Does an operating system have to be installed on an SSD by itself?

[fordongreeman]

Does an operating system have to be installed on a solid state drive by itself? Or can you have other programs on there as well?

Right now, I have a 1TB 7200RPM HDD, which I want to replace with a 1TB SSD.

 

[why_wolf]

SSD is just like HDD. You can install whatever you want on it.

 

[Dugimodo]

Yes, the only reason people sometimes use a second hard drive for programs is to save money and use a smaller SSD.
The OS benefits the most, but if you have the space everything runs a bit better from an SSD.

 

[USAFRet]

In fact, you should have the applications on the SSD as well.
They benefit from the speed also.

And if you have enough space, have everything on the SSD(s). Like I do.

 

[captaincharisma]

a 250GB SSD will be fine for the OS and your programs. if you game then that's another story. but game clients like steam allow you to install games on another storage device like a HDD

 

[pyeloyev]

Games also benefit greatly from SSD. In fact I'd say games benefit especially. I keep my OS, apps, and games on my SSD. Movies go on the 2TB HDD since pretty much any 1080p movie will play fine from even a USB connection an a SATA HDD is faster than that, so you get no benefit from having your movies on an SSD. Same goes for music.

1TB is a LOT of space. What do you use it for?

 

[fordongreeman]

Games also benefit greatly from SSD. In fact I'd say games benefit especially. I keep my OS, apps, and games on my SSD. Movies go on the 2TB HDD since pretty much any 1080p movie will play fine from even a USB connection an a SATA HDD is faster than that, so you get no benefit from having your movies on an SSD. Same goes for music.

1TB is a LOT of space. What do you use it for?

High-end gaming, lots of it.

 

[captaincharisma]

Games also benefit greatly from SSD. In fact I'd say games benefit especially. I keep my OS, apps, and games on my SSD. Movies go on the 2TB HDD since pretty much any 1080p movie will play fine from even a USB connection an a SATA HDD is faster than that, so you get no benefit from having your movies on an SSD. Same goes for music.

1TB is a LOT of space. What do you use it for?

true, any games i currently am playing on my PC i put on my SSD drive, any games i am done with or not playing at the time i move over to my HDD

 

[fordongreeman]

What are some of the top-tier SSD's for gaming?

 

[USAFRet]

What are some of the top-tier SSD's for gaming?

SATA III, in no particular order:
Samsung 850 EVO
Samsung 860 EVO
Crucial MX500
WD Blue

NVMe:
Samsung 960 EVO
Samsung 970 EVO

 

[pyeloyev]

Games also benefit greatly from SSD. In fact I'd say games benefit especially. I keep my OS, apps, and games on my SSD. Movies go on the 2TB HDD since pretty much any 1080p movie will play fine from even a USB connection an a SATA HDD is faster than that, so you get no benefit from having your movies on an SSD. Same goes for music.

1TB is a LOT of space. What do you use it for?

High-end gaming, lots of it.

Then you need to estimate how much space you expect to use with your games and pick the appropriately sized SSD for them.

As for brands, I had trouble with a brand new crucial SSD not being detected at boot time half the time. Replaced it with a SAMSUNG and never had an issue. They are a bit pricier, though, but the extra reliability is totally worth it to me, especially with something like an operating system drive.

 

[fordongreeman]

If your OS is installed on it's own SSD, it has to communicate with programs on other drives through the SATA bus, which can cause a bottleneck.

When everything is all in one place, then the OS doesn't need to do that.

 

[captaincharisma]

What are some of the top-tier SSD's for gaming?

SATA III, in no particular order:
Samsung 850 EVO
Samsung 860 EVO
Crucial MX500
WD Blue

NVMe:
Samsung 960 EVO
Samsung 970 EVO

WD are pretty good too, they have a WD blue SATA III SSD drive an a WD black NVMe

 

[USAFRet]

If your OS is installed on it's own SSD, it has to communicate with programs on other drives through the SATA bus, which can cause a bottleneck.

When everything is all in one place, then the OS doesn't need to do that.

Given reasonable quality SSD's, it mostly doesn't make a difference.

I have the OS and applications on one SSD, and all the data lives on other drives, all SSD's.
I defy anyone to sit at this PC and tell the difference between data sitting on the C drive SSD, or data living on the other SSD's.

 

[Dugimodo]

If your OS is installed on it's own SSD, it has to communicate with programs on other drives through the SATA bus, which can cause a bottleneck.

When everything is all in one place, then the OS doesn't need to do that.

Sorry but that's completely wrong. All data and programs have to be loaded off a drive, whether it's the same drive as the OS or not has absolutely zero effect. All that matters is the speed and type of the drive and the interface it uses.

Programs run in memory, not on the drive. And no data magically moves itself around within a drive, it all goes back and forth over the bus to RAM. When you run a program from another drive it doesn't go from one drive to another, it goes from each drive to memory.

Using separate drives can actually increase bandwidth and decrease bottlenecks as each drive can use it's own bus at full speed while the other drive does other things.

The only real reason a program might run worse of another drive is if that drive is slower than the OS drive or say there's only one NVME interface so it has to use a slower SATA type drive.

The one exception to this is when you are moving a file, if you move it within the same drive it's much faster. But that's because it doesn't actually move anywhere, just the way the file system addresses it is changed to make it look like it moved.