- Mar 26, 2010
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- 18,530
My HTPC has been coming together one piece at a time, and right now I'm taking a real hard look at replacing my 160 GB Hitachi with an SSD for a boot drive. I already have a 1 TB drive for data storage. I will be running the latest Mythbuntu version, which is pretty minimalistic and focused on media center functionality without the unneeded productivity software and such.
One of the drives I am looking at is the Intel X25-V 40GB drive. I figure that 40GB is a good enough size for what I need (though depending on how much tv I record, I may augment the rest of my storage). The Intel drives have a good reputation, but this particular drive has a particularly low write speed. It is consistent, however, and the write speed does not drop much, even for 4KB random writes.
I've also got my eye on some Sandforce-1200 SSD's, though. From my research it appears that SF-1200 drives are mostly the same as far as performance and the selection can be based on price and warranty. They are particularly good at random writes and usually even beat out the Intel X25-M drives.
My question is whether getting a drive with a lower write speed is going to affect me much if the drive is only being used as an OS drive. It would have the operating system and all applications on it, but pictures, music, movies and recorded tv shows would all be stored on the data drive(s). All other things being equal I would just go with an SF-1200 drive, but if there is a good deal on the X25-V, can I pull the trigger confident that it will give me a significant boost in performance. For me, that means faster boot times, application loading, waking from sleep and shutdown. I'm just not familiar enough with how the day-to-day operations of an OS and it's applications uses disk space, and if all the files are stored on a separate drive if much writing is needed.
One of the drives I am looking at is the Intel X25-V 40GB drive. I figure that 40GB is a good enough size for what I need (though depending on how much tv I record, I may augment the rest of my storage). The Intel drives have a good reputation, but this particular drive has a particularly low write speed. It is consistent, however, and the write speed does not drop much, even for 4KB random writes.
I've also got my eye on some Sandforce-1200 SSD's, though. From my research it appears that SF-1200 drives are mostly the same as far as performance and the selection can be based on price and warranty. They are particularly good at random writes and usually even beat out the Intel X25-M drives.
My question is whether getting a drive with a lower write speed is going to affect me much if the drive is only being used as an OS drive. It would have the operating system and all applications on it, but pictures, music, movies and recorded tv shows would all be stored on the data drive(s). All other things being equal I would just go with an SF-1200 drive, but if there is a good deal on the X25-V, can I pull the trigger confident that it will give me a significant boost in performance. For me, that means faster boot times, application loading, waking from sleep and shutdown. I'm just not familiar enough with how the day-to-day operations of an OS and it's applications uses disk space, and if all the files are stored on a separate drive if much writing is needed.
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