SSD + Primary Hard Drive

Can someone give me a rundown of the advantages and disadvantages of have a SSD? I am planning on getting a P35K and there is an option for a regular hard drive plus solid slate. Should I get both? I definitely have enough in my budget to do it but I know nothing about it.
And any info an RAID is good too since I heard it many times being associated with two hard drives.
Thanks

 

Regular HDD + SSD is the best option.

SSD is quick and more reliable than regular magnetic HDD, but you have to pay more for less space.

2x SSD Raid is for Record breaking Benchmarks only.

Configurations like i have currently

1 SSD 256GB

Divided to 2 Partitions, First partition ~50GB for Windows, the rest for Games (Fast Loading time), Apps, Video editing stuff and so on....

Second normal HDD 500GB/1TB for storage of Mp3s, Videos, Photos.

I do recommend to keep photos in 2 places at 1 time to avoid data loss.

If you really have money go for 2 x SSD 500GB and DO NOT make Raid from it, just keep them separate because when 1 drive goes = all files are going into the bin.

 

A SSD will net you a more responsive system if you install the OS on it, also install your most commonly used programs on it too. However, as flingin said, they cost a lot more per GB so if you have a lot of data, you want the HDD to hold your music collection, your videos, etc.

 

Thanks for the help
I'll probably get a regular hard drive for my files and stuff and a SSD for my games

 

There are only three real disadvantages of SSDs over HDDs
- Very poor cost to capacity ratio
- Some concerns over data integrity if unpowered for long periods of time
- Theoretically consumable endurance (I.e. the Flash cells can wear out but its really really hard to do in practice)

On the other hand, SSDs have loads of advantages, however, to understand the advantages you have to understand the shortcomings of HDDs. Since HDDs read using a head on a rotating platter, it is really good at reading files that are continuous and coherent, this is called a sequential operation, there is a massive latency penalty when the head has to shift to a different location, this is called a Random Operation. HDD speeds are dependent on how fast the platter rotates (which generally tops out at 7200rpm for most regular consumer models) , platter density and head repositioning speed. Unfortunately, HDD Random speeds are actually decreasing or staying the same as technology improves since the platters are getting denser instead of rotating faster (it is harder to accurately reposition heads on dense platters). Sequential speeds will still improve with time.

SSD flash chips have an almost zero latency to read and a nominal delay to write thus it has a massive edge when it comes to reading loads of small files or files which are random and incoherent. Furthermore, most SSDs are actually miniature RAID arrays of approx a dozen or more flash chips so this massive parallelism gives them strong sequential speeds too. The combination of low latency (strong Random speeds which HDDs were never able to match) and internal RAID (strong Sequential speeds which surpassed HDDs about 4 yrs ago) is what gives SSDs their performance.

There are additional benefits of SSDs such as resistance to shock and lack of operating noise which I consider to be perks. Reliability is theoretically better but in practice I would give the same precautions as HDDs (provided you didn't buy a bottom shelf SSD which is truly worse than the worst HDDs)

The latency advantage (usually by a factor of 10 to 50) is the reason why SSDs make your system feel really snappy in the UI and the massive sequential speed (usually by a factor of 2 or 3) is responsible for the fast application load times.

The following is something I wrote for someone else earlier who asked about RAID0 SSDs vs a single SSD but the same concepts apply to RAID0 HDDs vs a single HDD from a performance perspective.

The theory is RAID0 will compromise a degree of single queue Random read performance in favour of greater sequential and high queue depth performance. This is due to the slight computational overhead on the CPU of managing the array. The Windows 7 (and all previous versions) boot up process requires chain loading heaps of small 4k files so your performance determinant is somewhere in between Pure 4k random and true sequential (leaning more towards 4k).
Therefore, I think you may see no change or a slight reduction in boot speed. Loading windows from a Hibernation file is more of a sequential affair so I am confident you will notice an improvement with RAID0.

As an interesting side note, The Windows 8 fast boot process involves reading part of the OS from a compressed hibernation file so you will see an improvement with RAID0 (in addition to having a Quadcore and high bandwidth RAM) however it is a diminishing returns event (even more so than a pure restore from Hibernation) since the non-kernel parts are still chainloads of small files.

If you are loading large continuous files (like large models etc) to the RAM, then RAID0 will definitely benefit you as it is designed to boost sequential bandwidth.

The key disadvantage of RAID0 is that the failure rate of the whole setup is proportional to how many drives are involved, so 2 drives give you twice the chance of the whole array failing because a single drive failure destroys the array. There are additional issues with compatibility, stripe size and such but these are pretty minor within the current scope of discussion.


In an ideal world without the disadvantages of SSDs, we would go for full SSD storage. However, because limitations exist, this is why we tend to recommend the SSD + HDD combo. You place your stuff which requires high random or sequential performance (like your OS and some games) on to your SSD and you put the other stuff which only needs acceptable performance on your HDD (like movies etc which are mostly sequential in nature).

 

Thanks for the reply
Those issues wont be that much of an issue to me as I will be regularly using it but the cost is daunting. I'll probably just wait and save up more.
And if I were to install my OS and all my games (20+ and growing) on the SSD, how much would I need?

 

As for games, no reason to install them on your SSD. They wont run any better from an SSD than an HDD. Maybe a few seconds faster to load is all.

Focus on putting your OS on the SSD, as well as programs (not games) that you use often and need to be quick. (For example, browser, iTunes, Photoshop, etc)
For that, a 60GB or 120GB would be perfect.

 

Thanks I think I have enough info now to get what Im looking for
Thanks everyone

 

I love me some raid 0 ssd's..