HHD/SSD Upgrade

[AdamAnubis]

Right, few questions
I'm looking at getting (atleast) a TB HDD to add on to my current system.

I'll probably also get a SSD boot drive too (small, 32gb). What programs are worth putting on it? OS obviously, firefox, but I can't think of anything else that will fit. Would it be possible to get steam onto it, but not the games? Or would that make loading them really slow? Steam, Firefox and my OS are the only things I boot daily that would really make a difference.


Another question, Vista's currently on my 500GB (which might be dieing). Is there anyway I can get this across to a SSD boot drive without having to re-install everything and start from scratch? Or should I just get an upgrade for windows 7 as I'm starting from scratch? Plus, if I did this, how would I get rid of the vista install without it all going horribly wrong? (EasyBCD?) If steam was on the SSD would I be able to install the games on the HDD?

With the SSD - does the Write/Read speed make that much difference for booting? Basically, is worth paying double the price for the extra performance? And are these affected by SATA 2/3 in the same way that HDD's are?

Sorry for the amount of questions, I'm just kinda confused as to what to do

[redddraggon]

Don't bother putting Steam on the SSD, steam is only a GUI for the management and downloading of games, it won't actually improve gaming unless you put games on the SSD.

I'd install Steam on the separate drive and put slow loading (important) games on the SSD using symlinks. Steam always installs everything into the steam directory, so you have to use to symlinks if you want steam games not in the steam directory. Generally I don't find loading times an issue with lots of games I run, so It's easier to run steam on the HDD and then symlink the slow loading games I play on the SSD.

On my SSD (when I get it back)- I have Win7, Firefox, BF:BC2 and Fallout3 (and those games will be deleted or moved back to the HDD when I've finished with them

[AdamAnubis]

I'd install Steam on the separate drive and put slow loading (important) games on the SSD using symlinks. Steam always installs everything into the steam directory, so you have to use to symlinks if you want steam games not in the steam directory. Generally I don't find loading times an issue with lots of games I run, so It's easier to run steam on the HDD and then symlink the slow loading games I play on the SSD.

Yeah I thought that, it's just when it loads up on start up takes a while but nothing too bad. Wasn't sure if you could install games in seperate directories somehow but didn't think you could. What size SSD do you have? The only game I'd use really is CoH and that's about 10gb so could be a squeeze. Nor is it exactly slow loading.

[redddraggon]

60GB. Much smaller than that and I probably would bother installing any games on it.

Steam does take a bit of time to start up, but it's a one time thing (I doubt you'll keep opening and closing it down) and I don't have it loading on start up - I don't always want it running.

[AdamAnubis]

Yeah, true. Hmm...that's that answered. Now for the rest