Is the Hard Drive a major part of what makes a PC fast?
July 31st, 2013
I’d get an SSD but since they’re so small lots of the data would have to be on another drive so wouldn’t that defeat the purpose?
You are missing the point of those SSD’s.
SSD’s you will be looking at are not for storage.
It’s a performance part for installing windows/apps and games etc on.
It dictates the speed things can be read and written to the drive.
So anything loading will be much faster on SSD and windows will be much snappier, making the whole PC feel far more high end than if you had a mechanical drive.
You should ideally have both a SSD for windows and app installs and a mechanical drive to just store files like movies and iso’s etc on.
It’s not crucial to have a SSD but it does make your computer feel more high end and responsive.
Hard Drive will make the Operating System (OS), applications and games to load faster than a standard platter HDD. Most people use a hybrid system with an SSD and HDD both installed. If you get an SSD then use it for OS, Apps, Games AND use your HDD for storage like movies, songs, pics etc.
Below is a post from -paroxysM^ that I’m quoting. EVERYONE how owns an SSD must follow his advice.
-paroxysM^ replied: Well there's basically one golden rule about SSDs and that's read more and write (very) less.
1) Pagefile (virtual memory). Disable it. If you have problems with software that require a pagefile then move it to another drive.
2) Browser profile folders. I myself use a portable version of Firefox on another drive. A browsers cache gets written to very frequently. It's probably the most active area of your drive. You should stick with portable versions or use symlinks to map them to another drive. Symlinks are a more robust solution and is pretty transparent to the end user. It's easy to do as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_symbolic_link
3) The temp directory (found in C:\User\Appdata\Local\Temp) also needs to be symlinked as above.
4) If you're feeling lazy you could just symlink the entire Appdata folder to another drive.
5) If you use IDM to download you should change it's temp directory elsewhere. It can be easily changed in it's options.
6) If you use Steam I suggest you move the Steam folder to another drive as well since Steam's cache folders are very busy. You can just move the folder as it is and run Steam. It will become self-aware of it's location.
7) Do not defrag or run software like junk cleaners and etc. Just leave it as it is.
jock_juffalo replied: You are missing the point of those SSD's.
SSD's you will be looking at are not for storage.
It's a performance part for installing windows/apps and games etc on.
It dictates the speed things can be read and written to the drive.
So anything loading will be much faster on SSD and windows will be much snappier, making the whole PC feel far more high end than if you had a mechanical drive.
You should ideally have both a SSD for windows and app installs and a mechanical drive to just store files like movies and iso's etc on.
It's not crucial to have a SSD but it does make your computer feel more high end and responsive.
What I meant was if I use the SSD for all programs, and windows… but use a secondary HDD for all other files like movies or pictures.. won’t those files cause it to be as slow as if I didn’t have an SSD?
OR will having an SSD improve everything as far as loading and operation?
SSD’s are still young and like you said, they’re limited in size. These days they have 3.5″ SATAs that are up to 4 TB in size (I got one). Go with a 3.5″ SATA that is 7200 RPM with a 3Gb/s data transfer rate, or better yet, 6Gb/s even faster, but more expensive. Avoid 5400 and 5900 RPM drives, they are sluggish.
But what really makes a PC fast is the CPU and the RAM.
What I meant was if I use the SSD for all programs, and windows... but use a secondary HDD for all other files like movies or pictures.. won't those files cause it to be as slow as if I didn't have an SSD?
OR will having an SSD improve everything as far as loading and operation?
Pictures and especially movies are read slowly in real time off the drive normally, so reading them from a HDD will not slow the system down..
You can always use a hybrid drive.
I’ve got 2 x Seagate Momentus XT 500GB’s in RAID 0 (500GB/4GB NAND) in this desktop, not as fast as SSD for read/write, but damn fast for booting up and opening apps like Word, Photoshop etc, plus you gain the extra size for your money. If you utilise RAID 0 then you get the extra performance.
OCZ do a hybrid drive 1TB/100GB NAND – but they are quite expensive at the moment, I have never used one, but the reviews are pretty crap as there is lots of issues with software updating to them.
You can do as suggested above, use a 120GB SSD for your OS, and install anything extra on a storage drive.
JDX3DS replied: Is the Hard Drive a major part of what makes a PC fast?File transfer is faster,game loading is faster but other than that it won’t improve gaming .
If so what specs should I look for in a hard drive?
I'd get an SSD but since they're so small lots of the data would have to be on another drive so wouldn't that defeat the purpose?
If that’s what you need buy an ssd they are better than raptors .
JDX3DS replied: jock_juffalo replied: You are missing the point of those SSD's.
SSD's you will be looking at are not for storage.
It's a performance part for installing windows/apps and games etc on.
It dictates the speed things can be read and written to the drive.
So anything loading will be much faster on SSD and windows will be much snappier, making the whole PC feel far more high end than if you had a mechanical drive.
You should ideally have both a SSD for windows and app installs and a mechanical drive to just store files like movies and iso's etc on.
It's not crucial to have a SSD but it does make your computer feel more high end and responsive.
What I meant was if I use the SSD for all programs, and windows... but use a secondary HDD for all other files like movies or pictures.. won't those files cause it to be as slow as if I didn't have an SSD?
OR will having an SSD improve everything as far as loading and operation?
well you might find launching a movie a bit slower actually.
As it’s stored in another drive and it will be idle when not used saving you power.
So you then need to wait on the drive to spin up. (you can disable this in power options, or set the drives to idle only after a couple hours etc)
But other than that everything else will be faster.
In a ideal world all our drives would be SSD but that’s simply way to expensive.
However if you do use a ssd for a boot drive you will never want to use a normal hdd again.
They really are one of the best upgrades you can buy.
64gb is enough for a boot drive.
I have a single 64gb m4.
I don’t disable page file but i limit it’s size to a max of 2gb.
It’s fine to keep it on the SSD.
I have windows 7 ultimate x 64 installed and all my used applications plus two games right now and i have 20gb free space still on the drive.
Games are Skyrim (vanilla) and Assassins creed revelations.
Installing a game from a iso to ssd is so much faster
One of the best perks.
If you get a SSD i would give the following general advice.
1: never do a full format the SSD as it will make every cell dirty, quick format is the way to go.
2: disconnect other hard drives when installing windows
3: keep 20% of the drive capacity free
4: once windows is installed run the windows experience index as it changes some registry settings that make a difference.
5: disable hibernation. (also may want to disable system restore)
6: umm i’m probably missing something… some suggest moving the user folder to another drive, but there is more advantage of it being on the SSD so i keep it there.
EDIT: Also never defrag the SSD drive.
I’m pretty sure that the guide from -paroxysM^ that was quoted was old advice for older drives and less advanced controllers.
I doubt he would give the same advice today.