So what do you use SSD drives for?

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Given the space limitations of these devices, do people mainly use them to hold operating systems and maybe a few of their favorite programs? Thinking about getting one but trying to learn more about what they are best suited for. Thanks!
 
I have 2 60GB in Raid0 and thats what my OS and apps are on. I have steam/games on another HDD.
 
One for OS and applications and one for Steam. Wouldn´t have it any other way now.
 
I put everything on ssds EXCEPT movies and backups. games/os/programs are on my ssds because I have 240gb of space to work with.
 
I have a separate SSD/OS just for gaming. Main SSD/OS is for general use/work stuff.

I'll never go back to regular HD's again for PC use if I can help it. Of course my servers will have regular drives.
 
I wonder if they will become more mainstream soon and come down in price.
 
I just bought 2 SSDs yesterday. The 120GB SSD is the sole drive in my laptop which I mainly use for work (Programming), so 120GB is plenty. My desktop has a 256GB SSD which is used for the OS, Apps, and Games, and I have plenty mechanical storage in the same desktop for music, movies, pictures, etc.
 
I have a crucial M4 64gig on my desktop for OS+Apps and then 2 little 16 gigs mirrored as OS drives on my NAS and an older OCZ vertex 2 as a read cache (L2ARC) on my NAS. All my work files and media are stored on my NAS.
 
For me, not putting games on the SSD kinda defeats the purpose really since you would want to load your games faster. I put everything on my SSD except for data (music and video) and downloads.
 
Intel 510 in my laptop 120gb everything on it except backups/storage.

Intel G2 80gb OS Drive + Apps + 1 Steam Game
--> Crucial M4 64gb Virtual Machine Drive / Mysql
--> Intel 320 60gb Virtual Machine Drive / Mysql
--> VRaptor for storage of files I access daily
--> 4xF3 for archive storage
 
Haiku214 said:
For me, not putting games on the SSD kinda defeats the purpose really since you would want to load your games faster. I put everything on my SSD except for data (music and video) and downloads.
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This. I have a 256GB M4 that holds OS/Applications and (Steam) games. My pictures, music and video files are on a 2TB internal harddisk.
I had a 80GB Intel SSD first but it was getting a bit too small, especially when installing a lot of games (it should be enough for just the OS and normal applications). The 256GB I have now is a bit overkill though. I guess most gamers will be fine with a 128GB SSD.
 
I use a pair of 80G gen 2 intel drives (raid 0) for the OS, dev tools, and key games I want on my faster drive. Most of my steam folder is now on a pair of old raptors (also raid 0) with one more large mechanical for ISO, VMs, and other files.
 
I've got a bunch of SSDs scattered across my different computers / laptops. If multi-drive setup, always boot and games on SSD and apps, data and other on HD. If just a SSD drive only then I usually just load the bare minimums - current games only. Keep the office and productivity software in the cloud as much as possible (instead of using MS Office, I'll upload the files to Google Docs).

Either way all of my photos and videos and such are on my NAS so I can blank computers anytime as needed without worry about losing original data files.
 
running a 64GB Kingston SSD for my OS in my desktop -- really wanting to buy another matched drive and put them in Raid0 for double the capacity and double the speed. Gotta watch my money though.

I'd love to have an SSD dedicated to my steam games - but no way can I go out and afford to buy an SSD that's at least 200 to 300 dollars.

Besides the only game I play now is BF3 - and while the loading on multiplayer sucks, the problem is *if* i had an SSD and loaded games 10X quicker. I'd still be waiting on the game screen the 10 to 30 seconds you are sitting in the game waiting for players to ready up and even the teams. So it makes no sense to me to blow 200 dollars and in the end wind up waiting the exact same amount of time.
 
90GB SSD keeps all my OS, apps and games. Though, I can keep max 2 big games at a time , 3rd game doesn fit anymore :)
 
Thanks for all the info, i just ordered a corsair M4 64 GB to boot the OS off of.
 
The M4 series is great. I have the 256gb in my Alienware 14x (upgraded from the 500gb hd on my own) and the performance difference is night and day. Out of all the ones I've used, I think the Crucial M4 is the fastest single drive so far.
 
OS, all my apps, a couple of the games I'm playing most at the moment...

It's not hard to move game installs around with symlinks/Steam Mover, shifting them to the SSD when you're playing them a lot and back to a HDD when you're not... At 256GB or more it's less of a concern, at 60GB it might be hard to squeeze more than a single game unto it. You should never fill up a SSD to capacity as it'll drastically impact performance.

I keep all my documents, music, etc. on a HDD but occasionally I might move a really large video to the SSD while I work with it, or even large photos... Just a matter of throwing them on the desktop while working and then saving them back on your HDD when done.
 
Enjoy your SSD!

OS and applications some frequently used apps/games. I put Arma 2, Starcraft 2, DCS A-10C, Battlefield 3, etc. on it (Steam Mover makes this easy) - basically games that are either high in IO (Like Arma and DCS), or frequently payed (like SC2/BF3).

I use my 64GB as a boot drive and the 120GB for games and other things that I want great IO on. I've got 10TB of storage on spinning drives in my desktop (WD Blacks for my main Steam folder and other games, WD Greens for general storage and keeping redundant copies of important things that reside on my server's raid 5).
 
I moved my root partition to a new 60GB SSD the other day, and a few choice applications (root on SSD already includes a huge number of applications, in this case I'm referring to some larger applications from /opt and other locations). I run Gentoo, so having root on SSD is pretty wicked. Boot, application start, and emerge operations are much faster.

I think the typical workflow on Linux/Unix systems has the potential to benefit a lot from SSDs. The Unix philosophy of small, modular tools working together results in many tasks invoking a lot of small binaries which load small libraries and small configuration files from all over the disk.

I'm looking for other paths to move over which have large potential performance impact. The portage tree is one, but I'm worried about it's size and churn accelerating performance degradation. Some application configuration/data in ~ are also on the list.
 
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Set up my new 64gb Crucial M4 SSD - wow.... best upgrade ever. everything is instant! windows boots up before it even has a chance to show me the windows logo on bootup, lol.
 
My 6th(?) SSD just came in today.

I have the new Samsung 830 for my OS/Apps. I have the old Samsung 470 for virtual machines (taking the place of my optical drive).

I'd like look at a 60GB-ish SSD for my desktop...it's just laughable how much faster these things are.
 
How much did the 830 cost you? (and where) Haven't seen them at the egg yet...
 
Quartz-1 said:
Can you elaborate on this?
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The vast majority of SSD come with some spare area reserved for maintenance duties carried out by the controller, things like TRIM and such, relying on that minimum of space that's provided by the manufacturer isn't really enough though. A SSD's controller is constantly moving data around to clear pages (logic address space) that have been marked as deleted, or implement wear leveling algorithms across the flash, etc etc.

Filling it up to capacity slows or impedes many of those things. Leaving a good 10-15% empty will give the controllera good buffer (in addition to the pre- reserved space). Read some of Anandtech's old SSD Anthology articles, they go into detail about all this and provide plenty of before/after benchmarks, TRIM tests, etc. It's not like filling up HDDs to capacity was ever a good idea either, it had it's own share of side effects.
 
I have 2 Crucial M4 256gb Raid0 for OS and Steam games and two 2TB for pics and old files.
 
OS, programs, and games.
all my data is stored on internal raptors and external usb drives.
 
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