Fatal_Papercut~SPARTA~ Posted May 23, 2011 Share Posted May 23, 2011 (edited) UPS just delivered the following to my front porch (I'd like to say that they did so out of kindness, but I had to pay for everything): * 2x Intel 250GB SSDs * A few random parts to upgrade one of my workstations I've finally decided to use my "power rig" exclusively for gaming. The other random parts I mentioned above will be used to upgrade a workstation that I will be using for all tasks EXCEPT gaming. As for my main machine, I am going to RAID the two SSDs to show as one 500GB drive, and I'll keep one of the 2TB platter drives installed for recording Fraps footage. The only downside to all of this is the fact that, with only 500GB of space--part of which will be taken up by the OS--I will no longer be able to have ALL of my games installed (my 2TB 'Games' HDD shows 946GB used). I'll just have to go without the games that I've "finished" (which is about half of my library). In addition to faster boot and loading times, I'm hoping that I'll see some performance improvements in some games; Zeno has said that he's noticed better performance in Arma when it comes to loading textures. Since I'm new to SSDs, I'll have to read up on the utilities required for proper feeding and maintenance; I know that I'm not supposed to defrag the drives, but that instead I should use some sort of utility that more or less does the same thing to keep performance standards up-to-speed. Before I reinstall everything, I'm going to do a few benchmarks (boot and loading times) so that I can compare those results to post-upgrade performance measurements. Edited May 23, 2011 by Fatal_Papercut~SPARTA~ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Donziboy2 Posted May 23, 2011 Share Posted May 23, 2011 From what I understand the only time you wear out the SSD is writing to them, but you would have to write continuously for 10+ years to do it. Windows 7 does a good job of recognizing SSD and disabling things that will harm it. BTW 1100 for 2 ssd???? Thats a lil expensive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
custard~SPARTA~ Posted May 23, 2011 Share Posted May 23, 2011 I understood that defragging just serves no purpose with SSD not that it would harm the drive lol Nice choice mate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skaz~SPARTA~ Posted May 23, 2011 Share Posted May 23, 2011 google ssd optimization fow windows 7, it'll show lots of things that'll improve SSD performance and storage cap Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skaz~SPARTA~ Posted May 23, 2011 Share Posted May 23, 2011 i have a laptop with dual drives, so I set up my os and most used games in my SSD and the rest, all the media and other games on the secondary 1tb hard drive. Works perfectly, all i had to do was setup a few shortcuts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fatal_Papercut~SPARTA~ Posted May 23, 2011 Author Share Posted May 23, 2011 1100 for 2 ssd???? Thats a lil expensive. It is indeed, however, these SSDs have some of the best performance benchmarks. There were cheaper options, but in my research, these had better performance reviews, which is the reason why I chose to upgrade. I'm really NOT looking forward to installing everything again, but doing so won't take nearly as long as previous rebuilds. Most of my games are through Steam now, and I've used Steam's back-up function to archive every single game to an internal 2TB drive. Re-installing from these archives is MUCH faster than installing from CDs/DVDs, and they should install even faster now that they are being written to SSDs. And of course, I'll only be re-installing less than half of my game library: the games I play regularly and games I have yet to play but that I plan on playing very soon. Also, I'll be installing Windows 7 from a USB flash drive, so that should be interesting, installing from one flash medium to another. I'll have to use a stopwatch to measure the period from the time I press 'go' at the install prompt until I get to my first desktop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Batwing~SPARTA~ Posted May 23, 2011 Share Posted May 23, 2011 Well, First of all, CONGRATS for such decision. You deserve a standing ovation for such economical decision, however you will enjoy performances never seen before First of all, consider your RAID 0 config on those 2 SSD will be way more than excellent. I do not have first hand feedback, but i read several reviews and RAID ) with SSD high performance is comparable to a "Warp Speed" experience. Your Stopwatch will go backward and you will experience some Time Travelling... A friend of mine with a decent SSD and installing Win7 from a USB achieved a full install in about 8 minutes. At this point, transferring data from your 2 T to the SSD will be basically your bottleneck. The data will not be faster than what the 2T can push. At least once you are done, all of your data will be on the RAID and you will be done. What should be evident is the "load time" on any game, therefore any texture load, level load, partial info load, whatever load will be great. Besides that, I don t think you will see any noticeble FPS improvement because that is not part of the "storage" performance. congrats again Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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