Benefits of having OS on SSD beyond boot times?

[bradleyg5]

Basically I'm getting an SSD and don't really see any reason to reinstall my OS on it. I don't really care about my boot times, my computer just stays on. But there are applications I want to launch quickly, mostly my Adobe suite, and i want to use it as a scratch/cache disk.

But yeah, I haven't seen any specific claims to how it will speed up anything beyond the booting of your system, I just want my web browser and my adobe stuff to launch quickly, and I'm pretty sure I can install that stuff to secondary drive. Maybe move over some steam installs too.

Like launching applications is way more important than booting quickly, so why not just leave it as a secondary drive and save that 20-30GB to install more apps?

[Phill]

IMO I would want my entire OS to be as snappy as possible. I bought some Solid 3 120GB at $1/GB and at those prices and lower I will continue to buy SSD's for any and all OS' now and in the future. IMHO the difference in overall performance is substantial making the results tangible.

[enaberif]

Originally Posted by bradleyg5

Basically I'm getting an SSD and don't really see any reason to reinstall my OS on it. I don't really care about my boot times, my computer just stays on. But there are applications I want to launch quickly, mostly my Adobe suite, and i want to use it as a scratch/cache disk.

But yeah, I haven't seen any specific claims to how it will speed up anything beyond the booting of your system, I just want my web browser and my adobe stuff to launch quickly, and I'm pretty sure I can install that stuff to secondary drive. Maybe move over some steam installs too.

Like launching applications is way more important than booting quickly, so why not just leave it as a secondary drive and save that 20-30GB to install more apps?

Your pretty much correct in what you are figuring.

SSDs really only make a dramatic impact in certain things. Booting is one.. opening large applications like Adobe, CAD, etc software.

Day to day use your not gonna see that huge of a difference.

[Skyllz]

It's maybe a placebo effect but for a number of years now, even before SSDs, i've had my OS and some stuff on one HD and all my games on a different HD. I found it made load times better in games also since it did not need to do OS realted stuff at the same time.

This is entirely subjective, not sure to what extent it could be true or if it still is but that's how I experienced it and why I still do it today.

I will probably get a 120gb SSD just for games shortly...

[Shadowmeph]

Personally the only Benifit I have notice is the boot times other then that not much of a difference. but if you look on papaer you see huge differences. I think that if say you put an SSD into an older system you would see allot of difference but with the systems now being pretty fast well nothing notable . mind you I don't haveany real demanding programs installed on my system like Photoshop things to that liking

[bradleyg5]

Ok so I did it, I got a 60GB Vertex 3 drive and I'm not using it as a boot drive. It was an absolute torture to get it working, I had to do this linux boot thing and secure erase it before it was visible, drove me nuts trying to figure it out.

But here is a problem I ran into and a solution, Basically when I installed production premium it still installed like half of it to the boot drive(which is 7200RPM) which sorta made my launch times not the greatest. But what I ended up doing is I created a bunch of Junction points to the drives, so I take the Folders from the AppData and move them over to the SSD and in its place I put a junction file. So the Folder is actually on the SSD but as far as the application is concerned it's still in the same place.

I did this for a couple things, I did for one with google chrome since there is no way to install to a secondary drive since it goes in that pesky AppData folder. Overall I think it's working perfectly, I'm still tracking down all the little bits and pieces of the Adobe install and making junction points, I should have organised it better I think though because I can't move them around on the SSD without breaking the junction.

Still have to be 100% sure but photoshop and premiere pro are launching in less than 5 seconds and closer to 2. But sometimes it hangs for 3 or 4 seconds and I suspect that's because something is still being read off the 7200 drive since I hear it going.

Working well I have a bunch of Steam games moved over filling up the rest of the space. Boy are my Shogun 2 load times reduced almost half. My Bad Company 2 load times are seemingly less than half. My Red Orchestra 2 load times are maybe a second or two faster, but it's appreciated since it lets me pick my class first.

[ZZLEE]

Do your Widows expperiance index.

5 to 7.4 fore me

do the bench it helps setup internal setting on windows also. :)

[supaflyx3]

I still don't understand why you wouldn't use the SSD as a boot drive.. saves a lot of hassle. And the windows index means nothing, it is not a viable benchmark.

[bradleyg5]

Because I don't want to put 20 gigs of windows on a tiny 60GB drive. I just want important games web browser and adobe stuff. I don't have room, might change my mind when I get a 2nd one to raid 0 them.

[YukonTrooper]

All your programs need to communicate with the OS though. You'd be better off with the OS, most used applications and games on the SSD, then extra applications and games + data, media, etc. on the mechanical drive.

Also, RAID 0 won't get you anywhere in terms of snappiness and general performance, you'd only see gains in reads and writes for large data transfers, which isn't something 95% of people do with their SSD's, especially on dinky 60GB drives. If you're going to spend the extra cash for another 60GB SSD for RAID 0, you may as well just go with a single 120-128GB SSD for around the same price but double the capacity, considering that you're stuck with the capacity of a single drive in RAID 0.