SSD Storage Requirements

St1ckM4n

Posts: 2,887   +628
Are you thinking of building a new desktop (or laptop, with more than one HDD slot) rig?
Not sure what size SSD to get?


  1. I highly recommend an SSD in your budget. It's the single biggest boost to performance you can get these days.
  2. I can vouch for 64GB being enough, as long as you have extra 1TB+ platters in the system. Here's why:
  • It takes 5 minutes to set up Program Files etc directories on the slower HDD, change default location of your libraries (Music/Docs/etc). You're now set up.
  • When installing stuff, you either leave it as default C:\Program Files\Blah path to install on SSD, or just change the first letter to your HDD to have in install on the slow drive. No registry hacks, nothing to corrupt, all fine and a 2 second modification when installing.

  • 64GB is enough to have everything on Win7 turned on (apart from Hibernation), such as Indexing, System Restore, etc. You can install the OS, Office Suite, two full Adobe Master Collections, as many browsers as you want, Steam, chat clients, etc. Everything (unless you're a pro user - read: work) will fit, with at least 10% free space remaining for garbage collection and wear levelling.

  • It depends how rich you are, but games honestly don't get that much of a boost. You load a game, you play it for a couple hours, you close it down. You're not opening/closing games every 2 minutes, so that 2-20 second SSD advantage doesn't add up to much. Considering Steam libraries these days, a typical person would need an ADDITIONAL 500GB SSD in their system just for games - 500GB for OS/programs/games is sometimes not enough. I have 1TB WD Black on SATA2 and I still load games very fast.
  • Granted, if you only have 1-3 games you regularly play, coupled with the more economical cost of a 120GB+ SSD, it may be a wise decision to get this and install said games on the main drive, with other games on your HDD.
  • Worth mentioning one more time - the $/GB is better when purchasing 120GB SSD, and gets better the higher you go.

  • I have a $3000 rig, $1400 monitor, and another $1400 SteamBox. Not to be a douche, but Im saying this because this is in the realm of "dude has money to spend on PC". I am here, telling you that I'm still fine with my 64GB SSD on my main gaming rig and there's no need to upgrade until entire rig dies. My SteamBox has a 500GB due to: cost efficiency, silence, and because I don't have my full games library on it.
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To finalise: if you have a desktop PC and have other 1TB+ platters, and you're on a pretty tight budget, 64GB will suffice no problem. If you can't control yourself (e.g. when installing) or you're forgetful, maybe it's worth spending that little bit extra to get a 120GB one (if your budget is loose enough to fit it).
 
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Stickied it.

I've considered this upgrade on and off a few times. However, in my looking, its hard to justify how slow 64GB ones are compared to larger sizes. To be fair - I haven't looked at any SSDs in quite some time, maybe the landscape has changed.
 
Recommend NOT indexing on any SSD - - almost useless AND reduces the MTBF (mean time between failures). Conserve all I/O on SSDs.
 
However, in my looking, its hard to justify how slow 64GB ones are compared to larger sizes.
It still happens, all the way up to 500GB, then the speeds plateau. But there's a lot of 60GB one's where the speeds are pretty on-par.

Recommend NOT indexing on any SSD - - almost useless AND reduces the MTBF (mean time between failures). Conserve all I/O on SSDs.
Yep, you're right. That's probably a topic for another thread though. This one - I just wanted to reassure people on a tight budget that 60GB is enough. :)

This needs to be stickied. Nice work.
Thanks. :p
 
Recommend NOT indexing on any SSD - - almost useless AND reduces the MTBF (mean time between failures). Conserve all I/O on SSDs.

When my platter died I happened to have a wad of cash to spend so I just replaced the drive with an SSD and have been using it like any other drive.... Is this a no-no??

Mike
 
You'll be fine - just don't run disk scanning optimizations like defrag on it. They're getting so inexpensive now that by the time you wear that drive out you'll be able to buy a much larger one at a lower price. Just a few years ago (2-3) these things were $1-2/GB and now we're talking < $0.40/GB for the larger drives.
 
