even an option due to the way they pointed one on top of each other and also towards the case.

Well looking and thinking, I realized that with an SSD it did NOT matter whether an SSD was "upside down" or not, so I turned over the top drive so the connector was pointing up
instead of down like the bottom drive`s connector, and was then able to connect up the two SATA 3 cables to each SSD and proceed.

Later on during the actual RAID config, and after I set in the UEFI/BIOS the SATA Ports to RAID from default AHCI for just the two Z68 Intel SATA 3 Ports that had my 2 SSDs, my Asus MB manual said to "press CTRL and I" to enter the RAID utility. I had initial trouble in that I couldn't figure out the key "trick" of first pressing Caps Lock key THEN pressing Ctrl and the (Capital) I key !! Also, my eyes aren't what they used to be! The book made the key look like what used to be called the "pipe" key, but the BIOS showed an I-Beam...Oh well I finally got it!

Speaking of key "tricks", when looking for the little Asus RAID Utility itself (after pressing the correct keys) The thing zipped on by so fast during POST, I thought I still hadn't gotten the damn key combination. Turns out I had to fall back on an old BIOS trick I learned years ago when shit zipped on by in the BIOS, not allowing one to react, and that was to hit the Shift and Pause/Break keys at the right time, in order to stop whats on the screen!
After finally being able to read and set the Asus RAID utilty, I was then finally able to set it to RAID 0 and finish up the actual RAID config.

OK, so now I`m installing Win7 64 bit, and I get to the part where it asks for the ISRT Pack drivers which are on my Asus Disc, plus I have newer updated drivers unzipped and ready to go on a USB flash drive. I point Windows to the correct driver folder(s) and it churns and comes back and says my Asus 64 bit drivers are UNSIGNED and it wont accept them WTF?
Long story short, I give them the 32 bit driver folder and it accepts that, and continues on with the Win7 installation!!! ARRGGGH!! After the install, I am able to update driver in Device Manager with the newer 64 bit drivers on the flash drive.

Win7 sure is "snappy", but I only have the O.S. installed. I put a few essentials like AVG
and such, then decide to visit Windows Updates. Oh boy, 100 updates ready to be installed!! Since I stupidly left "Automatic" instead of "Let me Decide" they were already downloaded to my new computer, so I go ahead and install them. After install I Reboot and almost have a heart attack! The damn thing shuts down saying "Dont turn off Power" then goes black . After rebooting, past the POST, it gets to "Windows is Starting" and just sits there with the stupid animation going around and around and around !!

OK, now what? I try rebooting, same thing, I shut down, same thing I try SAFE MODE,
it never finishes loading drivers and says "Please Wait". I go back to normal startup and same thing... only I just let it "churn", trying to figure out what to do. Should I do a "Repair", should I Re-Install. Did the Windows Updates somehow mess up my RAID? What to do? What to do?

Sitting there dejected and beat, I start to see some flickering on the "Hard Drive" Case light after being "on" continuously during all this time. Maybe there`s some hope after all?
What the hell the damn animation thingy finally stops and eventually I hear the Windows chime and I`m at the sign-in!
Bottom line is, installing all those Windows Updates, even with SSDs took FOREVER!!

I don't know if it was *because* I was installing on to RAID 0 SSDs or what??
Usually you see a MS Windows script or something saying: Windows is finishing installing Updates, or some kind of indication that Windows was "at work", but all I got was the damn animation thing! I have installed Windows Updates from "scratch" before, but they never took as long a time to complete and reach the sign in as this one.

All is well!! Whew!!

BTW I got a 7.9 WEI on the "boot" SSDs, and a 6.3 overall, based on the lowest score
coming from the Intel built in graphics of my i7-2600K Processor

So you installed "Service Pack 1" for Windows 7,....?

reply to mattrixx