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Caerid11
10-16-2009, 08:56 AM
Good afternoon all.

I'm hoping to hear some opinions on setting up Windows 7 on an SSD drive and what I'm thinking about doing. My current rig specs are in my sig, and I'm using a 160gig Velociraptor as my current OS/Programs drive. This is mainly a gaming rig with some photo/video editing on the side.

I was thinking it would be best(?) to get 1 small SSD (thinking 30G either an Intel X25M or OCZ Agility) for just Windows 7 and my video/sound drivers and nothing else. Then an 80G Intel X25M (G2 of course for TRIM) for JUST installing games (Dragon Age/CoD/Mass Effect/Crysis type stuff), and I can throw any other programs on the old Velociraptor.

Or would it be better to just get the biggest SSD I can afford and install everything on it? I know these drives don't get fragmented but would having all install/uninstalls done on the same drive as the OS degrade performance after a while?

Also feel free to pimp any SSD drives you're using, from what I've read the Intels and OCZs seem to be superior.
Mabyboi
10-16-2009, 09:51 AM
the nice setups i see are a 60gb ssd for OS and programs, and then like a TB for storage...
skid00skid00
10-16-2009, 07:08 PM
Most people are doing raid to get double the bandwidth.
I chose to put OS & pgms on 1 drive, swap for OS and swap for Photoshop, and temp files on a second drive (while NOT using raid).
One drive will work just fine, as there's no wait time for an arm to seek.
HydrogenAlpha
10-18-2009, 03:08 AM
Personally I'd get a couple of intel x-25 m 80GB and Raid 0 them. I hate working across 2 drives where it's possible to avoid. The sustained write speed of the Intel drives is their Achilles heel, but you can more than double it (I know that sounds wrong but it has been shown in a few speed tests) by RAID 0 ing them. You have GOT TO SEE the speed of these things installing updates and applications.
The only drawback to RAID 0 that I think is really relevant to these SSDs is the extra boot time to initialize the RAID controller, but it's really only a few seconds. Data loss on SSD RAID 0 is possible (it happened to me when my coolermaster 1250 pro PSU died last week and fried one of the x-25m drives in the array - but that would have happened even if it wasn't in an array), it's probably less likely than for a single spinning disk HDD.
The other major advantage to RAID 0 on SSD is reducing and levelling wear across all drives. The more full an intel SSD is the more wear it suffers.

My two-pence worth.
Halk
10-18-2009, 09:58 AM
RAID for SSDs doesn't actually deliver the real life improvements you may imagine, and adds a few cons into the mix.

I'd simply go for a 120GB or a 160GB drive. Vista/W7 x64 have a bit of a bloat issue.
lowfat
10-18-2009, 10:12 AM
RAID for SSDs doesn't actually deliver the real life improvements you may imagine, and adds a few cons into the mix.

I'd simply go for a 120GB or a 160GB drive. Vista/W7 x64 have a bit of a bloat issue.

Agreed. Link to my comparison I did a month or so ago.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=232796