SSD usage questions

[matsta31]

I am really tempted to jump the boat, but was wondering about how I should set up the programs I am using.

My computer is used mostly for the following task :
- Gaming
- Torrenting/recording/watching Tv shows
- Music backup/player
- Surfing
- Excel/Vba work
- Boinc crunching 24/7

Obviously I want to be gaming and booting on the SSD,, altough I dont boot this much !
Where I have a question is for torrenting and Boincing, do I want to use the SSD or my WD Black ?
If so, how can I do this ? I never experienced a dual drive setup where I am running app from two different hard drive. Is this something convenient to do ? Any of you done it ?

[lowfat]

The only thing would benefit at all from an SSD in that list is gaming. Just install the applications that won't benefit to the secondary hard drive.

EDIT: I guess Excel would also launch/save quicker.

[AkG]

Honestly, I think the recording/torrenting part of your usage may kill a SSD faster than normal usage would. Like lowfat said....use the SSD as a OS and boot drive w/ the main apps and put the large (and fast) storage drive to use as a storage/data drive :)

[3.0charlie]

Dual setup on my main, SSD for the OS, secondary HDD for the apps. Just be careful when you install them, to choose the correct drive letter.

[CanadaRox]

For torrenting, I would suggest using the HDD as it uses cache on the disk, so it will lower the lifespan of the SSD. I'm not sure if what Boinc is like for writes to the SSD, but I would probably just run it off the HDD as it wouldn't benifit hugely from the increased read speeds so there wouldn't be much point in wasting and speed for it.

I'd pretty much just include the OS, games and apps that are affected by read speeds on the SSD, and put the rest on the WD Black as they wont get a worthwile increase in speed from it. I would also put the page file onto the WD Black as it uses a lot of reads and writes, and if you just make a small partition at the start of the WD Black and use that for the page file only, it will be fairly quick.

You can just install certain apps to the WD Black and others to the SSD. You just have to choose the installation directory when you install the program and it will run of the program fine. I have concidering doing this with SSDs, but I can't justify the money as I only work part time and have University next year.

[gingerbee]

i have to agree with everthing that everyone said. just do ssd tweaks for sure

[lowfat]

Originally Posted by gingerbee

i have to agree with everthing that everyone said. just do ssd tweaks for sure

The only 'tweaks' that are really beneficial are moving pagefile off SSD, align partition, and moving firefox cache off of SSD.

[matsta31]

thanks guys, aprreciated !

[AkG]

As an addendum to Lowfats list. Don't forget about turning off defrag, turning off indexing, PreFetch / SuperFetch, short file names, disabling timestamp for last access of files; all are important and WILL increase the life of the ssd and keep it performance going strong....Oh and make sure the drive has the latest firmware on it...especially if its a Intel X-25 or OCZ Vertex :)

[lowfat]

details on how to turn off short filenames and timestamp? I don't see why Superfetch should do anything. Isn't it mostly reading and not writing?