Installing OS On A Separate SSD

I already have a 512GB Crucial MX100, which I've been using as my only drive (OS+programs/games and data). I've come across a decent deal on a Kingston HyperX 120GB SSD.

Would it be beneficial to get the smaller SSD, install Windows+programs on it, and just dump everything else (especially games) on my Crucial SSD?

Or is that just a waste of money?

 

Waste of money.

 

Depends. I personally like to have my OS/apps on a smaller SSD, and games, larger programs, scratch, and data on a separate larger SSD or HDD. I have a 256GB mSATA for OS/Apps and 1TB Crucial SSD for games, programs, scratch and data. This way I can blow away my OS partition with a reformat occasionally, and have an image of an OS clean install on my larger SSD, plus all my data and larger programs I don't have to download all over again. Yes I do have a system backup every night, but it's more of a pain to restore than just leaving crap where it is on the larger SSD when I reinstall the OS.

The 120GB Kingston though likely will not have as good of performance as a larger drive. Usually 240GB and up drives are the better performers just the way SSD's work.

 

That is what partitions are for. The performance difference between a 120GB SSD and a 120GB partition of a 480GB to 1TB SSD is night and day, ime and doesn't require a notebook with two drive bays either.

 

Partitions are so 1990's.

I can remove my OS drive and plop it in my desktop for a quick secure erase, or remove my data drive and still use the OS, while I back up the data drive and do a secure erase of that one... /shrug/ different strokes for different folks. Plus reinstalling Windows and maintaining a partition for data can be problematic at times. I just don't want to have to fuss with it or risk it. I can just blank the entire drive and start over.

 

Partitions may be 'so 1990s', but that still doesn't negate the performance drop a toy-like capacity like most 120GB drives offer.

 

Rule of thumb is, you want your OS on the most agile possible SSD. Whether this is a 480GB model vs 20GB model or partition vs no partition is irrelevant, albeit 480GB drives tend to be faster than smaller capacities but you have to take in to account the controller as well. The OS runs hundreds of background operations which continuously read and write to the SSD, a slow SSD would severely degrade the UI performance. Thus, the SSD with the most powerful controller + the fastest NAND should be the OS drive.
Generally for an OS drive, the power of the controller and the latency of the NAND is preferred over capacity.

Games and most apps tend to favor Sequential Read Performance, your SSD does not need to be the most agile but as long as it can spit out 500+mb/s of sequential read performance (which even budget models can now achieve), you will have good loading times.

In your scenario, I wouldn't bother with the 120GB Kingston SSD. If you are looking for more performance from your current setup, get a Tier 1 SSD like the Sandisk Extreme II, Samsung 850 Pro or Sandisk Extreme Pro and put your OS on it. Then place your games and other data on the MX100. Otherwise, your setup is already quite good.

 

I don't do anything of any real value on my computer. I play games, surf the web, write a few emails. That's it. I'm not a programmer or anything.

I definitely noticed the jump in performance going from a HDD to my first SSD a while back. But the difference in speed between a Samsung 120GB and 240GB (which I had in my desktop and another laptop) and my Crucial MX100 is hard to tell - I don't notice the difference. Which is probably to be expected, given I do nothing productive or demanding on my computers.

It isn't so much about performance as it is about convenience. Having my OS and core programs (like Office) on one SSD, and everything else (including games) on the other is very convenient. Very much the scenario HTWingNut described. Sure, the performance isn't optimal, but I don't really care about (nor notice) these slight performance increases. Once Windows has booted up, the rest is all the same to me. Whether my games boot in 5 seconds vs 4 seconds doesn't matter.

 

If it's about the convenience of having one drive for OS & programs and the other for storage, it would seem to me that your system drive should be the faster of the two. As a result, I would recommend a 240GB+ capacity SSD, as they have significantly better write speeds than 120GB SSDs due to using more of their controller channels.

Alternatively, if ypu don't care about performance, you could get a hard drive which you use for storage and use the existing SSD for your OS and programs.

 

The convenience of a re-install once in a blue moon (hopefully even less than that) is greatly outclassed by the inconvenience of a permanently slower system each and every time you use it.

Sure, you might not notice it or even care. But that doesn't sound like something to throw money at.

 

Aside from better load times, what other advantage is there to running your games on a SSD vs HDD? All reviews I've seen have indicated there was no meaningful performance increase (aside from better loading times).

HARDOCP - Introduction - HDD vs. SSD Real World Gaming Performance

As an example

 

Well you're certainly not going to a see a performance increase in game because that's what the GPU (and to a lesser extent) and CPU are for.

 

Depends. If it's a persistent loading MMO world, it may help. Certain online games like BF4 benefit from the loading times because it gives you the "jump" ahead of everyone else or at least not behind when you enter the game.

 

I should've worded my post better, I meant you won't see any graphical or FPS improvements. What you mentioned still falls under the load time category though.