What to, and what not to put on an SSD?

[docterfreeze]

Particularly, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...D=3938566&SID= this SSD

Can I put google chrome on it?

Can i put games (WoW, Skyrim, Minecraft, BF3) on it?

[Mindyourbaal]

As far as I know, please correct me if I am wrong, you want to put things that have long load times. ie WoW league, and your OS so your boot time is super quick. Having chrome on your SSD would not do much if anything at all.

[Deleted]

Why wouldn't you?
You can put anything you want on it, the tech (and space) from initial launch SSD's has increased a lot over the years, other than perhaps turning automatic defrag off and the usual tweaks to save space (turning off hybernation & the like) there's not much you need to look out for.

My windows, programs, and games are all on my SSD.
There's not really any point putting small programs etc on a seperate drive, the amount of space you'll save is so little it just doesn't really seem worth it.

[Beace]

Windows and applications (including Chrome) should go on it pretty much by default. And with a 256GB SSD, you should be able to fit most or all of your games on it as well.

WoW in particular loves being on an SSD. You'll find yourself loading into instances before everyone else (except others also running it on an SSD of course).

[chazus]

To be honest, you really should be putting everything on the SSD that gets used more than once a week. A large storage drive is really only useful movies, music libraries, and video recording stuff.

There is absolutely no reason that any programs, and stuff associated with programs, should not be on the drive. If you can't fit it, you either need a bigger drive, or need to clean out some junk programs you don't use.

[mafao]

Just put everything on the SSD except your movie collection.

[Korgoth]

Yeah I have one of those. Great choice. Every Application you use regularly should be on the SSD, the rest on an external usb 3.0 drive. at 256 gb it should be ok. I have the full Adobe CS suite, 3 Modeling Programs, full Office suite, a bunch of various work shit, and about 5 games I am currently playing and still have over 50g of space left.

I have most of my game library on a 1tb usb 3.0 external drive and only games I am currently playing on the SSD, and just swap them out, which really takes no time as I see transfer rates above 100 mB/s. Steam even loads games off the USB drive without any noticeable difference then directly off a internal HD. Movies I always leave on external as the SSD speed increase doesn't really matter. Music I would have external as well, but I just stream everything now.

Don't worry about not having enough space, at 250+ its more then enough for the application and games you use regularly, and if its not then you can still have them running off an external drive.

[docterfreeze]

Yeah I have one of those. Great choice. Every Application you use regularly should be on the SSD, the rest on an external usb 3.0 drive. at 256 gb it should be ok. I have the full Adobe CS suite, 3 Modeling Programs, full Office suite, a bunch of various work shit, and about 5 games I am currently playing and still have over 50g of space left.

I have most of my game library on a 1tb usb 3.0 external drive and only games I am currently playing on the SSD, and just swap them out, which really takes no time as I see transfer rates above 100 mB/s. Steam even loads games off the USB drive without any noticeable difference then directly off a internal HD. Movies I always leave on external as the SSD speed increase doesn't really matter. Music I would have external as well, but I just stream everything now.

Don't worry about not having enough space, at 250+ its more then enough for the application and games you use regularly, and if its not then you can still have them running off an external drive.

Thanks for explaining it in a newb-friendly way. I was reading into it and some people say it is not good to put programs that write on an SSD, must've been outdated info.

[chazus]

I was reading into it and some people say it is not good to put programs that write on an SSD, must've been outdated info.

It's not outdated, it's just misinterpretted. SSD's are still fairly new to the consumer market (they didn't become big until about a year or two ago). The issue is this.

SLC (Older SSD/Flash) has X amount of writes. A very large amount. (About 100k writes per cell)
MLC (What MOST SSD's are now) Has anywhere from 1/10 to 1/5 of SLC (about 10k writes per cell)
TLC (Some newer SSDs) Has 1/2 to 1/3 of MLC (about 5k writes per cell)

People's gut reaction is "omg TLC sucks, it'll die super fast" or "I need to make sure NOTHING is EVER written to my drive or it'll die!"

That's where the misconception is. Based off calculations and tests, you would literally need to write 20GB a day to your SSD (lets say it's a TLC)... And your drive would die in... about 20-30 years.

20GB a day. A DAY.

I've owned my SSD for about 4 months now. And I write a LOT of data. I do VMs, I tweak stuff, I do a lot of software testing. I write a lot of data, more than most people on this forum, I suspect. I have so far written about 1.5TB, which I believe comes out to about 6TB a year on average. The 250gb MLC drives last about 6000TB. My drive will definitely last longer than I'll be alive, under normal circumstances. Half of that, a TLC drive will only last like ... still way too long.

