Should I use an SSD for a boot drive or not?

[Acomputernewbie]

I'm currently building my first PC and wanted to know if I should use SSDs or not. My brother told me I should just get a small SSD, 60-90GB, and reuse my HDD from my current PC after I format it. He says I should use the SSD as a "boot drive". I don't know what that is and I didn't get a chance to go in depth about the subject with him. He recommended Corsair's Force Series GT. I wanted to know everyone else's opinion on the matter. Should I go with that set up or my current set up, HDD for apps and OS and ex HDD for everything else? Thank you.

Oh, btw, are there any downsides to SSDs? I've been reading about them and everyone loves them over HDDs. Are they really the second coming or is there a set of cons I'm not seeing in any articles?

 

[notshugo]

All I hear is that some SSD's are unreliable after sometime.

 

[drew13]

SSD's, after a few years, become a bit unstable but can be refreshed with a flash. A boot drive is what you install windows 7 to. If you install windows 7 to an ssd you'll boot in like 7-8 seconds and run windows 7 programs much faster compared to a hard drive. so basically what you'd do is install the ssd, unplug the hdd (sata cable only) until after you install windows and get it running, plug in the hard drive and use that as storage and if you wanted to install 1 game onto ssd that you play the most and use the hard drive for other games and videos. Hope I helped.

 

[Acomputernewbie]

Best answer selected by Acomputernewbie.

 

[Student9]

Best answer selected by Acomputernewbie.

nI'm new to the SSD question myself. Considering using 120GB SSD as boot drive for my Windows 7 x64 build. I chose the size because of the way Microsoft has restructured the file system making it harder to spread files out over multiple drives...gotta allow for growth.
nI am wondering what you ultimately did and how things have turned out so far?
n
nThanks,
n Joe