Help needed: SRT/SSD

[Zkeya]

I was checking the prices on SSDs on the local stores a while ago and I found this drive (16GB version) for 44 euros (for comparison intel 320 40GB is at 82 euros). I almost immidiately thought "I should buy one for SRT".

BUT:

I don't know if the disk is reliable. And I don't know if SRT is worth it. Yes the price of the disk is low, but I don't want to waste money. If SRT isn't worth, the disk would be useless, since it's too small.
I'm really gaming right now, but I may focus on some RPGs this autumn. At the moment I use Autocad and Photoshop and I'll be trying to learn 3dsmax and Illustrator.

[vesseblah]

SRT will be faster than plain HDD, but on 16GB is really small and will not help much with games and such.

[Djinni]

Didn't even know they did 2.5" drives that small....

It's doubtful that you'd see any real difference with a 16gb drive though.

[Zkeya]

I was under the impression that the size of the disk doesn't really matters, seeing the Gigabyte M/Bs with the 20GB SSD (and yes I didn't know they made so small SSDs too). So SRT is probably not worth it right?

[vesseblah]

I was under the impression that the size of the disk doesn't really matters, seeing the Gigabyte M/Bs with the 20GB SSD (and yes I didn't know they made so small SSDs too). So SRT is probably not worth it right?

Problem is that files on games tend to be multiple gigabytes in size, so 16GB disc will not be able to hold many things in your use.

[taekvideo]

The smaller ssd's aren't going to be as fast as bigger ones, in general anyway. I think intel made a 20gb one designed to be as fast as a larger drive, but it's expensive for the size. It'll still be a nice improvement in sequential read, and more importantly the random access times, which is what SRT takes advantage of the most anyways.

[kailtas]

Well there are 4 aspects of an SSD you should watch out for when you are going for an SRT SSD.

Read - Higher = faster
Write - The HDD will write data to the Sata cable. The data will then end up at the SSD controller, if the SSD cannot write faster than the HDD we have an SSD bottleneck. But any faster write speeds than the HDDs write speeds are uneccesary.
Space - Highest possible SRT is 64 GB. A 64GB on a 1TB HDD means that 6.4% of the most used files are placed in the SSD.
Controller - The sandforce controllers are better at read than the marvell controllers. But the marvell controllers are more stable and have less BSOD issued.

I will be getting a 64GB Crucial M4 for SRT the next month, and it is an SSD i recommend for SRT. It has over 400MB read/s and it has enough write to be used as an SRT 95MB/s,

[Zkeya]

I'll probably postpone the SRT SSD for a while then. Right now I don't even have 100GB of programs in my HDD -.-
Maybe I'll get one for OS when prices drop a bit more (more than 3euros/GB here :/)
Thanks for the help!

[BicycleMafioso]

SRT is worth it. I would recommend 40~ish GB though. Else, the increases would be negligble.