SSD and Hdd Hybrid Rig. Best uses?

Hello,

I recently purchased an OCZ Vertex 4 (240GB), which I'm using as my boot device, and for gaming. I also have a 1TB 7200 RPM HDD. I'm trying to decide what I should be using the HDD for.

I'm aware that an SSD has limited read/write cycles in its lifetime, but I'm really not too clear on much else. I am currently using the HDD for storage of files and downloads, as they tend to takeup much space. That being said, should I install programs that do not need the extra .100 second opening time reduction to the HDD? I'm certainly not conservative in use of space (as demonstrated by my 500GB of data on my HDD), so I'm just looking for some advice on how to get the most out of my SSD and maximize the use of my HDD with it.

Thanks in advance,
Collin Biedenkapp

As far as the limited read/write cycles go, I think far, far, far too much emphasis is placed on this. It's true, the # of writes is limited, however, its most likely going to be a much longer time then anybody plans to use the drive. I would be more concerned with a controller failure on the device, then I would be total # of write cycles.

OCZ has come up with a formula to help people understand how long these SSD's will last. From what I have read, you take capacity x # of write cycles and then divide by the daily write rate = # of days it should last. So, on a 120GB SSD, with 3,000 write cycles, if you wrote 100GB every single day, it would last (120 x 3000)/100 = 3600 days...or approx 10 years. So, if you wrote 100GB of data, every single day, your drive wouldn't wear out for 10 years.

For me, anything that's pure storage just lives on my mechanical hard drive. This saves me space on my SSD for more apps and more games. Unless I was out of space, I wouldn't install any application period to the mechanical hard drive.

OS, applications, and pagefile all go on my 80GB Intel 320 series SSD (even with 16GB of RAM, Windows 8 doesn't allocate more than about 5GB of pagefile by default). All my data, including my VMware guests, go on my 500GB HDD (7200 RPM).

Kebero said:

OS, applications, and pagefile all go on my 80GB Intel 320 series SSD (even with 16GB of RAM, Windows 8 doesn't allocate more than about 5GB of pagefile by default). All my data, including my VMware guests, go on my 500GB HDD (7200 RPM).

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That answers all the remaining questions I have about using an SSD.

I have no great need for one but with the way the prices are dropping I suspect I'll be putting the released version of Win 8 on a brand new SSD.

80 Gb = 16,000 five Mb drives. I paid $2500.00 for my first full height 5 Mb drive back when that size meant something.
$40,000,000 for 80 Gb at the time...

Hehe...

I concur about the write cycle thing being overblown. In fact in my machine just last week with an Intel SSD and a WD spinner. The spinner died with MUCH less use and the SSD is going strong.

I leave the OS and important but smaller installed files on the SSD, including photoshop and music production software etc. But then photos, work I create, and HUGE games that take up like 16 gig go on the spinner. Smaller games I may put on the SSD. Skyrim rocks on the SSD, the screen loading times are almost non existent.

I also like to keep everything on the single SSD for the OS and apps so that I can make an image of my SSD to my HDD, and I can restore the entire system at a later time by just restoring the SSD and I can completely leave the HDD alone.

Kebero said:

OS, applications, and pagefile all go on my 80GB Intel 320 series SSD (even with 16GB of RAM, Windows 8 doesn't allocate more than about 5GB of pagefile by default). All my data, including my VMware guests, go on my 500GB HDD (7200 RPM).

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On a HDD I get 8GB of pagefile for 8GB of RAM. And I guess I would have around 16GB pagefile if I had 16GB RAM.

Windows probably uses other (special) settings when dealing with pagefiles on SSD's.

But I think the pagefile is not used that much.

Thanks for mentioning this.

Oh, one thing you need to do is move the hibernate file off the SSD to the spinner. That's a HUGE waste of space on an SSD. A machine with 16 gigs of ram will instantly lose 16 gigs of SSD on a default install due to the hiberfil.sys file created to hold the hibernation state.

Win 8 doesn't allocate pagefile space the way previous versions of Windows do. I have 16GB of RAM, and Windows only makes a 5GB pagefile. The same with Hibernate. I'm fairly certain that my hiberfile.sys is nowhere near 16GB.

If it is, that's definitely new as of windows 8. But still, there's no reason to waste even that amount of precious SSD space when you don't have too

Given that a lot of us with SSDs also have HDDs for our data files, is the space really that "precious?" I really like how fast Windows 8 boots on my SSD with UEFI and the way it uses the hiberfile to hold boot items.

Hi there
t he read / write life cycle was only really applicable to the early generation of SSD's -- in "Normal" use they will probably outlast your computer especially if its a laptop.

Use for OS / applications, possibly page file (assuming you have more than one disk in your machine) and if you run photo shop allocate photoshop scratch space on it too especially if using large camera RAW files and loads of layers).

Any user data such as music, office type documents, spreadsheets, scans, photos, etc should be stored on typical spinners.

I've got 3 SSD's used daily and they've all outlasted a cheapish external USB WD "Passport" type drive - no more WD drives for me -- Samsung SSD's and external USB3 drives for me now.

To those who haven't installed an SSD -- you will be amazed at the performance improvement by running the OS from an SSD even on an older computer -- but ensure you have a decent amount of RAM in it too -- while SSD's last longer these days than the earlier models it's no point increasing the wear on them (read / write cycles -- there's no "physical" wear in the classic sense) by causing excessive read/writes due to lack of RAM.

Cheers
jimbo

Kebero said:

Given that a lot of us with SSDs also have HDDs for our data files, is the space really that "precious?" I really like how fast Windows 8 boots on my SSD with UEFI and the way it uses the hiberfile to hold boot items.

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Only place I have a problem with it is on my single drive laptop...