Seeking advice on SSD install and optical slot HDD install

[kylemerosi]

Hi all,

I'm going to be swapping my HDD to an SSD and putting a new HDD into my optical bay soon. Before I do I was hoping that you all would give me some feedback on the drives I've chosen and answer a few questions for me.

My computer is a 15" Late 2011 Macbook Pro with :
Intel i7 2 GHZ
16GB DDR3 RAM
500GB HDD

I'm planning on pulling the HDD out and putting it into an enclosure and replacing it with a Samsung 840 Pro 256GB SSD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147193

I also plan on putting the optical drive in an external enclosure and installing either a Seagate Momentus 1TB 5400RPM 8MB Cache:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178006

or a Western Digital Scorpio Blue 1TB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136927

I plan to install both OSX and Windows 7 on the SSD, as well as all of my applications, and also the game I'm playing at the time. All media and documents will go onto the HDD.

My questions are:
1.Is the Samsung a good choice of SSD?
2.Should I buy the Seagate or WD for my HDD?
3.Is only having 8MB of cache on the HDD going to be an issue? Should I go down to a >=750GB HDD to get a 7200RPM 16MB cache drive?
4.Do you notice any issues with my overall plan? Is the SSD going to be large enough for both OS' and applications?

Thank you for your time and help, sorry about the length of the post.

 

[edogawa]

1. Yes, Samsung is a very good brand, or Corsair.

2. Western digital is more reliable.

3. Cache won't really make a difference considering it will be for media and documents only.

4. SSD is plenty for your OS and applications, you may want to consider going down a size down unless you really need another 120gb-ish of space.

 

[kylemerosi]

4. SSD is plenty for your OS and applications, you may want to consider going down a size down unless you really need another 120gb-ish of space.

My thought is that I'm planning for future growth. I'm don't really like to have to be constantly deleting games and apps I'm not using at the moment, so the extra space will be nice, plus the 256GB range was the price point that I've been planning for.

Also, if I were to play a game off the HDD, would the cache then be a significant factor? Or do I not need to worry about the cache much? I could only find one 1TB drive with a 16GB cache it was very expensive.

 

[edogawa]

Go with the 256GB then, time you go to upgrade again I'm sure a 1TB SSD will be around the price of a 256GB now.

Here is a 16mb too: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236221

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Scorpio-Internal-2-5-Inch/dp/B004I9J5OG/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1362184367&sr=1-1&keywords=2.5+sata+hard+drive+1tb+16mb

I wouldn't fret of MB cache though, hard drives have little impact on games.

 

[avacadobread]

1.Samsung is a very good choice for and SSD.
2.WD are, in my opinion, more reliable.
3.Don't worry yourself about cache, it won't hurt you.
4. That size should be just fine, but it really depends on how much stuff you put on it.
One last note is that your battery life will take a big hit with two storage drives running at the same time. I once considered this for myself and was able to find some resources online that can help with that.

 

[kylemerosi]

One last note is that your battery life will take a big hit with two storage drives running at the same time. I once considered this for myself and was able to find some resources online that can help with that.

Do you have links to any of those resources? I only use my laptop away from a charger for a couple hours at a time in class so I don't anticipate it being a huge problem.

 

[kylemerosi]

Go with the 256GB then, time you go to upgrade again I'm sure a 1TB SSD will be around the price of a 256GB now.

Here is a 16mb too: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236221

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Scorpio-Internal-2-5-Inch/dp/B004I9J5OG/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1362184367&sr=1-1&keywords=2.5+sata+hard+drive+1tb+16mb

I wouldn't fret of MB cache though, hard drives have little impact on games.

Do you think that a 7200RPM drive in the optical bay slot would cause a lot of vibration?

 

[edogawa]

Do you think that a 7200RPM drive in the optical bay slot would cause a lot of vibration?

Nope, it will be fine.

 

[photonboy]

Optical Drive:
Have you confirmed that an external case will be COMPATIBLE?

I'm not familiar with OSX, but I do know it tends to be limited to drivers for products apple made themselves. It will work no problem for Windows.

Optical drive/HDD:
Have you confirmed there is a MOUNT for this?

HDD/Games:
I agree on the SSD, however most games don't benefit that much from an SSD. I'd recommend just installing to the hard drive.

STEAM and SSD:
If you use Steam for games, you can install it to the Hard Drive (i.e. "E:\Steam") and put a SECOND steam folder on the SSD. You can easily MOVE a game from the hard drive folder in Steam to the SSD folder like this:
a) BACKUP the game (steam backup folder)
b) DELETE the game (right-click the game in Steam and "delete local content")
c) RESTORE the game (but now choose the SSD steam folder instead)

When you're done playing that game you can simply move it back to the hard drive, or just delete it if the backup still exists.

 

[edogawa]

Optical Drive:
Have you confirmed that an external case will be COMPATIBLE?

I'm not familiar with OSX, but I do know it tends to be limited to drivers for products apple made themselves. It will work no problem for Windows.

Optical drive/HDD:
Have you confirmed there is a MOUNT for this?

HDD/Games:
I agree on the SSD, however most games don't benefit that much from an SSD. I'd recommend just installing to the hard drive.

STEAM and SSD:
If you use Steam for games, you can install it to the Hard Drive (i.e. "E:\Steam") and put a SECOND steam folder on the SSD. You can easily MOVE a game from the hard drive folder in Steam to the SSD folder like this:
a) BACKUP the game (steam backup folder)
b) DELETE the game (right-click the game in Steam and "delete local content")
c) RESTORE the game (but now choose the SSD steam folder instead)

When you're done playing that game you can simply move it back to the hard drive, or just delete it if the backup still exists.

If you install games on the hard drive, you won't need to install Steam onto the SSD, it's redundant with no benefit.

Keep Steam installed solely on mechanical hard drive, and if you ever have to reinstall Windows, you can just reinstall Steam directly over old Steam folder without losing anything. There's really no benefit to even trying to use games on a SSD except to cut loading time by a tiny bit.