SSD as boot drive? (1 Viewer)

[Adam Lenhardt]

I'm having some minor irritations with my current PC setup that are having me considering doing a clean install of Windows 7. I figured that the occasion might be an ideal time to move to a solid state drive for my boot drive. Right now I have a 1TB traditional 7200 RPM HDD I'm using as my boot drive and a 500 GB traditional 7200 RPM HDD I use for additional storage. If I went to a SSD, I'd be going with probably a 120 or 128 GB drive for the boot drive and then use the 1 TB HDD I'm currently using as my boot drive for additional storage. The 500 GB drive would move into an external enclosure. Anyone have any recommendations for or against this plan?

 

[Ken Chan]

You'll have to do a little extra work to move your Documents, Pictures, etc folders to the 1TB drive (pointing them to the existing folders under Users). With 7 you might be able to use Libraries to work around this. 120GB is enough to keep all your programs there, where they'll load faster. One exception would be games, which can be several GB each; so if you install a bunch at the same time, you can run out of room. Be sure to keep several GB free to install the next Windows Service Pack. This was more an issue with smaller 30GB-ish SSDs from a few years ago. If you're paranoid about SSD lifetime, put caches on the 1TB (browsers, pro apps, streaming media like SlingPlayer)

 

[DaveF]

If you were a one-drive person, I'd recommend against going to two, since it's a nuisance managing data. But you're already there.


I recommend WinDirStat as a handy utility to understand how much space is used by stuff. It will help you sort out what to put on what drive.


http://windirstat.info/

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Great stuff, guys. I've always spent a lot of time researching hard drives for the best reliability stats, but once it's in there I've sort of forgotten about it. Drives might migrate from system to system, but I never had a strategy or put much thought into what I stored where. You've given me a bit to think about. I only play a few games, so I'm not worried about that. Even if I only use up 60 or 70 GB with everything installed, it sounds like I should keep the SSD for the OS and the programs, since that's where the speed difference is. On the other hand, I would have never thought of pointing the caches to the 1 TB drive if you hadn't pointed it out. I'm wondering if it's possible to set your Recorded TV folder to a secondary drive, because with that I could easily see filling up the SSD quickly. I've got 260 GB tied up in recorded programs now without any particular backlog. It's appealing to me to have all of my data stored on a non-boot HD. I haven't messed about with drive images since XP, but it would be worthwhile to create a clean program environment with all of the programs I use regularly installed that could be backed up as an image on a thumb drive, and then just ghosted back from time to time as problems pop up. The biggest obstacle to upgrading hard drives has always been data migration. If the SSD is used only for programs, then even if it fails, I'll have lost nothing irreplaceable. I just installed WinDirStat on your recommendation, and it's completely fascinating how the storage usage breaks down. Some of my assumptions were completely off; I expected the Recorded TV folder to be the largest chunk, and it was, but Steam takes up way more space than I expected, and my Music and Pictures folder takes up far less.

 

[DaveF]

WinDirStat (DiskInventoryX on the Mac) can be revelatory. Glad it helped. I've found it handy for finding the ways to free up space when it's getting low

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

My case only has space for two harddrives, but it has space for two optical drives, and I'm only using one. Is it possible to mount a third harddrive in the second optical bay? This would give me a net gain of ~120 GB instead of a net loss of ~346 GB if I lose the 500 GB second harddrive in favor of the 128 GB SSD. My motherboard supports up to four SATA connections.

 

[Ken Chan]

Yes: search for "3.5 5.25 adapter"

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Thanks the tip. I committed this afternoon and went with the following (to borrow Dave's table format from another thread): Item

Cost

Details

Link

Solid State Drive

$176.99

Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148442

SSD Mounting Bracket

$6.39

2.5-inch SSD / HDD to 3.5-inch Bracket Mount Adapter

http://www.amazon.com/2-5-inch-3-5-inch-Bracket-Mount-Adapter/dp/tech-data/B005FCZP08

HDD Mounting Bracket

$9.95

Nexus DoubleTwin Hard Drive Vibration Isolator

http://www.amazon.com/Nexus-DoubleTwin-Drive-Vibration-Isolator/dp/B001AZHS04

My plan at the moment is to mount the SSD where the 500 GB HDD is now using the 2.5-inch to 3.5-inch mount adapter, and then mount the 500 GB HDD in the vacant optical bay using the Nexus. I should have enough SATA III cables, but I picked up a couple on Monoprice just to be safe.

 

[DaveF]

As you've looked into SSD's, have you got any advice on what to look for or avoid? My HTPC plan is evolving and will probably include an SSD now. I'd rather go 64 GB to save a few $, but if the "right" drives are 128 GB that might be doable.




Off topic, did you copy that table form the thread, or re-create it in Excel and then paste it in? My originals are are straight copy/paste from Numbers (the OS X spreadsheet from Apple). I was impressed the forum could handle a table paste like that. The forum is weird, so advanced in many ways, but so backwards in a few others.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

As you've looked into SSD's, have you got any advice on what to look for or avoid? My HTPC plan is evolving and will probably include an SSD now. I'd rather go 64 GB to save a few $, but if the "right" drives are 128 GB that might be doable.

