I think a few people on here use SSDs and I’m thinking of getting one to install the OS and a few programs on and maybe install a Linux distribution onto it as well. How large of one should I get? They’re pretty pricy and I really have no idea how much space the stuff I want to do would take up.
So what do you guys do, as in how do you have your SSD set up?
Really depends on what you are going too use it for.
Id say that for OS only a 32-40 is easily enough, make sure to change download directories and such and it will do just fine.
I have a 120gb corsair force series(old sata2) and its quick as hell, even if its only half of what you get with the sata3 and (same price 
) I use it for windows, some games I play a lot and a few programs.
I’ve got a 64gb vertex ssd for my OS… but it’s getting a bit small with all the updates so go for at least a 128gb one.
I’m pretty much planning to install Windows and whatever programs I use right now (FF, Steam, Foobar, etc), a few games (BF3 mainly, to make it load faster), and perhaps a Linux distribution on a separate part of it. I was looking some up and 256 GBs should be enough right? Everything else, the rest of my Steam games, pictures, videos, and music will be on the 1TB drive that I have now.
Windows 7 + updates should take no more than a dozen gigs. Steam… I dunno something tells me that a super high density SSD will be dead in a couple of years of steam updates and updates to their games.
I would recommend a small one with the highest possible overwrite rate, just for windows and every program that loads automatically after windows starts.
I suppose that’s a yet then 
. Do I need anything special to hook it up? Like does my motherboard need any special features?
Sata 3 would be beneficial.
If I don’t have SATA 3 is something like that backwards compatible?
yeah also you could get a PCI-e x1 sata 3 card if there is any bottleneck in sata speed
https://www.amazon.com/Syba-Port-SATA-PCI-Express-SY-PEX40039/dp/B005B0A6ZS
I don’t think I have enough PCI slots. One of my PCIe slots is taken up by my graphics card, and it covers the other one. And then I have a sound card and network card in the 2 PCI slots I have.
SATA 2 supports up to 3GB/s, and most of the SSDs I’ve seen max out at around 500MB/s, so if I’m not misunderstanding something there should be no problem.
SATA 2 supports up to 3Gb/s
SDD Transfers of up to 500MB/s
3 gigabits = 3072 megabits
500 megabytes = 4000 megabits
God do I hate the distinction between b and B. Well it’s still about 384 MBps which is still pretty fast and certainly faster than what I have now.
I would recommend just installing Steam on your second HDD. Just so you don’t have to worry about symlinks and whatever else for your steamapps folder. That’s what I do, and I’m satisfied enough.
Make sure you move your paging file to your secondary HDD as well.
It’s totally worth it for the price, once you’ve used one for a while you’ll never look back. Windows boots up in under 40 seconds for me, and programs I use a lot open in a flash. Everything else just feels faster and much more responsive than a regular HDD, just the whole experience of using my computer feels different now.
If I do what some are suggesting here and just put windows and what starts up with windows onto the SSD, would anything really load any quicker? I don’t turn my computer off that often so the load time doesn’t bother me. So if I have say FF on my normal HDD, but windows is on my SSD, would that have any affect on how FF runs?
It will run quicker anyway because your Firefox settings and preferences are in the users folder on drive C:
It’s very worth it, I have a 120GB Sata II SSD, with everything on it but my games and pr0n, and I have 83GB free space. Blazing fast start up and programs open instantly.
Once you have that ssd, you will turn off your PC when not using, because booting will take as much - if not less - than waking currently does.
I don’t have my computer go to sleep either .
So, I’m going to make a list:
Depends on the size. I bought a 120gb SSD with the intent to install work/designer programs on it too, I still install games on my HDD but visual studio, photoshop etc all go to SSD.
However, you should consider wear leveling, which in short: the more free space you have, the longer the life expectancy of your SSD will be.
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