NOT using an SSD for OS?

[rumblefillyourskin]

I bought a new machine today and fully intended to put my os and apps on an ssd I picked up ..

But then it occured to me, other than booting faster, is there any benefit to wasting half the ssd's capacity on windows itself?

Why not just cotinue to run windows from the mechanical hdd and use the SSD for apps and games?

Won't that be just as effective, reduce write operations/hassle and make updating firmware and managing power/access modes a lot easier long term?

Is there a definite case for running windows from an ssd, instead of just using it for apps and games?

 

[madbiker]

Size matters, you never mentioned how much you're packing... 60GB. I'd say OS only for sure; 120 OS, a few games; 256?? the OS and several games... There is a review on Toms or Anandtech indicating how much performance you'll see with some games like WOW, Crysis 2, & Metro I think...

You have to remember as an OS drive w/ the swap file on it, you're benefitting from the uber speed, sure, you could have a ton of RAM, but, I'm pretty sure WIN 7 loves having itself some sort of pagefile. I think you're best combo would be a small OS SSD drive and 2 WD black edition drives in raid for games and apps, just my opinion though.

I had a Corsair P3 128GB drive w/ a Marvell controller that kept getting itself "stuck" while I was happy with the headroom and the performance of the drive, I could not tolarate the crashing every 2 weeks... Bought a OCZ VIII 60GB and havnt had an issue in 3 months! My current drive also operates @ advertised speeds, I have about 20GB free on the drive after loading the OS and things like NERO....

Just do yourself a favor and keep Image files until you're sure the drive is operating correctly!

 

[Murissokah]

Besides the benefit from greatly incresed transfer rates on the SSD, the real benefit for the OS comes from the near-zero response time. By leaving the OS on the HDD, you are wasting that potential gain whenever the OS needs to read a system file. Shouldn't be a big issue if the system was to load all files it needed at boot time, but we all know that its not how it works.

If you have to choose between running just the OS or just your apps on the SSD, I'd go with the former. As for the read/write operations, the big issue is really the writing, and shouldn't be a problem on current generation SSDs (do remember to use AHCI).