Laptop with SSD and HDD. Readyboost, boot drive, and other options

My gaming laptop is finally being put out to pasture due to a failure of the video card. I've ordered a new system from Sager custom laptops (specs below). It comes with a 500gig HDD installed, and a slot for a 2nd drive where the optical drive would otherwise go (I'm going for no optical drive, I have an external and haven't used it in months). I'd like to salvage the 64gig SSD from my old system, but I'm not sure what to do with it.

Option 1: Install SSD as boot drive, use HDD as storage.
This is my default option. The SSD boots lightning fast, and my games run quickly as well. My problem here is that I have very little to store on 500gigs. I don't have movies or music that I keep locally. On the other hand, for my programs 64gigs runs out of space really fast, with only a few games installed usually. I could use the SSD as boot and the 500 gig for my games, but I worry that I'm defeating the purpose of the faster drive if I do that. My boot time will be fast but will my game experience be slowed down by having them installed on an HDD? Will initial load times be slower but the games run just as fast?

Option 2: Use HDD as boot and SSD for games
This one I'm not sure of. Will I, again, be defeating the purpose of the faster drive if I have my operating system and programs installed on different speed drives? Will I bottleneck at the slower speed? The nice thing about this option is that I've heard Sager installs are free of bloatware, so I wouldn't have to spend my first day of ownership doing the traditional reinstall of everything.

Option 3: Use HDD for everything and SSD for "readyboost."
I had never considered this option, but someone on another forum suggested it. He said the 'readyboost' would speed up overall performance, and make good use of the drive. He said that I should partition the SSD into at least 2 separate drives and use both of the virtual drives for readyboost. I've done little research on this yet, does anyone have any ideas? Like option 2, this would prevent me from needing to reinstall everything my first day.

Option 4: Use HDD for everything and leave the caddy bare.
My biggest problem with my old system was heat (the old graphics card melted down about once every 6 months, even with optimizations and a cooling fan lapdesk). I could just use the HDD, forget the old SSD, and keep the caddy bare.

Thanks in advance for any comments and suggestions.

System specs:
Display 15.6" Full HD LED-Backlit Display with Super Glossy Surface (1920 x 1080)
Video & Graphics Card 2GB GDDR3 Nvidia GeForce GT 555M GPU with Optimus Technology / Embedded Intel HD Graphics
CPU Processor 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i5-2430M Processor ( 3MB L3 Cache, 2.40GHz)
Operating System Genuine MS Windows® 7 Home Premium 32/64-Bit Edition ( 64-Bit Preloaded )
Memory 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz - 2 X 4GB
Primary Hard Disk Drive 500GB 7200rpm SATA 300 Hard Drive

 

Hmm... 64GB just isn't that much space. Once windows is fully installed you'd probably only be left with about 30GB usable.

Its pretty much pointless to have the OS on one drive and the games on a HDD. Your load times will be really slow for games.

I invested in a 256GB SSD. My boot up time is <15 sec (POST screen takes more time than windows to load), and most games I play will load in <10 sec. With a hard drive on my other system, its more like 40 sec for boot up and a game could easily take 60 sec or even more to load.

One thing you could do...

keep the 64GB as the boot drive. Sell the 500GB on ebay, maybe get $50. Spend ~$200 on a 128GB SSD such as an M4, then you have a system with 192GB of SSD storage total, while only playing about $150 bucks more.
I terms of FPS in your games, it doesn't make the game run faster, it just means the loading times are much shorter.

 

Here's what i'd do to take advantage of your already available SSD. Install the windows on the SSD, move the page file to the HDD and disable hibernation. Assuming you have 8GB RAM, this will free 16GB of space. You will loose the option for hibernation, but a SSD boots fast enough. You'll have enough room for a couple of programs and one or two games. Use the HDD for steam if like me, you have a game library that is well over 150GB. An hibernate and page file free windows installation takes about 12GB of space by the way.

 

You can get a slimline Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate in <16GB using RT7Lite. My configuration with several large games (Starcraft 2, CS: Source, etc.) barely fits in my 32GB drive. IMO 64GB is more than sufficient for most users if you put your data on another drive.

 

Thanks for the replies.

The double SSD is something I hadn't considered. I actually have a 32 gig SSD from my old system (I replaced it with the 64 when I installed windows 7). Do you think 32gig would be sufficient for a windows install to run efficiently if I don't install anything else on that drive? I could use the 32 as my boot drive and put literally everything else on my 64. I keep no media files locally, the only thing I need space for is games, programs, and temp files.

 

If you have no games and a secondary HDD for storage, then yes, 32GB is sufficient for basic Windows with Office, PDF, browser, and multimedia viewing. I'd use the 64GB SSD for your OS, programs and games though since it's presumably faster than the 32GB one and the 500GB HDD for storage of any data.