??

Solid State will always win..

but your going to pay a pretty penny for 512gb of solid state goodness..

at least for a decent one...

alternatively.... grab a 120 or 240 gb solid state and then plug in a 1tb or larger hardrive for extra storage for other things...

SSD, a good SSD.
But a SSD with 512 GByte will be very expensive (6 750 GByte HDDs for 1 512 GByte SSD)

K thanks for the info yeah i know the ssd are much more expensive but if it's better it's what i'll get plus i won't be getting my own laptop for another 6 or 7 months at least so maybe price well be a little better if not o well that's what i'll get

No contest really. Now that SSD are slowly going down in prices more people are considering it.
SSD is going to be the better option 95% of the time. Price is the only thing. Most people go for the smaller sizes like 128Gb.
Storage is obviously still key to you. Read on...

A huge SSD like that (512Gb) might not even be needed. Use some normal hard drives as secondary drives as backups.
I personally make use of a networked storage device at home (Google: LGNAS) and In the past also a usb HD.
My Network storage has 2 2TB drives in it, raid 1 for the hope anything I put on their is safe, and that I'll never run out of room.
Also it really didn't cost that much to do it.

A 512Gb SSD will set you back about ￡600 pounds, while a 128Gb will be nearer to 150. Or if 128Gb is still too small 256Gb is about 300 (spot a pattern?).
Huge saving since it won't cost that much for an external HD setup, be it be a usb based or a NAS system.
I have no problem working on files via my NAS, it's still fast. I keep all my big stuff there.

An SSD will be 10x faster than a mechanical HD, so for speed there's no context.

However, if you're planning to use the HD for storage purposes, then the clear choice is a large mechanical HD, as you get much more GBs for your ￡.

SSD is NOT x10 times faster, it's faster only for random access, but almost same for linear.

SSD will die very soon with Skyrim, especially if HiRes packs installed. If you want SSD very much, then at least get warranty of 5 years. But the best of all is to install Win7 x64, to buy 12 or 16 gb RAM and software for emulating RAM drive and play game from it. Best performance, cheap enough price.

I'm sorry but that is utter rubbish.

With sequencial reads, even the fastest commercial mechanical HD you can buy (WD Velociraptor 10000rpm) you will be lucky to achieve 150MB/s. With modern SSDs you're looking at 500MB/s.

With random reads of 4k blocks, you're right, SSDs are not 10x faster.... more like 100x faster.

And NO, Skyrim, or any other application, will not kill your SSD "very soon" at all. SSDs have an unlimited read capacity and a limited write capacity, which means for gaming, where you're only reading data (apart from when you save your game), SSDs will have a practically unlimited life span. Even for commercial file servers, where there are vast amounts of data being written evey day, most SSDs will have a minimum of 5 years life span, but the life span is predictable (unlike mechanical drives) and the server operators can schedule a replacement cycle accordingly. Basically, Skyrim is much more likely to kill your mechanical drive, with all its moving parts, bearings and motors than your SSD.

Please do not spread such rubbish over the forums if you have not done your research.

Thank you for taking the time to essentially post what i was about to post lol..

My comproimise is a 120 Gb SSD for my OS and for key programs and a pair of 10K RPM Raptors in RAID 0 for most programs and data. That way I get the very fast boot (under 14 seconds including antivirus) and fast load (Outlook. PowerPoint, Excel Etc. in about a half a second) and also a real snappy everyday read write. The Raptors are backed up by a large standard 2 Tb 7200 RPM drive which also holds all my bloat files like thousands of pictures, videos and e mail back ups Etc. The entire set up is then backed up to my server (Win Home Server) every night.
I have been using the same SSD for 18 months now and I have always put my most played game of the day on it. I just checked life remaining and it is now 88% life left so I would not at all be concerned about SKYRIM taking down the life of your SSD.

I use a 128gb SSD for booting my OS, a few key programs, and to run Skyrim, I have a 2TB HDD for everything else like movies, music and other stuff.

SSD's are still not good enough to warrant their cost. Unless you have unlimited fundage, go with a RAID 0 setup with 7200 RPM (or better) drives. Maybe in about 5 years the cost will match the increase in performance, but right now it's just something to brag about having.

This is an excellent strategy, I use very similar with one minor adjustment, I also move the games I'm currently playing the most to my SSD (160GB). I still install them to the D:\ RAID 0 array to maintain install/OS structure but I just create a junction to them so that they are logically still on D:\ but physically located at C:\. This gives the speed-up of my SSD when I'm playing a game and then I just return it to D:\ when I'm done by deleting the junction and moving the folder back.

