ssd as os drive

Hello all, I'm getting ready to purchase a sager np 8278-s. What is the advantage of having a 120GB Crucial M5 mSATA SSD - Preconfigured as an OS Drive . versus upgrading the primary hard drive to an os drive using either a 500GB Samsung 840 EVO Series SSD [SSD2 - SATA III] or a 512GB Samsung 840 Pro Series SSD [SSD2 - SATA III] ?

 

The disadvantages of having a 120GB Crucial M500 mSATA SSD vs. a 2.5" SSD are:

1) Capacity. Simply not enough going into Q2-Q3 of 2014. When OP'ing (30% recommended) is taken into account along with the free space Windows needs (50GB recommended for most users) the 120GB nominal capacity of the mSata drive you're considering is just too small.

Math:
120GB nominal is 120,000,000,000 / 1024/1024/1024 = ~111GB actual capacity x 0.7 = ~78GB actual capacity less ~50GB free space for O/S and program temp space = 28GB available for the O/S, the Programs and the pagefiles.sys and hibernation files (if needed). Simply too small to do anything useful with except for browsing imo.

2) Heat. mSATA SSD's like the M500 are very sensitive to heat and will throttle their performance when temps are excessive. Keep in mind that the 2.5" M500 also have this issue - but the difference is that the physical space where each is placed is much greater for the 2.5" SSD and will keep it cooler better than the much more constrained space the mSATA drive will live in.

3) Price. Depending on how much premium you pay for the too small mSATA drive, of course, it almost always is better to order the smallest cheapest HDD with the system you can (or no HDD if possible - but make sure you have an O/S license you can use - Windows 8.1 x64 Pro highly recommended) and put in your own SSD with the size, capability and performance that is better matched to the workload you will present it with. Instead of choosing the bottom of the barrel pricing the manufacturer is looking for in an mSATA part vs. any benefit to the end user.

4) Workload. What will this system be used for? The other 2.5" drives you mention can all be considered depending on the workload they will see. But I recommend the SanDisk Extreme II 480GB models for the highest (sustained) performance and best bang for the buck when you find them on sale for $300 or less for 480GB.



In any case, you want to specify that the O/S disk is included with your purchase and the first thing you want to do is download the MS USB tool and create a bootable USB key with your install media. The O/S install from a USB key is around 5 minutes vs. over 20 minutes from CD/DVD media (for Windows 8.1 Pro x64).

See:
Microsoft Store


Hope this helps.

Good luck.

 

I'll be using the laptop fro gaming and entertainment. I'm wondering what the benefit is by putting the os on a seperate ssd vs leaving it on the the main ssd?

 

The advantage with that setup is that it allows separation of the OS/programs and data. If you need to reload your OS at some point, you can do so without affecting your data. There are minor performance advantages as well; the storage drive and OS drive can handle read/write requests independently.

I'm not doubting you, but please back up that statement about Windows needing 50GB free space.

I have a 120GB SSD primary (111GB formatted capacity); it currently has 75GB free space with Windows 8.1 and many programs installed. Never had a problem.

 

Windows 8 Pro only uses about 16GB upon fresh installation. A 120GB drive as an OS drive should suffice. 60GB will do too, if you don't plan to install any programs on it and just plain OS drive.

 

Your setup is unique in my experience with my many clients that range from pro to not pro.

In each case with my clients (although for different reasons) the capacity was used up much faster than the usability of the system (had it free space available to continue working).


When taking into account OP'ing (30%) as I do and the wish for my clients to have a system last at least 3-5 years with all the WU's and SP's that that time frame entails, 50GB free space is not asking for a lot.

Especially when that also includes some programs that need 5-15GB free space for their temp files when they are being used.

My most common scenario (space issues) is a call from a client that wants to disable the Windows warning about free space. I have seen as little as 125MB free space on business computers because of all the reports (PDF's, Word and Excel files) that have been downloaded (usually multiple times) over the past years. Consumer/home setups from some of these same clients are worse: KB's of space free and a very unresponsive O/S.

