Where to put my SSD?

[tavisc]

I'm buying a new computer in the next few days. and one of the upgrades I'm getting is a 256 Evo Pro SSD. I know how to migrate the OS, but where do I put the SSD? I'm getting a caddy to replace the optical drive, so I can put it there, but I'm caught between two schools of thought, those being;

Putting it in the caddy.
My worry with this is that the connection will be the bottle neck and will slow down the SSD. And speed is kind of the point


Put the HDD in the caddy, and put the SSD where the HDD was. My worry about this is heat. I know platter disk drives create heat, while SSD's don't. I also know that optical drives don't, so there isn't going to be much in the way of heat reduction there.



So where should I put it? Am I just being overly cautious? Does it really make that much of a difference?

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

I would question the wisdom of removing the optical drive at all. They can be life-savers when it comes to diagnosing problems and fixing a screwed up Windows installation by using a boot CD. It also allows you to install CD-based software which you might wish to purchase at a software shop instead of electronic downloads.

I would keep the optical drive and buy an external enclosure for the HDD. Initially you could put the SSD in to the enclosure just to clone the HDD to it (or vice versa whichever is appropriate), then swap the drives over when cloning is complete.

 

[tavisc]

I would question the wisdom of removing the optical drive at all. They can be life-savers when it comes to diagnosing problems and fixing a screwed up Windows installation by using a boot CD. It also allows you to install CD-based software which you might wish to purchase at a software shop instead of electronic downloads.

I would keep the optical drive and buy an external enclosure for the HDD. Initially you could put the SSD in to the enclosure just to clone the HDD to it (or vice versa whichever is appropriate), then swap the drives over when cloning is complete.

I want to have an SSD for the decreased load times, and I want to have bulk storage for my photos, music, movies, etc. I have a optical drive at the moment, and I can count on one hand the times I've actually needed it. 99% of the software I use anymore comes in digital form. I'd also keep the ODD, and put it into an enclosure so I have it if I need it.