Another strategy gaining popularity with the price of high capacity/density RAM dropping so much is RAM drives. You can get 4GB DIMMs for $5/GB or less and 8GB DIMMs for ~$6/GB. With X58 or X79 that means you can easily obtain 24GB+, which leaves you plenty for your OS/apps (~8GB) with another 16GB+ for a RAM drive. I'm tempted to try this out at some point myself, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

But bringing this full circle to the OP, I would also recommend setting it up this way, buy a reasonably priced and sized SSD in the ~120-160GB range for $150-$200 or even 2 smaller ones for RAID0. Then buy a couple large, fast mechanical HDDs for storage and backup. Much better bang for the buck, especially since large SSDs carry such a huge premium and drop in price so quickly.

Sorry this just isn't accurate. I've never seen anyone who's actually used an SSD say this, the difference is really pretty extreme and probably the single best upgrade you can make for your PC once you've taken care of the basics (CPU, GPU, RAM).

There's no need for such a huge SSD. All you would want on it is your applications and your operating system. Keeping stuff like games and movies on it is pointless since they dont benefit from the speed. Games only get a boost in loading times but nothing else, not even streaming games (even if, only barely).

You will be fine with a 128gb SSD. It's more than enough for Windows and a few applications, keep games and other data on a normal HDD - A big SSD simply is not worth the cost, a small SSD however IS worth it.

Don't think in "either/or" terms. Get a decent SSD for the OS and apps and a big HDD for everything else.

It's not "extreme" and it's not not the "single best upgrade"...please. I don't see why you want to argue about something like this, the facts are clear. If you have excess money, get an SSD. For everyone else, standard drives in RAID 0 is the way to go. A single SSD is faster than a singe 7200 drive, but that's NOT what I'm talking about.

And having an SSD just so your OS boots a few seconds faster is ridiculous.

Do you have an SSD? If you do you can try this yourself. The benefits extend far beyond just loading times because that's where RAID 0 mechanical drives do manage to stay pretty close. The main benefit of SSDs are for seek times and random I/O speeds (small reads) where they are orders of magnitudes faster than mechanical drives. If you think Raptors or whatever else are fast compared to 7200RPM drives, just look at the seek times on SSDs...even the slow ones are full decimal point faster.

Games you will see a huge benefit: MMOs, any game that streams textures (virtually all), games with a lot of tiny, unique objects and textures.

I installed an SSD for my gf about 2 months ago and she couldn't believe the difference it made for Sims 3. TONs of tiny objects and clutter that need to load, it speeds up not only the viewport render, but even opening up the "buy" window as all that clutter needs to load, tons of tiny I/O access and reads where SSDs excel.

I use an SSD for my boot drive, and HDDs for storage. When a game needs better performance, I just copy the game files over to the SSD and symbolically link them back to where they were on the HDD to maintain location continuity.


From the perspective of how the user experience, an SSD as the OS volume is probably the most noticeable and significant upgrade that one can do. The snappiness and response an SSD provides is not to be underestimated.

Suicide RAID is certainly twice as fast as a single drive in some instances, but on average the performance boost is only around 10% or so and is nowhere near the performance of the weakest SSD. Further, note the use of the term "suicide RAID": RAID 0 is generally not worth the risk of data loss.

Finally, making the OS boot faster is probably the least of what an SSD offers.

Well, you've clearly never used an SSD. Like I said, after the basics are taken care of, the storage subsystem clearly becomes the single biggest bottleneck. SSDs are orders of magnitude faster where it matters; anyone who uses an SSD understands this, anyone who doesn't will think mechanical drives are still faster (they're not).

I have 2 RAID 0 arrays with fast mechanical drives that give me 300 - 350MB/s sequential read/write performance and while they are on par or better in that regard to my SSD, they pale in comparison in the categories that actually matter and are noticeable.

SSD wins, as long as you have the rest of the computer fast enough to cater to it.

SSD hands down; best value for money upgrade anyone can buy.

The choice is made even easier by the inflated price of HDDs atm.

SSD's are worth every bit of their price considering the speed over mechanical drives. I sacrificed my 500GB WD Caviar drive for my current SSD and never looked back.

Intel or OCZ SSD or get ready for some setting changes or a dead SSD at least if you read write as much as I do.

Yep. Blue screens can become a problem. Whatever make/model you're looking at, read up on it...a lot. I made the mistake of buying a Crucial 120GB and, after the fact, found bueacoup negative write-ups on it.

I don't know. I'd rather use a low capacity SSD for swap file duty, rather than a large one, with all my files in there...