I am an SSD Convert -- How can you manage WITHOUT one !!!

[poppa bear]

I don't wait for everything to load. The AV and firewall load as soon as the desktop shows, so I start surfing as soon as my dock appears. A Guy

Because of it's speed SSD has really synced in brilliantly with rapid restore of my OS. I have a 2nd storage partition on the main HD, which contains a bare-bones activated Acronis image of Windows, with only mobo drivers installed. This is used if ever the need arises to do a clean installation. There is also a fully loaded Acronis image of Windows with all programs, but no personal data.

If the OS becomes badly corrupted/infected to the point of FUBAR, then I simply reload the Acronis image that has all programs. This used to take a long time on a standard SATA 1 TB HD. With SSD, it reloads 23.8 GB in about 7 minutes.

I also keep updated copies of all my user data on the 2nd storage partiton. This includes personally created folders as well as Windows folders such as Documents, Music, Videos, etc.

After the fully loaded OS is restored from the Acronis image, it's a simple matter to drag/drop all the personal folders/data to the active interface ... while the originals are still retained on the 2nd partition. It's an absolute joy to do this using SSD. Because it's being copied from SSD partition to SSD partiton, the speed of transfer is blistering. It takes exactly 27 seconds to copy across 3.07 GB of music.

So the whole system is up and running and up to date in a total of about 12 -14 minutes. Sure as hell beats a full reload. And it's brilliant for experimenting with the OS; since the dreaded full crash can be set right in the time it takes to have a slow espresso coffee!

And I have to give due credit to Acronis. I am not exaggerating in saying I have never had an Acronis back-up image of Windows that didn't validate properly. And it has been invaluable in restoring other persons PCs that I have set up that have been totalled. Even if a 100% clean install is needed, by creating an image of their old OS, when the new installation is complete, any or all of the files/folders can be selectively copied from the Acronis image, by what is called "mounting the image", so it acts like a normal GUI folder. Any folders/files from the corrupted OS can be screened with Anti-Virus before copying, as opposed to a generic all-in-one file transfer.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents worth.