just bought a 64 GB Samsung 830 SSD, am I mad?

[Anteries]

these are going relatively cheap on on Amazon, £55 it was sort of an impulse buy. Received wisdom on these forums is that you need a least 120 gigabytes if not more. I wonder if anyone here is getting on successfully with a 64 GB drive.

I don't play games, but my Windows 8 installation seems larger than I expected, about 35 gigabytes. My logic is I don't particularly need one at all really so it just dipping my toe in the water.

is given me the motivation to learn about SSD's I found that there are so many ins and outs, is probably one of the most complicated items to compare.

Would appreciate anyone's experiences of this size drive, with non-gaming use. Thanks

[MrJim]

I have the 256Gb model of the Samsung 830, but partitioned so that the OS (Windows 7) is in a 60Gb partition.

There's really problem running it in such a small partition, you can remove unnecessary parts of the OS (games, utilities you don't use, etc). Of course it depends on which programs you want to use, but you should be able to fit a fair few in 60Gb. Ideally your page file should be on the SSD for speed, although you can always reduce the size if you find you don't need it much.

You should bear in mind that for the best performance, you should try & leave some empty space on the SSD, if possible. I don't think you'll ever regret going solid state...the boot-speed & responsiveness of the OS are fantastic, & you won't get the gradual slow-down in Windows which tends to happen over time when it's installed on a hard-disk. SSDs are definitely the way forward!

[chuckskull]

64GB is just fine for the OS use and will make your PC feel noticeably snappier in my experience. Use the the 1TB for programs and files and away you go. Samsung are solid drives too.

Another option you have would be Intel Smart Response(pretty sure Z68 can do it) first link outta google but there's plenty more benchies etc out there http://www.pcworld.com/article/24882...echnology.html

[flearider]

just get your page file onto your mech drive .. save a lot of ware and tare .. googles your best friend ..

[smargh]

I've used the same Intel X25-M 80GB drive on my desktop PC 24/7 since they were first released four years ago. It's not fully partitioned - 35.6GB used, 32.7GB free. Lots of free space.

I use a different PC for gaming (except for KSP, which is on the SSD). The %temp% folder, OS pagefile, and some write-intensive apps, reside on a spinning drive.

[simplicity96]

If you have reasonable ram just turn the pagefile off and save a lot of space. It is not needed and if used on a mech drive a reasonable amount of ram will be more responsive anyhow.

I use a 64Gb drive for boot just fine with plenty of space on a win7 install. I dont game but do video compression and programming just fine.

[jim]

I'm using a 32GB on the 2nd machine (see sig), but I will admit it's a bit tough to get everything I need onto it.

Ultimately it's no different to any normal disk - fit whatever you can onto it, if you can't, then you either need a bigger SSD or move the least important stuff onto another disk.

[technodean]

I used a 64gb for over a year and if it hadn't died, I would still be running it. I had everything on it including photoshop and still only used about 65%. As I had 8gb of ram I shrunk the pagefile down to 4gb, Disable hibernate as this uses quite a bit.

[shaithis]

You can use folder redirection to have your My Documents, My Music, downloads etc on another drive.

[jim]

On Windows 7 all you need to do is use the libraries.

[pp05]

I have a 64gb drive and it is fine.

Main thing is obviously to move things over to your secondary drive if you have one. I think it is perfect size although once you have 64, you'll want more later.

these are going relatively cheap on on Amazon, £55 it was sort of an impulse buy. Received wisdom on these forums is that you need a least 120 gigabytes if not more. I wonder if anyone here is getting on successfully with a 64 GB drive.

I don't play games, but my Windows 8 installation seems larger than I expected, about 35 gigabytes. My logic is I don't particularly need one at all really so it just dipping my toe in the water.

is given me the motivation to learn about SSD's I found that there are so many ins and outs, is probably one of the most complicated items to compare.

Would appreciate anyone's experiences of this size drive, with non-gaming use. Thanks

[Macadee]

I recently bought a 60GB Intel 330 for my HTPC, only has windows and XMBC on, media is on NAS.

[Anteries]

I appreciate everyone's comments, I feel a lot better about getting it now, thanks. I feel I can join the elite group of SSD people.

[Anteries]

I have to say I'm a little disappointed that I'm not quite getting the stellar performance I was hoping for.

I've done a straight system restore onto the SSD. My boot time with a software autostart is 1 minute and 5 seconds, using my hard drive is 1 minute 40 seconds.

I autoload Dragon NaturallySpeaking which is a very large programme and stop my time when the profile has loaded. It takes 15 seconds to manually load on its own.

Power desk file manager takes about 2 seconds to load.

Audacity takes about 50 seconds to load with all the plug-ins enabled, with my hard drive it took about 57 seconds.

About 3 1/2 seconds for word to open.

I heard talk of software loading virtually instantly, was that cloud cuckoo land.

2 factors, is the small size of the SSD and not doing a fresh install, causing this only marginal improvement.?

[jim]

Word takes about three-quarters of a second for me. Small size won't make a difference, but I think a fresh install might.

Is there a chance it could be an issue of sector alignment?

Try running the AS SSD benchmark and see what you get.

[MrJim]

2 factors, is the small size of the SSD and not doing a fresh install, causing this only marginal improvement.?

How much free space have you left on the drive? I tend to always do a fresh install, as I find it reduces the risk of problems further down the line.

The slower performance is strange though - the 64Gb version has the same sequential read speed as the larger versions, and only slightly slower random reads. have you got AHCI enabled in your BIOS? Without it you won't get NCQ, which will limit performance a great deal.