SSD Upgrade Advice

[explodatron]

I'm looking to change my OS drive to an SSD, but I don't want to spend a ton of money to do it. From what I've read here and from reviews, the 64GB and 128GB Crucial M4 drives are the best bang for the buck. But it looks like the 64GB is significantly slower than the 128GB.

I would really only use the SSD for the OS itself, all my programs, and then maybe Skyrim or something. I have a 1TB HITACHI Deskstar 7K1000.D which I could use for my storage needs and it hits ~150Mb read/write which is plenty for almost any game.

So should I get the 64GB SSD or is the faster 128GB worth the extra money? I do install a good number of applications, a few programs from the Adobe suite being the biggest.

 

[mcnumpty23]

i would go for the 128gb

i can get all my software and games on there using a few tweaks to recover space like lower the pagefile if you

have over 4gb ram and delete the hyberfil.sys file and turn off system restore

and still have 60gb space left

dont see the point of using an ssd and putting some programs on a mechanical second drive--i only put

music,video etc on the second drive

 

[explodatron]

i would go for the 128gb

i can get all my software and games on there using a few tweaks to recover space like lower the pagefile if you

have over 4gb ram and delete the hyberfil.sys file and turn off system restore

and still have 60gb space left

dont see the point of using an ssd and putting some programs on a mechanical second drive--i only put

music,video etc on the second drive

Yeah I have 8GB so I could safely turn off the page file I think. You think I should try to stick all my games on the SSD too? I mean, how many games really benefit from an SSD? I've heard only big open world games like Skyrim really benefit.

 

[goodguy713]

Depends on personal prefernce really... keep in mind that steam only wants to install games on the same drive as the os.. personally i went with a patriot wildfire from amazon they had a 50 dollar mail in rebate at the time id check them out .. they usually have the same if not better deals then new egg or tiger direct .. i currently have bf3 and supreme commander and cities xl 2012 installed on my ssd .. by the way cities xl is slow as hell .. im thinking due to programming .. i have an decent system so but check out patriot pyro or wildfire others will say ocZ ... i picked mine based on nand type .. /performance

 

[explodatron]

Depends on personal prefernce really... keep in mind that steam only wants to install games on the same drive as the os.. personally i went with a patriot wildfire from amazon they had a 50 dollar mail in rebate at the time id check them out .. they usually have the same if not better deals then new egg or tiger direct .. i currently have bf3 and supreme commander and cities xl 2012 installed on my ssd .. by the way cities xl is slow as hell .. im thinking due to programming .. i have an decent system so but check out patriot pyro or wildfire others will say ocZ ... i picked mine based on nand type .. /performance

Well there is this: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/15/joy-install-steam-games-to-other-drives/ I hear it works very well. Then I could use Steam to install some games to the SSD and the rest, stuff like counter strike source, to the mechanical drive.

Well I guess I'll just go with the 128GB anywayus for the peace of mind lol. Thanks for the help everyone.

 

[mcnumpty23]

i wouldnt turn off the page file just lower it to about 512mb

as you use adobe-- programs like cs5 may not work properly with no page file

i find any game that loads levels runs faster

played arkham asylum and every time you leave or enter a building it loads the outside or inside scene

 

[explodatron]

i wouldnt turn off the page file just lower it to about 512mb

as you use adobe-- programs like cs5 may not work properly with no page file

i find any game that loads levels runs faster

played arkham asylum and every time you leave or enter a building it loads the outside or inside scene

Oh that's good to know. I found the Crucial M4 128GB on Amazon for 159.99 vs Newegg's 174.99. Guess I'm buying that. I'm excited! lol

I wish I could select multiple posts as best answer. You've all been so helpful.

 

[greenrider02]

I would suggest the 128GB as well, and DO put all your games on it. The reason for this isn't just in-game load times, but also how fast the game (or anything installed on the SSD) boots up.

If you start running out of space, just take some of your less used steam games and back them up to your HDD, then delete them from SSD. If you want to play it again, the restore only takes a few minutes with the SSD, and it's no great inconvenience, and you still get boot/load speeds that you want.

 

[greenrider02]

If you want a really nice page-file solution, buy at least an extra 4GB of RAM and set it up as a RAMDisk, to which you set all your temp files and a ~2GB page-file. Saves writes on your SSD, and gets a nice speed boost too.

Keep in mind though that files on the RAMDisk Poof! disappear once you shut down your system, but that's why the files on it are ones that do not need saving.

 

[explodatron]

If you want a really nice page-file solution, buy at least an extra 4GB of RAM and set it up as a RAMDisk, to which you set all your temp files and a ~2GB page-file. Saves writes on your SSD, and gets a nice speed boost too.

Keep in mind though that files on the RAMDisk Poof! disappear once you shut down your system, but that's why the files on it are ones that do not need saving.

Would it really be necessary? Would putting the page file on my single platter drive have a negative impact on system speed?

 

[Soda-88]

keep in mind that steam only wants to install games on the same drive as the os..

say what now?

steam is portable along with all the games that come with it, you can just move it to hdd

also @OP

you can just disable pagefile on ssd partition and set it on partition residing on your mechanical drive

 

[greenrider02]

Necessary? No. But consider the difference in access time and speed between RAM and an HDD, which is, if I remember from my system architecture class, a factor of ~1000 or more on access and a factor of ~100 on speed.

Point being, it makes your system in general even snappier, for a whopping $20-$30, and I'm sure you've wasted that much on something less helpful.

 

[Soda-88]

Would it really be necessary? Would putting the page file on my single platter drive have a negative impact on system speed?

no simply because pagefile will only be used for error logging in case of bsod seeing as u have ample ram

 

[explodatron]

no simply because pagefile will only be used for error logging in case of bsod seeing as u have ample ram

This is kind of what I thought. Almost seems like a waste to me to use RAM for caching like that. If I had 12-16GB of ram in the first place I'd doubt I'd ever run out of memory and need the page file lol.

 

[greenrider02]

no simply because pagefile will only be used for error logging in case of bsod seeing as u have ample ram

Our very own Tom's writers have shown that lots of programs still use the pagefile even though they don't need to, Adobe CS5 for instance. The pagefile was designed as a spillover for your RAM for program data, essentially a copy of everything cached in RAM and CPU and then the rest that didn't fit. However, some programs, to limit their use of RAM, had a set limit on the amount of RAM used before spilling it to the Page-file, regardless of the fact that there is plenty left to use. It is these programs that also encounter glitches when you disable the PF.

I would also like to reiterate how useful it is for temp files too. You can set your browser's temp files there, your systems temp files there, and if you're a prolific Photoshop user, I've heard of people setting their auto-save location to the RAMDisk, so going back to where you were an hour ago (or whenever) is nearly instant. then when you have a finished copy, you back it up to another drive (or two).

Again, it can only help.

 

[RetiredChief]

1) Quote: Keep in mind though that files on the RAMDisk Poof! disappear once you shut down your system, but that's why the files on it are ones that do not need saving.
End Quote. NOT True.
During shutdown the contents of the Ramdrive are copied to the HDD, or SSD -Your choice. On Power up this file is then read back into the Ram (Ramdrive). Free One up to 4 Gigs, $15 for > 4 gigs.
Ref (one I use): http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk

2) Ram Drive, using AS SSD is 10 X faster than a SSD. I have 16 Gigs and have a Ramdisk program that I can enable/disable.

3) On Page files, as several have stated, best to set to a small Value. I would use 512 Mb. If you get an "out-of-memmory" error simply change to say 1024 mbs. Just set min and max to these same values. If realy pushed for that "`1 Gig" space, then select none for drive "C" and put on HDD, very small performance hit.