The IT guys at work told me having an SSD + HDD will slow my computer drastically?

Question

I know a lot of people put their OS and apps on a SSD and then use a HDD for files. This is precisely what I was going to do, but the IT guys at work told me that is suicide. Supposedly just having an HDD on your computer makes windows 7 run HDD tasks which slows everything down. Instead they said to get a bigger SSD and then take the other HDDs, build a server, and connect to it as a home server.

Now besides the fact that this increases my budget and becomes a major pain for me, so many people seem to be doing the SSD + HDD route that I'm wondering if they are just getting too technical and that doing a dual setup is completely unneccessary?

I dont play games except sometimes scrabble. I do use photoshop occaisonally and dreamweaver, but most of the time I am just multi-tasking office applications, copy data cds for work, etc. My PC is a core i7 with 12 GB ram. I currently have 3 TB in RAID 5, but will be dropping the RAID with the addition of my SSD, a SATA III 256 GB

Thanks!

Answer 1

Your IT guy is right. When you run an OS off a solid state drive it's be like plugging a thumb drive into your computer specifically to to run an OS.



SSD's are good for holding data because they don't have as many moving parts and have less of a chance to fail, they also are faster because they don't have to move to retrieve data like a normal HDD.



If you get a solid state drive then you won't need another drive except to have more space.



Just get a smaller hardrive (standard or solid state, it doesn't matter which) to put into your computer for the OS. Then get/make a hard drive bank type thing outside of your computer so you can store all your files. I would suggest using an SSD for inside the computer and an SSD external drive for your files. Just don't get an HDD for your files because it will be slower and you'll notice the lack of performance in no time.

Answer 2

Everybody says Theta an ssd is a t faster which isn't neccesarly true, a hdd can be faster and besides that an ssd will break within five years, an hdd could go for over 20, an ssd most of the time has about 100000 times use, but reading, removing, adding etc. Is also a use so it won't go for more than 5 years

Answer 3

Basically, an SSD is just a hard drive that operates a lot faster than other hard drives.



If you have one, you should put things on it that benefit from rapid operation. It is good to have your operating system drive on an SSD, because that will speed up a lot of the activities on your computer. As for what else you install on the SSD, that depends on what you regard as a priority, the software that you use most frequently.



The presence of a traditional mechanical hard drive will not have any effect on the SSD or the programs installed upon it, but of course when transferring files from one drive to another, the slowest drive determines the speed of the transfer.



I don't have an SSD yet, I haven't found an adequate reason to buy one (my software andd games work perfectly well without it...) so I'm happy to wait another year or two and let the technology evolve.

Answer 4

You misinterpreted what they were saying. HDD's are usually very slow when compared to SSD's. The higher speed HDD you buy, the better your experience. As far as speed goes, the only drawback is that the higher the speed, the more expensive the drive is. Putting your OS and OS files on the HDD isn't quite suicide, but it is definitely slower than the SSD. I suggest using the SSD, and any files you may need be put onto a portable HDD, as that way you can tote around your files.

Answer 5

dafuq? is he retarded or something? a SSD works just as a hdd (or well how then inside owrks are different but the job it does is the same) except that it is A LOT faster, i have a SSD with my OS on and my favorit programs and games and the rest that dont fit on a standard mechanical drive, and my computer is as fast as a oiled lightning and always been.

a ssd is ALWAYS a upgrade in speed over a traditional mechanical drive (except ofc if you get a damaged drive xD)

i use a 120GB crucal M4 ssd for my OS, can fit around 5-6 games + all my programs on it and then have another 3.5TB as storage spread across a few drives.



the "IT" guys should be hanged for this, one shouldnt spurt out things one dont know unless they add " i think its like this atleast" or something like that.

dont worry a SSD for OS and your programs and store the rest on a HDD will only be a good performans boost.

Answer 6

SSD access is much much faster than traditional rotational media. a friend told me he has two SSD mirrored for the OS and the system would boot up faster than it would post!!



imo dropping the raid 5 is a great choice. i personally would put the os on the 256GB ssd and raid 1 (mirror) two of the 1TB for redundancy. the third 1TB would be used as a backup drive. remember a mirror is not the same as a backup.