I went with the drive I did because it was the bestselling one on Newegg, and -- of the drives with a lot of user reviews -- it seemed to have the lowest percentage of 1 and 2 star reviews. From what I can tell, SSDs are still a bit of a crap shoot. I'm just planning on using it for the OS and my programs so, if worst comes the worst, I shouldn't lose anything too important should I end up one of the unlucky ones. I went with the 128 GB over the 64 GB because I have a lot of programs installed right now and wanted enough space for future service packs, etc. Someone like Ken would probably be able to answer better than I would, but if you're just using the computer as an HTPC, 64 GB would probably be enough for the programs you'd have installed.

Off topic, did you copy that table form the thread, or re-create it in Excel and then paste it in? My originals are are straight copy/paste from Numbers (the OS X spreadsheet from Apple). I was impressed the forum could handle a table paste like that. The forum is weird, so advanced in many ways, but so backwards in a few others.

I selected it in Firefox, copied the HTML into Notepad, subbed in my values, dumped all the excess rows, ran it through a web app to strip out all of the white space and line breaks, and then pasted it into the reply box. I used it mainly because it was one of the only tables that forum didn't garble. I used my own custom table last year for my 2011 Film List, and it was an absolute nightmare.

 

[Ken Chan]

I forgot that I actually have an SSD sitting in the unused second floppy drive bay, on top of a small stack of business cards, so that the screw hole lines up. The drive is too narrow, so It's screwed into just one side of the bay. The drive is also light, so that should be good enough for, say, an earthquake or even moving it around the room; but probably not quite secure enough for actual travel or shipping. Of course, this is an older case with a floppy bay. 60GB is enough for Windows and some programs. 30GB is just too close to being not enough. If you start searching for "ssd sudden" Google will suggest "failure" and "death", leading to recent posts about it. Here's one from nine months ago with a notable perspective on it. It mentions models that are probably better than average. These guys put a lot of time researching their buying decisions. The "king of hill" might change on a quarterly basis. For me, unless I'm actually going to buy one it's not worth trying to keep up.

 

[DaveF]

I'd read the CodingHorror blog. It was frightening.


My HTPC plan leads me to have a separate boot drive. I only need 64 - 128 GB for OS and programs. SSD makes sense, in reducing what little boot time there would be. But if quality is still dubious, I could get a cheap small conventional drive.


I'd hoped that SSD would be both cheaper and more reliable by now.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

To be fair, those drives are a year or two old. Also, $180 for 128 GB is a huge price difference compared to what the same capacity would have been a couple years ago. None of which makes those failure rates untroubling. Having the boot drive go would be a major inconvenience, knocking the computer out of commission until the OS and programs can be reinstalled on a new (or repurposed) drive. On the other hand, a boot time of 6-20 seconds versus three to four minutes is a huge difference from a user standpoint.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I got all of the components a couple days ago, but a horrendous stomach flu had me laid up and prevented me from really digging into this project until today. Windows 7 is installing on the SSD now, but so far it's been a lesson in mounting brackets; namely, make sure the ones you buy are compatible with your case. The 2.5" to 3.5" brackets I bought for the SSD are designed for drives that are mounted horizontally in the tower. My tower mounts the HHDs vertically. Since there's enough space in the case, my interim solution is to mount the SSD horizontally, screwed in on only one side. The SSD has no moving parts, and the tower doesn't get jostled that much so I figure I should be okay for now. Eventually, I'll either buy brackets that work with my case, or drill out the proper holes on the brackets I have. The "Nexus DoubleTwin Hard Drive Vibration Isolator" 3.5" to 5.25" brackets fit like a dream for one HDD, but there's no way in hell I could have fit two harddrives into the optical bay with it. My case simply doesn't have enough room. Will update again once I have things up and running.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Typing this from the new installation on the SSD. Wow is it a huge difference in speed. 47 Windows updates installed in about three minutes. Boot time is about 10 seconds. Right now I'm reformatting my 1 TB harddrive that used to be the boot drive so I can use it all for storage. Made the mistake of doing a full format, though, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave the computer on half the night. Once I've got the Ceton installed again, I'm going to create a disk image in case the SSD craps out on me down the road.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Okay, typing this from my second install of Win7 on the SSD. The first time through, I couldn't get the primary user profile to store off the SSD, and in the process of trying to move it really messed up the registry. In case anyone else runs into the issue, here's how I ultimately got my User Profile onto the 1 TB drive instead of the SSD: 1) During the Windows 7 install, I created a dummy account just for the first login. 2) From the desktop, I opened a cmd window with Administrator privileges and entered the following prompt to enable the Administrator account: net user administrator /active:yes 3) Rebooted, logged into the Administrator account, and deleted the dummy account I created during the install. 4) Opened Regedit, backed up the registry (fool me once...), and navigated to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoft Windows NTCurrent VersionProfileList 5) Changes the following: ProfilesDirectory to B:Users from %SystemRoot%Users; Public to B:UsersPublic from %SystemRoot%UsersPublic. 6) Rebooted, logged back in as Administrator and created a new account in the Control Panel. Logged out, and logged in with the new account, which was created on B: instead of C:. 7) Disabled the administrator account again.