What is the best way to use my hard drives? SSD/HDD

[Its4u2n0]

Hey guys, thats it. It's official as I'm building my first gaming computer. My build is 99% complete and is as follows:

Case: Azza Solano 1000
Mobo: Asus Sabertooth Z77
CPU: Intel i7 3770K
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
RAM: 8G (2x 4G) Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600Mhz
Video Card: XFX Raedon HD 7970 3G
Sound Card: On board sound atm.. Will eventually upgrade as needed.
Optical Drive: Samsung DVD drive.. Will eventually upgrade as needed, cant beat $18..
PSU: OCZ ModXStream Pro 700 Watt [FONT=Calibri]OCZ[/FONT]
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**Hard Drive(s): Not sure which, as I need some advice...**

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Some of my parts have been shipped, some of my parts are shipping and some of my parts still need to be purchased. Of the parts that still need to be purchased, I have yet to conclude my hard drive setup. I'd like a bit more information on the best way to use my hard drives. Once again, main use for computer would be gaming. I was thinking about 2x hard drives and thinking of mixing a SSD and HDD into the equation. Of what I read about SSD's, they are very fast and boot times are less than 20 sec?! (Dont know too much about them) So maybe put my OS on my (fairly small and inexpensive, lets sayyyy 64g or 128g SATA 3?!?!) SSD along with any other crucial program such as computer security (BitDefender is what I had in mind) and dedicate my (most likely Seagate 1TB 7200rpm 64mb cache) HDD to all of my games, programs, downloads, documents etc.. Does this seem like a viable setup? What is the best setup for my hard drives?! Will my games run flawless on a different hard drive than my OS? How should I dedicate my hard drives in terms of files?


Thank you guys so much in advance. I'm eager to build my first computer and I HOPE this build will be able to play all the latest games on ultra settings.. Thanks again!!!!!!

 

[SNGX1275]

I think you have a good plan. Hopefully someone else with more SSD knowledge will be able to make specific drive recommendations.

I can say that I don't think you'll want to install games to your SSD, sure they'll load faster, but in the actual gaming portion you won't notice much if any difference (depending on the game and its HDD access needs). Having said that, if you don't play games much after completing them, and you have a 128GB or bigger SSD I don't see any harm in installing the game to SSD and uninstalling after you are done to recover space.

 

[Its4u2n0]

Thanks for you reply! Does anyone else have any thoughts how to dedicate my files to my hard drives? Once again OS and crucial programs to my SSD and all other programs, games, etc.. to my HDD?

 

[St1ckM4n]

This is pretty much the way to do things these days: 128 GB SSD (cheap enough to get this over a 60GB), install OS and productivity programs on it. This includes Adobe Reader, photoshop, browsers, media players, Office suite, etc.

1TB+ HDD for documents, music, video, everything else.


Very small, frequently loaded games can go on SSD (I honestly can't think of any, though). Normal games go on HDD.

 

[Its4u2n0]

Perfect, will do. Thank you both for your input.