What drive is a good complement to a 60GB SSD boot drive?

[Fat Tone]

My main rig is a core i5-750, 6GB ram, 60GB SSD (280/230 read/write speeds), Win7 Pro 64.

The SSD is now full (updates have pushed the core install size up and up). I have a few Hitachi 500GB HDDs I could plug in but by comparison they are very slow, noisy and hot. I know, the SSD spoils me.

So the question is what makes a good companion drive for data? I see 1TB drives now for £40, I see hybrid drives that cost lots, and I see 60GB OCZ 2Es for £90, 120GB for £170.

I think I could make do with a 60/90 for a while, and occassionally archive off to a 500, but I have a hard time convincing myself to spend the money.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

T.

[Evildead666]

You could always stripe two 1TB drives for the speed and response.

[UtwigMU]

2 SSDs is not so good unless you stripe them (RAID0 is rarely a good idea). I'd ghost OS to 500GB, sell 60GB OCZ and get something like 120GB intel drive.

For storage 500GB drives should be OK, unless you need more. In that case 7200 RPM drives for performance and 5400 RPM for low noise and low power.

[Elie]

I like the WD Caviar Blacks!!! They are awesome drives and only ~ $90 for 1TB.

[Jammrock]

Add the HDDs as D:, E:... whatever. Move your profile stuff off to the HDD, like Pictures, Documents, Downloads, Videos, Music, etc.

Go to C:\Users\<user>

Right-click on the folder and go to Properties.

Location tab.

You can move it with the tools there.

That should clear off some space.

You can use a tools like jDisk Report (http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/) to find where you're disk space is being used and move stuff around. I have a 50GB partition with Win7 x64 that I've been using for well over a year without any issue.

I agree with WD Caviar Black drives. Very nice drives.

[Evildead666]

My laptop is running off a 40Gb Intel value drive, with Win7 x64, and I have a few games installed too.
Oblivion, GTA3, FarCry...
I keep around 6Gb free space.

All documents etc on a desktop machine should be on a HDD, the SSD being used solely for the OS, and maybe frequent programs, but not big progs like Photoshop or stuff.

Ideally you should have SSD as boot, a RAID (stripe) for fast program storage/access, either the two 500's, or two 1Tb drives (would give 1Tb and 2Tb respectively).
Then, for pure storage, either a NAS (homebuilt or bought) or another few 1 or 2Tb drives.

edit : RAIDed SSD's still dont have TRIM support yet iirc, maybe on latest Intel boards and drivers (but with the probs they are having i'd stay well away for the moment).

[Jammrock]

You can get around the TRIM issue with the right SSD. The SandForce-based controllers have a large overprovisioning space that is used to extend the life of the drive and run garbage collection on TRIM-less OSs (see Mac OS X) and RAIDs.

While I have never done it myself, I have read that you can format a normal SandForce SSDs with less space than possible, say 100GB of 120GB possible, and it will automatically use the unpartitioned space for overprovisioning to improve RAID, garbage collection, and lifespan. Or you can get a RAID SSDs, i.e. MLC-1500.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/internal_storage/Mercury_Extreme_SSD_Sandforce/Solid_State_Raid_Edition

Though I'm with EvilDead about your situation. There's no need to store docs and AV on an SSD. Grab a couple of cheap 1TB or 500GB drives and RAID them (or not) and put everything but the OS and key apps/games on the HDDs.

[Fat Tone]

Thanks for the advice, all makes sense. I think I'll save my cash and make proper use of the 500GB HDDs I already have. They need some tidying up but it will be worth it.

I've been doing some simple video trimming and recoding recently, off the SSD. That runs pretty quick there, I daresay it'll be somewhat slower on the HDDs but nothing I can't live with.

I've got an old buffalo nas box sitting unused too, so this is the perfect time to power that back up. Time to start practicing what I preach.

[MultimediaMan]

My home network is getting ever more "Cloudy"; I have roaming profiles for all users (yes I run a full up Domain), but on a variation of redirected folders or shares, I use a logon/logoff script which creates and destroys a user-specific iSCSI connection as part of the user profile with the user profile directed to the iSCSI drive letter. It works very well, about the only "off" thing I had to do was to restrict all of the iSCSI-redirected users to a single logon session, and create large authentication lists on my iSCSI Target.

[Fat Tone]

I haven't had a chance to sort my storage out yet, but I now have the opportunity to sell on the 60GB SSD so have just ordered a 100GB OCZSSD2-2VTX100G for £144.98, which is a cracking price for that.
Its 285/275 and has native TRIM and RAID support. MTBF is 2million hours, warranty is 3 years and it has a 3.5" adapter.

It'll be good not to be up against the buffers just with my apps.

I'll still be putting ths 500GBs and the NAS into use just as soon as I get some time.

PS if anyone in the UK is looking for that deal its at dabs.com.

[Fat Tone]

I chose free delivey and it arrived today!

[ALBPM]

Add the HDDs as D:, E:... whatever. Move your profile stuff off to the HDD, like Pictures, Documents, Downloads, Videos, Music, etc.

Go to C:\Users\<user>

Right-click on the folder and go to Properties.

Location tab.

You can move it with the tools there.

That should clear off some space.

You can use a tools like jDisk Report (http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/) to find where you're disk space is being used and move stuff around. I have a 50GB partition with Win7 x64 that I've been using for well over a year without any issue.

I agree with WD Caviar Black drives. Very nice drives.

I don't see the Location tab.... what do you need to do to enable this???

[Jammrock]

I don't see the Location tab.... what do you need to do to enable this???

Are you running Win7? You have to go through the folder structure (C:\User\folder) to get the Location tab. If you go from the Favorites/Library lists in explorer you get the Library tab only.

[ALBPM]

Found it ...Thanks!!!