Hi all, quick question regarding my hard drive setup. Apologies if there is a similar thread out there already. My current system spec is pretty decent, however the only HD im running is a 1.5tb samsung F2 (5400rpm) no partitions or anything. Performance isnt really the best as a boot drive / game drive etc. I plan on picking up an SSD in the near future, cant really stretch for more than 60-80gb realistically so gona be shuffling games and programs between that and the second drive. Question is really, will the F2 be acceptable as a second drive to still load software from and is there anything i could do to improve its performance i.e. partition etc (not really up to speed with hard drives.. excuse the pun). I was considering getting a 1tb F3 and relegating the F2 purely to storage. Would this be worth it? Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
I would say that before even considering SSD, you should invest in a 7200 r.p.m hdd. But I'm not an expert.
May sound a bit more.. Adventurous than storage solutions you've already conjured up. But, simply for the price a single Samsung F3 1TB drive can be picked up for.. Why not RAID0 two F3 1TB drives? They would have a similar cost to a decent SSD, you'd end up with 2TB of striped storage to play with (200%+ over the space of the SSD size you're aiming for) and the speed will be immense. The downsides are if you don't have a RAID capable board, you'd need an expansion card capable of it, if you have room for one, secondly, two drives would consume more power, and emit more heat, and finally.. If one drive fails, they both fail, the data wouldn't be.. Well unrecoverable, to put it to a point, on the surviving drive. Factor in that a RAID card, and 2 drives still equates to more bang:buck than an SSD, power and heat issues should be minimal (they're HDDs.. And modern ones at that), and you have a 2TB drive, so if you lost the RAID array you'd still have the other drive to rely on for back-ups. Out of the two options you offered up, I'd just go with a single 1TB F3 and use your F2 for storage, the F3s are still brilliantly fast drives alone, and for the money, the space they offer is amazing, I'd only ever recommend an SSD for an OS installation alone, so, that's a 30GB drive. But that's me.
I dont think upgrading your hard drive to a faster one is really worth it, you are better off putting the money towards an SSD instead. Also, a raid 0 array of only two drives, still not going to compare to an SSD. The main thing is access times, a hard drive raid array would have to have many discs before it matched the access times of an SSD. Im in the same boat as you, one big slow HDD, and I want to get a fairly small SSD for OS drive, but SSD prices are falling fast, chances are prices will fall even faster leading up to Christmas. Ive seen good reviews of the hybrid HDD's though. They essentiall have 4GB of SSD, coupled to a decent sized hard drive. It is transparent to the OS, and data that is accessed alot gets put onto the SSD part. Ony 4gb of it though, but like I said the reviews say its pretty good. I would like to see a comparison between a hybrid drive and an SSD though Hope that is of some use...
Forget all the suggestions mentioned here... very complex Get a OCZ Vertex 2e 60Gb SSD from ebuyer (cheapest i think) sell the f2 samsung and buy a 1tb samsung f3 for storage and software. Best solution which lots of people are running IMO.
I've recently added an OCZ Vertex 2E 60Gb as a boot drive and have relegated the previous F3 1TB to storage, data and mainstream applications. Cost me £94 from Scan and the difference is immense. From power on to Windows 7 load is under 30 seconds. Needed a few tips from the good folk here to get it going, but overall a simple upgrade with a massive gain in performance. Obviously you can't install too many games on the SSD due to space, so I installed Steam on the F3 so it downloads there (though tempted to experiment with two Steam intalls... anyone done it?). Overall can't recommend the Vertex 2 highly enough.
Thanks very much for all the suggestions. Sounds like a good idea to me. ~ £135 for the OCZ ssd and a 1tb F3 sounds reasonable. Running Windows 7 OEM atm, am I going to encounter problems re-installing this to the SSD or is this a fairly simple process now of getting an activation code? Also what would be the ideal way to switch boot drives, just format and do a fresh install or is there an easier way whereby I wont have to lose / externally backup all my data from the current HD?
The OEM dvd you've got 'should' just work - if not you'll get a free phone no where you can explain to M$ what's happened (your HDD failed & you installed a new one) & they should be sympathetic. The easiest way to switch boot drives is to disconnect the HDD & plug the SSD in to install Windows -> then plug the HDD back in as well & copy your data about. This is recommended as Win7 recognises SSDs on installation & alters some key settings. & remember that you only want to do a quick format with SSDs rather than a full one (as this would make all of the usable cells dirty -> very slow speeds until it recovered).
took the plunge and went for the OCZ ssd and F3, should be here in a couple of days! been reading this thread, looks pretty informative. Should that cover all my bases? Sorry for the old thread bump!
