I'm buying a SSD tomorrow. I want to move Windows onto the SSD and I'm wondering, should I just put the OS on the ssd and all my programs and personal stuff on a hdd? Or put everything on the SSD? Which is better for performance
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4My advice would be to put programs/OS on the SSD, but keep your documents/pictures/whatever on a hard drive.– BenjiWiebeCommented Jul 11, 2014 at 22:53
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If you have a motherboard that can handle the speeds the SSD can run at, your programs will run so fast that you'll want to get another one for all the programs you couldn't fit on it! Its good practice to have at least one HDD for just about everything else. I have all but a few of my games off the SSD and have changed my default download folder to my secondary HDD so it saves space on my SSD.– slow_excellenceCommented Jul 12, 2014 at 1:18
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3 Answers
It depends.
Do programs on an SSD load faster? Yes, if the load time is bottlenecked by disk reads, which is often the case. No, if it's some other bottleneck - eg, a game that needs to talk to a DRM server may spend the majority of the time it's loading waiting for that rather than reading from disk. Other programs that have to spend a lot of time doing CPU-intensive work may not be any faster loading from an SSD.
In general the answer will be yes, because most large programs do spend most of their loading time reading files from disk.
But even so, the answer to "should I put everything on the SSD" is still "it depends".
For instance, if you've got a 1Tb HDD now but your SSD is 256Gb, it won't make sense to load your 500Gb of photos that you pull out for the once-a-year family vacation-photos slideshow on the SSD - even if they fit, you don't load them often enough for the increased load speed to make a significant difference.
answered Jul 11, 2014 at 22:41
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1I installed everything on the SSD (drive C) and then used NTFS Junctions to move the odd folder within
Program Filesonto the HDD (drive D) when they became too big. For example I have a Junction atC:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamappspointing toD:\Drive_C\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamappswhere the 76 GB worth of game data is stored. I mirrored the same folder layout on D so it was easy to work out where it originally came from on C.– RichardCommented Jul 12, 2014 at 16:15
If you care about your SSD life time then you need to be aware that due to limited write/erase cycles number per sector the device may start dying after a few years of serious usage. From this perspective it is recommended to put the most rewritable data on the HDD. OS will run much faster being placed on SSD, of course, but OS itself has files that are rewritten often.
In Unix-like OS you can afford you to keep your home directory at any different partition. Myself have it with SSD + HDD couple. In Windows, I don't know how separate OS itself and Users or Documents and settings folders from each other.
Hope this helps.
answered Jul 12, 2014 at 3:09
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2Modern SSDs have write lifetimes of
17.5 GBto70 GBper day, every day to give it a 3 year lifespan. If you are using a modern drive the IO activity of your OS reading and writing to stuff like the page file will barely scratch it. What you said about the OS wearing it out was true for the first generation of SSDs but is no longer true with modern ones. Commented Jul 12, 2014 at 3:20 -
I completely disagree with the idea that the "most rewriteable data" should be on the HDD. The data that's being rewritten most often is precisely what you want on the SSD, as it's where you're going to get the most speed improvement from the system. Buying and SSD and then only using it for infrequently used files makes no sense to me. Yes this means it will wear out faster, but it also means you get more speedup per dollar spent. Commented Jul 12, 2014 at 3:37
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1@James Polley as I said if someone cares about lifespan. Of course to get all speed purchased most writing should be on SSD. Commented Jul 12, 2014 at 3:55
SSD are faster than mechanic HD, especially in random access - when small amount of data needs to be read from different locations, which also means they degrade performances less even under heavy fragmentation.
The difference is lessen on sequential access (i.e. large non fragmented files), but SSD wins even here, faster RAID of 10K RPM disks may came close but at higher cost, definitely not a SOHO solution.
About reliability and lifetime, SSD are now quite close to mechanical disks (technology is newer, less mature, but intrinsically more robust due the lack of moving parts) but go for RAID1 mirroring or RAID5 if you really value business continuity, and always remember there is nothing better of a fresh backup when you need it :)
So, yes, SSD technology is mature to replace HD, but cost per GB is higher so keep system, programs and data you are actively working on in the SSD, but go for HD large cheap storage for backup and for less frequently used data.