It's literally impossible to burn out an SSD drive unless you are doing benchmarks in order to do so (which is what some people do, to get us this fancy info). Of course, drives sometimes die, manufacture defects, and acts of god. SSD's are a funny thing, because they die like LCDs, in cells. Point by point gets locked into read only mode, and there are tools to see when it's starting to really go south. And then you just get a new drive. You will upgrade before your drive starts to fail though, by decades.

[docterfreeze]

It's not outdated, it's just misinterpretted. SSD's are still fairly new to the consumer market (they didn't become big until about a year or two ago). The issue is this.

SLC (Older SSD/Flash) has X amount of writes. A very large amount. (About 100k writes per cell)
MLC (What MOST SSD's are now) Has anywhere from 1/10 to 1/5 of SLC (about 10k writes per cell)
TLC (Some newer SSDs) Has 1/2 to 1/3 of MLC (about 5k writes per cell)

People's gut reaction is "omg TLC sucks, it'll die super fast" or "I need to make sure NOTHING is EVER written to my drive or it'll die!"

That's where the misconception is. Based off calculations and tests, you would literally need to write 20GB a day to your SSD (lets say it's a TLC)... And your drive would die in... about 20-30 years.

20GB a day. A DAY.

I've owned my SSD for about 4 months now. And I write a LOT of data. I do VMs, I tweak stuff, I do a lot of software testing. I write a lot of data, more than most people on this forum, I suspect. I have so far written about 1.5TB, which I believe comes out to about 6TB a year on average. The 250gb MLC drives last about 6000TB. My drive will definitely last longer than I'll be alive, under normal circumstances. Half of that, a TLC drive will only last like ... still way too long.

It's literally impossible to burn out an SSD drive unless you are doing benchmarks in order to do so (which is what some people do, to get us this fancy info). Of course, drives sometimes die, manufacture defects, and acts of god. SSD's are a funny thing, because they die like LCDs, in cells. Point by point gets locked into read only mode, and there are tools to see when it's starting to really go south. And then you just get a new drive. You will upgrade before your drive starts to fail though, by decades.

Awesome, thank you.

[Killora]

Extending from Chazus' post

Assuming 5k cycles (a program cycle is when you write the full size of a drive, wipe it, and re-write) even if you wanted to pound it to death, assuming we're using a 120gb SSD, that's 600TB worth of write data before the drive becomes read only. That's a lot. as Chazus said, you'd have to write 20gb a day for quite awhile for the drive to fail. Write now i have 3.66tb of writes and i've owned this SSD for about a year. The endurance on these SSD's are pretty ludicrous.

Don't worry about it. Just make sure you save space by getting rid of hibernate/relocating or deleting the page file. Aswell as media like music and movies on a different drive.

[docterfreeze]

Write now

Ba-dum, tish!

[mazox74]

If you have a large amount of steam games steam tool library is great for moving games you do not need on your ssd or to make space for newer games.

[Killora]

Ba-dum, tish!

You like that?

I uhh.... totally meant to do that. Right. Let's stick with that.

[yurano]

As far as I know, please correct me if I am wrong, you want to put things that have long load times. ie WoW league, and your OS so your boot time is super quick. Having chrome on your SSD would not do much if anything at all.

Chrome might not need to be on an SSD, but Firefox should be on the SSD. On a slow 5400 RPM HDD, Firefox takes some 10 seconds to load where as it loads instantly on SSD. I think it has something to loading of the internet cache, especially browser history and address bar search tokens.

[Killora]

Chrome might not need to be on an SSD, but Firefox should be on the SSD. On a slow 5400 RPM HDD, Firefox takes some 10 seconds to load where as it loads instantly on SSD. I think it has something to loading of the internet cache, especially browser history and address bar search tokens.

No reason not to have your browser on your SSD. Still improve browser performance regardless of what it is. If anything, it opens faster.

[Libertarian]

You would be surprised how fast a 240/256gb drive fills up. You definitely want your OS, browser, and small day to day applications on there. The only games you really want on there are ones with many load screens that interrupt gameplay. For example: World of Warcraft could be considered one, while League is not. Sure you will "be the first to load into league!" but who cares? Once you load, the game goes. If you're playing a singleplayer RPG with many load screens you definitely want that on there.

I have a mushkin chronos 240gb and I love it so much. Installing updates, restarting, browser, etc is so fast and I put games on there with long loading times that interrupt gameplay. Otherwise most of my collection is on my F:\ drive and now that steam lets you easily choose, it's even better.

[Ihnasir]

I always had WoW and OS (at least) on my SSD. I love it.

[Killora]

If only WoW didn't take up so goddamn much space. Between the OS and WoW on a 120gb SSD you're already at half. >_<;;

[Hanto]

Put anything and everything you can if it's used often enough (program-wise). Treat it like you would a normal HDD in regards to its use.