Yeah, i covered everything over a couple of posts in there (along with some more general info & waffle)... ...although have just read that there is a new firmware for the V2 (as of, i think yesterday) that's currently only downloadable/installable using the Toolbox. So it would be worth quickly downloading & installing that & plugging in the SSD temporarily as a secondary/non-boot drive (but not partitioning or formatting or anything) & updating to the 1.24 f/w... ...& then run through the list of things in the other post. Edit - oh, you could do the update afterwards, but despite it not being a destructive f/w revision, you'd want to back up your new install just in case... Hence recommending doing it the other way around.
Nice I've just added some info on that thread you linked to. Made Steam much easier for me to work with..along with every other game I play.
Excellent I shall indeed do that Just read that, exactly what I was looking to do. That thread shall be my bible come thursday evening
If you care about your data at all DO NOT DO THIS FOR STORAGE! (Raid 0 stripes across 2 disc so if one disc fails you loose everything) Raid 1 Mirrors disc (exact same information on 2 disc so if one fails you can replace it) and raid 5 spans across multiple disc with parity so if you have say, 3 disc Raid 5 and 1 disc dies you can still rebuild the raid array.
Whilst the OP's already gone for a different solution, there's nothing at all inherently wrong with using R0... Of course it's true that if this is the only place that the data is stored & one of the drives fails in the array then you would lose the data, but you have to remember that other raid array types are not a backup solution - simply the prevention of data loss from drive failure (the no depending on the array level & no of drives) &, with certain types a level of parity checking (at the cost of a loss of speed & a noticeable level of CPU usage unless you buy a dedicated controller with an on board processor). As has been said both on here & elsewhere for half of ever, they will not protect from accidental deletion, malware, data corruption (though the use of parity can limit this) fire, theft, etc, etc... Okay, so protecting from fire would have a prohibitive cost for significant quantities of data (or be damn annoying to do - having backup drives in an alt location & carrying them back & forth) & theft would be down to thieves not also taking the backup device (or as for fire), but it is entirely wrong to suggest that a raid array (of any level other than R0) will magically protect your data from all other potential issues as it won't. Instead, no matter whether you're using single drives or any array type, you need to have a regular backup regime, & this is the only way to significantly limit the likelihood of data loss. As such, using a R0 array is perfectly sensible providing, of course, this advice is followed. i've done this repeatedly on many computers over the years with no issue at all - my current better computer uses 4x V2s in a R0 array which increases the risk of the array failing vs a single SSD fourfold, but everything on it is automatically backed up to a R1 array on a DAS on a daily basis. & similarly, whilst the OP's gone for a vastly better solution with the V2, F3 & (i assume) keeping the F2 for backing up to than a pair of F3s, 'if' they had gone for the pair of F3s & put them in a R0 array there would still be the F2 for backing up to - & so no problem &/or lack of care for their data. &, of course, the upside of R0 is vastly better speeds...
As i do agree with you that a raid is not a back up solution, but how many people have a regular back up regime? I have a Raid 0 for performance but I also have my data backed up to a 1tb drive (in the rig) along with a home server. I was just stating that Raid 0 is not a good idea to store data. I do not put anything on my raid 0 I value because of the chance of loss thats the point i was trying to make.
Fair enough - you'd simply missed all of this out from your original comment, & more general advice about raid arrays always needs qualifying to include the need for backing up (esp critical) data imho. Whilst i've absolutely no idea how many people regularly backup, by qualifying it i think it then means that people can make an educated choice about backing up - cost vs inconvenience & problems that data loss would cause to them as individuals - which is better than making warnings of dire peril. Well, one of the purposes of forums such as these is to try to provide advice that, not only gives the OPs their answers, but also to inform others... ...&, whilst i 'should' have mentioned it myself in my response to you, it's a topic that's not just ltd to raid arrays - whilst a 2 drive R0 array (with no backup) will ~double the incredibly small chance (unless there's a major fault that affects large no's of drives - ie the early Seagate 7200.11s & the 1st f/w update for the C300s as easy examples) of losing data d.t. drive failure, there's obviously still ~half that chance with a single drive (with no backup). Anyway, as we're generally in agreement then all's good i think.
