what to get, 60gb or 120gb ssd?

[Hicks12]

Really getting annoyed at how slow my pc is, booting takes a pretty long time (i can make a coffee and still be back intime, ) and the snappiness of the system has gone, i think its time for an SSD as i have noticed a huge difference with my laptop that now has one, time for the desktop to have an upgrade!.

Im not to sure what to buy though, i was going to get a vertex 3 or the new corsair sandforce but the v3 is out of stock and way to expensive(i was hoping for the next gen to drop pricing ) and the corsair equivalent still isnt anywhere to be seen.

So im thinking its going to be out of these drives:

Vertex 2/e
corsair force
crucial C300/400

now i dont want to spend much really as i am still looking for a new job and currently a student! And i will most likely end up getting a new one next year if pricing drops and performance increases, so im leaning towards around the 60gb mark, are there any real benefits to going higher? All i want to fit is, windows 7 OS + Basic software (office/browser/skype) and if possible starcraft 2 (around 10gb, not a problem if it dont fit though).

So whats people suggestions on the drive to get? Lowest is probably better but i guess as long as its near £100 its ok.

Thanks

[jim]

You can probably manage with a 60GB SSD, although it wouldn't be ideal.

I'm running on a 32GB one at the moment (albeit only for a month, so I don't mind) and it has been a gigantic pain in the neck. I've been shifting everything off it in the vague hope of getting enough space just to run the OS, page file has moved to a hard drive, hibernation disabled, outlook data files moved to hard drive (and now Outlook doesn't quite work properly).

Can you fit on 60GB? Yeah, of course. You could probably squeeze Starcraft on there as well if you move the page file, get shut of hibernation and all the rest of it. I would personally go for a larger SSD but a cheaper model - performance differences between SSDs aren't big enough to be concerned about in my view. Not now that those horrendous JMicron drives have stopped, anyway.

[Hicks12]

well i currently have a 40gb intel v drive on my laptop, ive had to turn off a few things but i havent ran out of space, have about 15 or 20gb left and thats with OS/office/browser/visual studios! also have a page file still enabled .

ive been having a look after posting to see what other capacities there are but it seems the 80/90gb sandforce drives(ocz/corsair) are higher per gb than the 60gb capacities which seems a bit odd . I would prefer a high performance drive ideally, i had always seen the kingston one as a good "budget" drive but even that is ~£80 now which isnt really much cheaper than the £89 vertex 2e.

However i will still keep looking for cheaper places and different drives . if cex finally reply back i might be able to sell my 22" lg monitor and fund it... or maybe i should shove it on ebay lol

[jim]

96GB Kingston seems a pretty good pricepoint, not much difference between the 64 and 96. I agree that the 80/90 are overpriced though, definitely.

Mind you, it's still about £40 more than the 64GB, which is a fairly big chunk of cash.

I'm guessing your planning to run in tandem with a mechanical disk?

[Hicks12]

of course , i have a 500gb seagate and a 640gbAAKS.. will be reformatting all of them and repartitioning as they are a bit messy at the minute, AAKS will be for gaming and the 500gb will be running a server OS along with being used as storage (also got a 500gb external for that).

[Hicks12]

just had a look on scan again, noticed they have the corsair f60 on offer for £1 less than the vertex2e and since im guaranteed to get the 35nm version i may go for that, still working out if i should get a higher size but its a fair chunk of money to lay down when my games arent taking to long to load, its just everything else lol.

[Benihana]

I recently got a Vertex Bigfoot 90GB and wish I had shelled out the extra for the 120GB, never hurts to have more space than you think you'll need.

[Hicks12]

thanks for the comment, looked around at 120gb drives and the price difference per gb isnt much making it a less attractive offer, i remembered a mate owed me £80 so im using that to now cover my SSD haha. I have put in an order for the f60 @£88, i cant see myself needing more at this time, but if i do then i can buy another one (same cost as a single 120gb drive) and possibly raid0 them

[Hawker1986]

TBH I find that 60GB is plenty, im sure you wont be disappointed. Ive got a 32 in my media centre and laptop which are both 1/2 empty and 64 in my main PC which is also 1/2 empty with office, pagefile, photoshop + other usual programs. The 128GB in my other PC is literally 3/4 empty...

Hawker

[Hicks12]

yeah im yet to fill my laptops 40gb drive so im pretty confident it should be plenty.

Now is there anything else i need to do apart from the following:
Set bios to ahci
turn off defrag
think thats it?

[Benihana]

I used to have a 40GB raptor as my OS drive, was great as you could easily back up the entire drive before wiping it, but with the SSD I really want to put games and apps on it to make the most of it, but my Steam folder is about 150GB so that's out the window!

[watercooled]

I don't think games see that big of a difference being on SSDs anyway, especially mainstream ones - games usually rely on large sequential reads where HDDs perform well and even better than some SSDs.

[barry2811]

yeah im yet to fill my laptops 40gb drive so im pretty confident it should be plenty.

Now is there anything else i need to do apart from the following:
Set bios to ahci
turn off defrag
think thats it?

Leave defrag enabled, Windows will disable it for the SSD, but your storage drive will still need defragging.

Only other things I do are;
- do a powercfg -h off to turn off hibernation
- set a 2GB fixed pagefile on the SSD (I have 8GB of RAM, but still keep a pagefile)
- disable drive indexing on the SSD (drive properties)

From doing lots of reading on the subject and plenty of testing this is what I've found works the best.

I have an F60 and must say I'm pleased with it overall. I have 33GB still free, and that is with Windows 7, Office 2007, Visual Studio, Windows SDK, DirectX SDK, and all my usual programs installed. I use my mechanical drives for games but I could put my favourite couple on the SSD if I wanted really.

[Hicks12]

thankyou barry i forgot about my hdds haha, looks pretty much what i did on my lappy(forgot that i changed the pagefile aswell) guess i should have room to shove VS on there to do work lol.

Cant wait till tuesday now lol, monday getting new watercooling gear and so ill have a nice and refreshed system during tuesday .

[Millenwagon]

definitely get a 120. I think you'd regret only settling for 60, instead of having 2 60's you might as well just have one 120. Although you could just get a 60 (for the cheaper option) then get another 60 later on if you wanted.

[Hicks12]

well the f60 is posted . the plan will be either raid them or get whatever comes next.its faster to have them in raid and is the same price so i think its a good idea