SSD Question: How Much Space?

[singingigo]

I purchased the $30 student Win7 deal and downloaded it this morning. (Here's to hoping the move to 64-bit is smooth!) I'm planning to splurge and buy a new hard drive to install it on. I was thinking about an SSD for reduced noise & the speed boost. My question is "How much space do I need?"

I have plenty of hard drive space on 3 other drives for data and some of my programs. This is what I would like to load:

1. Win 7 Pro 64-bit
2. AVG antivirus
3. Office 2007
4. Canon MP620
5. Civ 3 complete
6. Age of the Empires 3 + Warchiefs
7. Adobe CS4

Does anyone got any ideas on how much space that will take? Is a 30GB SSD big enough? If it's not, what won't fit?

Thanks!

 

[saint19]

Maybe yes, but with updates, in the future will be not enough.

 

[singingigo]

Anyone got any numbers for how much space these things take?

 

[saint19]

Win 7 (6GB) + Office 2007 (2GB Max.) + Adobe CS4 (25GB for master collection, or 11GB for premium)...the games, printer and antivirus i don't know the used space.

 

[singingigo]

Thanks! So that would mean I'm looking at 19 GB for Windows + Productivity Apps.

Another question comes to mind...how full can I fill an SSD? I know with regular hard drives, when you get to 85-90%, things really seem to slow down. Is that true with SSDs?

 

[sminlal]

Don't forget that you also need space for a pagefile (unless you move or disable it), a hibernation file (unless you disable that), and some reserved space for System Restore and Recycle Bin.

Personally, I think you're going to find 30GB to be a tight fit and in your place I'd look for a 60 or 80GB drive. But if that breaks the budget then go ahead with a 30GB with the idea that you can always install programs on your HDD if you run out of space on the SSD.

I would plan on leaving at least 25% of the drive free, although in performance terms this won't be as important if you buy a drive that has a good controller and supports TRIM.

 

[singingigo]

I will probably disable the pagefile if I get the SSD. I have 4GB DDR2-1066, and I could go up to 6 GB if I need to.

I was thinking about the OCZ Vertex http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...om/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227393..

 

[saint19]

I will probably disable the pagefile if I get the SSD. I have 4GB DDR2-1066, and I could go up to 6 GB if I need to.

I was thinking about the OCZ Vertex http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...om/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227393..

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Don't forget the space for updates, this also need space.

 

[singingigo]

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Don't forget the space for updates, this also need space.

19GB for Windows + Apps should give me plenty of room for updates. I'd like to squeeze a game or two on there to speed up load times, but we will have to see how that goes.

Any thoughts on the OCZ Vertex SSD?

 

[jasperjones]

Also take into account that a 30GB drive is going to be considerably slower than the 80GB+ drives ppl often recommend for desktops.

 

[xrodney]

I just installed W7 professional on 128GB patriot torqx SSD disk and it took 25GB from disk so i would say 60GB is minimum.

 

[sub mesa]

I do want to add that using on-demand virus scanners that always run in the background will slow down any I/O done, because it first wants to scan the data before its allowed to go to the application instead. So using anti-virus which runs in the background slows down your I/O. This can nullify the speed effect of an SSD possibly. Especially Norton is notorious for its resource usage. Don't know about AVG.

 

[singingigo]

Two more thoughts:

1. there are several 30GB SSD that offer the same class of performance as 80GB+ SSD. OCZ Vertex is one of them.

2. Norton AV 2010 actually uses less resources than most other current AV products. Symantec seems to have taken note of the dog that it's been in the past.

I decided 30GB was too small, and I didn't want to raid, and I couldn't afforn an 80GB. So, I went with a WD Caviar Black 640GB. Thanks!