HDD to SSD - will I see much improvement if I have to use USB 2 drive for my docs?

mr_fishbulb

Hi all,

Thinking about putting in a SSD into my machine. It's currently running a Samsung F3 1TB drive partitioned into 60GB for OS and Apps, and the rest for data.

However, I've only got space for 1 hard drive in my machine (space and SATA connector constraints - it's a small form factor).

I was thinking of getting a 120 SSD drive for the OS and apps, but my documents would have to go on an external USB drive.

Will the slowness of the USB cancel out any improvements I'd see from the SSD?

Cheers

patman99

SSDs are a good option, but as with any such storage medium (inc. memory cards & USB Pendrives), each physical bit can only be written-to around 4 - 5000 times before it fails (unlike a normal HDD which can handle 100,000 writes per bit) so storing your docs on an external HDD is good advice.

mr_fishbulb

Cheers patman - not worried about the drive failing as I've got additional USB hard drive, and Internet backups. Just want a faster machine without upgrading everything

bluesnake

ssd are fairly small, so it could be possible to hide it or Velcro it down.

Also many people do not use their cd drive much, like me on my laptop, so have removed the cd drive and put the old 1t in a drive caddy that fits into the cd slot, and now have both an ssd and a 1t drive

mr_fishbulb

bluesnake wrote: »

ssd are fairly small, so it could be possible to hide it or Velcro it down.

Also many people do not use their cd drive much, like me on my laptop, so have removed the cd drive and put the old 1t in a drive caddy that fits into the cd slot, and now have both an ssd and a 1t drive

Thanks, but I can't do that either - dvd drive is a slim (i.e laptop size one) that only has 5v power going into it. The power cables are thinner than for the hard drive. It's literally 1 SATA hard drive in this thing

bluesnake

mr_fishbulb wrote: »

Thanks, but I can't do that either - dvd drive is a slim (i.e laptop size one) that only has 5v power going into it. The power cables are thinner than for the hard drive. It's literally 1 SATA hard drive in this thing

Only 5v?
get a power connection splitter. These ssd often use much less power than hard drives or cd players. Unless you have some bespoke cd drive which I very much doubt, it should just plug in. However if your cd drive is ide, then you get the inline ide to sata converters for a few quid of ebay.

My ssd drive will either it into an 8mm or 12mm drive caddy on a laptop.

also what you could do, if you pc has spare card slots is to get a card that fits the slot cut the wire circuits immediately above the slot so that the board has no live wires, then glue/screw/tie the drive to the board. You may be able to connect the drive over or under the current drive.

The 12v supply is usually used to power the motor. SSD usually only use the 5v line.

goosander

I have done exactly that and replaced a 1TB Samsung disk with a 256GB SSD and 2TB external disk, though I keep everything except video and music files on the SSD.

Its very quick now (boots Win 8 in under 4 secs), so I'd say yes you will see a decent improvement.

esuhl

The performance increase is likely to come from being able to access small OS-related files very quickly. So overall performance should improve.

Accessing documents via a USB HDD will be a little slower than using an SSD, but I assume that, once the file has been loaded it will be cached in RAM, so having your data on an external drive shouldn't slow you down much at all...

I don't have an SSD myself, but if they do fail so much faster than HDDs, what do people do with the pagefile? Is it usually best to have is on a standard HDD...? And what about the OP's case where there will be just one internal SSD available? Would it be best to do away with the pagefile altogether...? Would that negate the benefits of moving to SSD in the first place...?

goosander

I don't think SSD's will fail faster than a normal disk under normal use. Whilst the memory cells do have a finite life that is less than a normal disk, all SSD controllers employ algorithms to ensure that you are not continually writing to the same area of memory - the wear is spread evenly amongst all areas of the flash memory.

Even the lowest spec flash memory in SSD's should see 10 years use before wearing out under typical use.