Do i need an SSD?

[odeezy2ez]

i was planning on getting a Samsumg 840 pro 128gb SSD only for boot purposes and a couple OSs on virtual box. i want the SSD for the fast boot times and snappy OS response, but i was going to install all my programs on a WD caviar black 1TB SATA 3. with this setup will i still achieve the snappy response from my programs as well or just the OS itself?

i plan on doing some programing, gaming, and audio engineering.

Dell studio 540
Core 2 Quad q8200
0m017G motherboard (sata 2 only)
500W Lepa PSU
Radeon 7750 GPU

 

[Novuake]

Mostly yes, depends on what you are looking to use on the SSD and what not. Going one up to 240/256GB is definitely worth it if you can afford it, it allows for much more freedom.

But a direct answer to you would be yes, you would see sizable improvement.

 

[Swordkd]

Just the OS and any programs installed on the SSD wil be "snappy". You would probably be better off getting two WD Caviar Black 1TB drives and running a Raid 0 setup. Not near as snappy as an SSD, but you will notice a definite improvement.

 

[ThomasJ93]

Just the OS and the virtual machines. Your programs still load from the "slow" hard drive. If I were you, I would install the programs on the SSD and let the virtual machines run from the hard drive.

I've actually had VMs running from a USB 2 hard drive, which was doable.

 

[thasan1]

although i wouldn't like it but a recent review at tomhs hardware shows that there is no advantage of a sata 3 with SSD as sata 2 has almost same performance so even with sata 2 it makes sense. so id say yes. but other programs outside of the SSD will load slow.

 

[odeezy2ez]

Thanks for the answers. I guess I was hoping that running my programs from a separate disk even if it wasn't an SSD would give some spotted improvement being that they would have there own disk to read/write and not have to share one with the OS while it's reading/writing.

Just the OS and any programs installed on the SSD wil be "snappy". You would probably be better off getting two WD Caviar Black 1TB drives and running a Raid 0 setup. Not near as snappy as an SSD, but you will notice a definite improvement.

I was actually planning on getting a second drive, but if I may ask how will raid 0 effect the speed of the drives? I'm asking how the configuration is going to improve the physical speed?

 

[Swordkd]

If by physical speed you mean things like load times, a Raid 0 will be a noticeable improvement. Even having the OS on the same drive configuration will be much quicker than a single drive. Again, not as fast as an SSD, but cheaper for the amount of storage space you'll gain and a definite improvement.