Boot drive recommendations (SSD or HDD)?

[cheekster]

Hi.

Need to order a boot drive onto which Windows 7 Home Premium will be loaded later this month. What would you recommend? A small capacity SSD or something like a Samsung F3 HDD?

Only plan to install the OS, so don't really need a large drive, although I understand with the Samsung F3, only the 1TB drive has 32MB cache (500GB only has 16GB). Not sure if that will make a huge difference to performance.

Don't play games on PC but do want fast read/write speeds.

Best deals currently available on SSD's?

Thanks.

Cheekster.

[shaithis]

Of course, if you can stretch to an SSD it would be the best performer but you need to way the cost up.

The 80GB Intel G2 drives are £170, which is quite a lot of money but they are amazingly fast. WD cavier black would be the best alternative if the SSD seems too expensive.

[kalniel]

Either an Intel 80GB G2 SSD, or if that's too much, the Samsung F3 1TB. 'Only' 32mb cache won't impact performance, and it performs better than the caviar black.

[UseItNow]

Again, SSD if you can afford it, however, the new Samsung F3 drives are very fast if you can't justify the cost of an SSD.

I too am looking at whether there would be any performance diffence between the 500Gb & 1Tb F3 drives!

[GheeTsar]

Only problem with the Intel G2 80GB drive is that you might not be able to get hold of one before the release of Windows 7!

[shaithis]

Speak to the guys at span.com, a couple freinds rang there today on my recomendation and have been guaranteed a drive from their next delivery (7 days time). I don't think their site gets a huge amount of traffic, although their service is excellent.

[cheekster]

Thanks for the replies guys.

So has the new Samsung F3 replaced the WD Cavier Black as the boot HDD of choice as far as speeds go? 500GB or 1TB would be best as far as speed is concerned?

Might order one of those in time for the Windows 7 launch and upgrade to the Intel G2 80GB or 120GB when stock becomes more readily available and the prices come down?

Does everyone who uses a seperate HDD for their OS, install all programs on the same drive or onto a seperate one? Sorry if it's a silly question. My only concern is if the OS went belly up for any reason and needed re-installing, I'd save the time having to re-install all my loaded programs too.

Cheekster.

[marshalex]

not sure about the 1tb f3 but the 500gb is a lot faster than my caviar black (going on windows installation times and seems to load windows pretty snappy as well so i'd thoroughly recommend it, cant really go wrong for ~£35 either. i'm hoping that i can get a cheap intel SSD through work but if not i'm very tempted to get one

[mraquinn]

It's a tough shout really - SSDs are amazing but I'm not convinced as to whether day to day you'd see enough performance improvement to justify the huge cost.

[mac124]

A couple of F3's raided are as quick on transfer speeds its only access times where the SSD's come into their own, and tbh that really doesn't justify the cost per GB tbh. Still if you have the ££ then it's entirely your decision, but as you are asking i suspect you have your own doubts.

My two 500GB F3's in raid 0 short stroked to a 300ish GB partition.

[vti_786]

iv not really looked into hdd upgrades for a long lite as the wait on xp loading hasn't bothered me nor have i been a gamer on my pc, but i wanted to know wouldn't the wd 10,000rpm be faster than the samsung F3, sorry if i sound like a computer novice, i aint, but for a long time i haven't bothered with any hardware upgrades or anything

[kalniel]

iv not really looked into hdd upgrades for a long lite as the wait on xp loading hasn't bothered me nor have i been a gamer on my pc, but i wanted to know wouldn't the wd 10,000rpm be faster than the samsung F3, sorry if i sound like a computer novice, i aint, but for a long time i haven't bothered with any hardware upgrades or anything

Only in access time - transfer speeds are not generally faster, and they cost a lot more. If you're spending that kind of money then you're better off with an SSD.