To clean these systems up is not difficult. But the time to do so is dreaded by all (depending on the platform in use; I leave the cleanup to run overnight in addition to having already spent an afternoon or morning doing the manual stuff).

When these same clients are told 50GB is the lowest free space to live with: the same type of cleanup can happen in minutes instead of hours or days.


Here is a specific example for the setup of my T100TA with 64GB SSD and 64GB microSD card:

Win8.1 x32 installed from factory (with 2GB RAM):
OP'd capacity (aka 'unallocated'): ~6GB's (cringe: I want it closer to ~18GB's)
Used capacity on main SSD: ~15GB
microSD card used: 0GB's

Total capacity available on SSD: ~43GB

Delete garbage-ware, disable system restore, disable error reporting, disable hibernation:
Used capacity on main SSD: ~8GB
microSD card used: 0GB's

Install Office 2013 (full version) to microSD card, install a few other suites (full versions) to microSD card, install java, Windows Updates (WU) install Windows 8.1 Update 1 and update Office and other programs:
Used capacity on main SSD: ~24GB
microSD card used: ~10GB's

Install Dropbox to main SSD (selective folders only: ~5GB worth of data : DB won't install to removable drive!!!):
Used capacity on main SSD: ~29GB
microSD card used: ~10GB's


So, with DB's caching routine I still effectively run out of capacity with more than ~15GB free space on the main SSD drive (the files I'm constantly updating on DP are in the 1-3GB size though, and I have at least a three of these).




From my real world example above: the O/S drive almost tripled it's capacity cost (with 99% of the programs installed to the microSD card) with just 'regular' Windows Updates and a single Update 1 for Windows 8.1. While I have ~35GB free space on the microSD card - it is not usable space (by the O/S and/or System and/or (some) Programs (Dropbox)...).

My 50GB free space requirement may seem far fetched and it is not anything anyone 'officially' recommends (except me of course), but not taking these capacity issues into consideration is simply setting yourself up for more work in the very, very near future for no reason, imo.



This is why I have recently changed my recommendations for 'real' setups to have a C:\ drive that is partitioned for 150GB and the Data drive to be the remainder of the capacity available (less 30% of the total nominal capacity of the SSD of course).



This space is not wasted 'just in case' either:


Example: 480GB SanDisk Extreme II setup:

~447GB nominal capacity.
~313GB usable capacity after OP'ing 30%

150GB C:\ drive (O/S)
165GB D:\ drive (Data)


150GB C:\ drive configured during Windows 8.1 x64 Pro setup.
165GB D:\ drive configured after Win setup and all drivers installed.

After Windows is fully updated and setup with the user folders moved to D:\ properly: the C:\ drive partition is shrunk to leave the ~50GB free space capacity we want. For our example here let's say we shrink it down to 75GB (75GB Shrink).

When we do that: we can expand the Data drive by the same amount.

D:\ drive now has 240GB capacity for our data.

And our total 'unallocated' space has remained the same.


What have we gained by this?

What we've gained by setting up the system like this is that we can expand our C:\ drive as needed up to 150GB (that would mean 100GB capacity used) without having to remove all our DATA, our setup (moving the User folders) and our programs paths (DB to d drive, Outlook linking to DB for the pst files, etc.).

Of course, I would be decreasing/shrinking any capacity that we expanded on the C:\ drive from the D:\ drive.

But managing a few GB's worth of simple DATA is much easier than having to re-configure an entire system to adjust storage capacity for the O/S partition - or, worse; having to completely re-install Windows again (especially if the system has proved stable up to now).



I know, not many people look that forward when deciding optimal storage capacities and configurations. But when I'm managing many dozens of workstations and notebooks; being able to shrink/expand a partition as needed with minimal impact to the O/S and programs installed is greatly valued over a slightly higher (one time) cost of a bigger SSD.

Not to mention the undeniable performance advantage of a higher capacity SSD in the first place...


Charles, I hope I answered your question fully?

Take care.

 

I would defiantly go with a SSD. Unless you needs tons and tons of space you will never look back.