Mushkin SSD

[sk1939]

So I took advantage of Newegg's Shell Shocker deal and bought a 60Gb SSD. However, now that I own it, I have no idea what to do with it, or how to install it. Right now I'm perfectly happy with the current boot drive (home screen in under 3 minutes), and am thinking about using it to house some of my larger, slower games (New Vegas, Skyrim, a few others). The question is, what do you all think is the best use of this drive, and second, how do I install the thing, since I've never dealt with an SSD before (more than enough experience with other hard drive types). The biggest questions are TRIM support under Win7 and partition size.

 

[WyomingKnott]

Storing a game on the SSD will make it load faster, and levels will load faster, but it will not run any faster. If you want higher frame rates, the SSD will not help. Which do you mean by "slower games?"

For more than 90% of users, installing the OS and applications on the SSD boot drive is the best use of the SSD. It will make your system feel "snappier." And it should be a fresh install. Yes, you can clone your HDD to the SSD if your OS partition is small enough. No, you should not do it.

Second-worst case, if your motherboard supports it, use Intel's caching feature.
Worst case, if you can't figure out what to do with it at all, send it to me. I'll use it well.

 

[sk1939]

Storing a game on the SSD will make it load faster, and levels will load faster, but it will not run any faster. If you want higher frame rates, the SSD will not help. Which do you mean by "slower games?"

For more than 90% of users, installing the OS and applications on the SSD boot drive is the best use of the SSD. It will make your system feel "snappier." And it should be a fresh install. Yes, you can clone your HDD to the SSD if your OS partition is small enough. No, you should not do it.

Second-worst case, if your motherboard supports it, use Intel's caching feature.
Worst case, if you can't figure out what to do with it at all, send it to me. I'll use it well.

Games with large levels or intense detail, like Battlefield 3, Skyrim, and such that take a significant amount of time to load a level. Frame rates are not my concern, just load times.

I would prefer cloning it due to nuisance of re-installing everything, but I could live with a fresh install.

It doesn't, since it's a H55 chipset (yes it's relatively old, it was free).

I'm not going to send it to you ($), but should it not work as I had hoped, I will be more than happy to sell it to you. Frankly, I'm perfectly happy with the performance of my HDD's at the moment (boot to desktop <5 min), but for $60 figured I'd give SSD's a shot to see what the buzz is about.