Of the 4 x W7 Ultimate machines I have three of them have a SSD for the C drive the other is a test bench machine for just that and has a mechanical drive, two of the machines have a AMD 1100T CPU (6 layer) the other a very high speed 4 layer CPU a AMD 975 to say they are fast is a reasonable response. one of these machines is a "Storage unit".

But I will say I wont use anything but a Samsung SSD preferably a "Pro Series" OK they might cost more but the quality is worth every penny IMHO.
 
But I will say I wont use anything but a Samsung SSD preferably a "Pro Series" OK they might cost more but the quality is worth every penny IMHO.
However, their performance degrades over time . . .
I'll stick with HDs, as I've found them to be super reliable and going fast for 10minutes and then crashing is not how I wish to run my business.
 
Sorry but all of mine are used at least 12 hours a day and in one case 24 x 7 x 52 other than reboots the oldest is a Samsung 840 Pro which runs 12 hours a day and I bought on the 14/04/2014 so coming up to two years and NO PROBLEMS
 
Good to know that SOME Samsung SSD have a better MTBF. Lots of reviews express regrets however.
 
Why do you think I said "But I will say I wont use anything but a Samsung SSD preferably a "Pro Series" OK they might cost more but the quality is worth every penny IMHO."
 
I'm saying there are others with strong negative responses on Samsung SSD - - let the buyer beware. Pleasd that you are highly satisfied with yours, but just like Yelp, there are other experiences. As we frequently see in these debates, "Your Mileage may vary".

Peace unto you.
 
Opps just realised I made a mistake the oldest drive "SSD" wise is in the "Storage Unit" and although and in fact is a 830 Pro not a 840 and that machine as I said runs 24 x 7 x 52 other than re boots the 840 is in another machine I would have to go digging through my old invoices to find that might do it tomorrow as its 01:15 here
 
Frankly - - it just doesn't matter much and certainly nothing to me as I don't/will not use one.

The whole point is the pro vs con opinions that allows others to evaluate for themselves. IMO, we've both done our jobs in this regard :)
 
When SSD's get as big as 4 Tb and as cheap as the mechanical drives it will require motherboards with more than 8 SATA Connections (what my motherboards all have now) but it will also mean small but reliable PSUs better made cases capable of holding more SSD sized drives etc which I look forward to but I maybe too old to worry about it
 
When SSD's get as big as 4 Tb and as cheap as the mechanical drives it will require motherboards with more than 8 SATA Connections (what my motherboards all have now) but it will also mean small but reliable PSUs better made cases capable of holding more SSD sized drives etc which I look forward to but I maybe too old to worry about it
I knew I saw that "dead horse" move. Perhaps I mistook "beating a dead horse", for giving it CPR....:confused:
 
It will happen and in the not to distant future but I don't know if I will still be playing the way I am now (I Have one machine with 34 Terabytes of storage)
 
Why would one 4TB SSD drive vs one 4TB HDD drive require more SATA connectors?
Well, I think he meant that more people would embrace higher in computer storage capacity. Arguably, 8 / 4TB SSDs would use half the current & be half the physical size, of say maybe 2 / 4TB HDDs.

Then too, there's the hole Seagate is digging for itself with the junk mechanical drives they're turning out. (By all reports, but not by my experience).
 
@ cliffordcooley if you READ all my posts in this topic you will see I have one machine that has 34 Terabytes attached the 8 Standard SATA are not enough to do this on their own so 6 of the drives are in ICY boxes and connected via USB3 if they produce cheap large SSD drives then the onus will be on Board makers to provide MORE internal SATA connections do you not see the Logic in that?
 
if they produce cheap large SSD drives then the onus will be on Board makers to provide MORE internal SATA connections do you not see the Logic in that?
No I don't because you are a minority to the minority. The majority don't need more than 1TB, and the majority of those can work within the confines of 6 SATA connectors. Anyone needing more than 6 or 8 SATA connectors would be working with internal add-in cards or from drive enclosures. There is no logic to requiring more than 8 SATA connectors on a motherboard.

If you seriously want more than 8 internal SATA, there are add-in cards available to satisfy those few who need them. The cheap ones are as little as $20.
 
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