64 Gb SSD acceptable?

I just am having trouble justifying the higher prices of larger sized SSDs. I am getting ready to build something for pete's sake as my core 2 duo 2.13 (running at 2.24 - baby overclock) just can't handle WoW too well any longer. Also, I hear my WD 640 Caviar Black constantly seeking and I am sure faster read times would be a real boost. However, 64 GB is not large by today's standards; and if I have to go 120 or 128 (Intel or Crucial), I will for reliability and size. But then we are in the two to three hundred dollar range.

Thanks for any input.

-Grail

p.s.- I would use the SSD for Windows 7 and WoW and as few other programs as feasible. I imagine some others already have this setup. Also, if there is a good thread on this, please feel free to just point me there. I couldn't find it.

It might be a gamble using just a 64gb drive. You are going to lose 5 or 6gb from overprovisioning and if you get Win 7, that's another 26gb used up. The general rule of thumb is to keep your drive from getting 80% full.
I agree with your brand choices, both companies have solid quality. Personally, I'd save up for 100gb+ drives for a little extra buffer space.

Thanks Umbaalo,

I am leaning that way myself. Case in point, I just spent my last three minutes of game time looking at a frozen screen of the inn by the original SW bank while my hd tried to load everything up. Couldn't even post a few more auctions! I just had time to /wave goodbye to Azeroth and then log again.

Of course, I could buy more game time and will in a week or less, but I had planned this little forced hiatus. More time to research new gear!

Thanks to anyone else as well with any info or anecdotes or recommendations on the SSD front.

-Grail

64g is okay if you use the drive just for wow.

My ssd is 64g and i just have wow with symlink folders on it.

I've got a Patriot Torq 64GB SSD.

I've got 1x Warcraft on it.
Plus 1x SC II.
Full installs, haven't bothered with Symbolic Links.

It's not quite large enough for the operating system and warcraft.
But is easily large enough as a gaming drive.

I started with 64GB Kingston V-series (the one with the Intel controllers). It was fine as long as I kept my installed games cleaned up depending on space. I run two of them in Raid 0 now. What I did was partitioned them to 80% drive size so I'm always <80% even if the drive is full, though I've yet to fill them up. I suppose if you have huge games like Prototype and a few other multi-DVD installs, you might bump the limit. Really, though, I'd probably run a second cheap non-SSD drive for storing big files.

I can't complain so far. As an example, my current RAID-0 setup is ~100GB total. I have:

20GB C:\Windows
10GB C:\games\rift
8.2GB C:\games\eve
12GB in mail, MP3s, app setups, driver installers, downloads, pics and a bunch of other junk in various other spots. Total use is ~61GB reported, so if I kept my non-OS and non-Gaming files on a USB drive or second, slower HDD, I'd be well under the max, even with a 64GB single disk partitioned to 52GB.

it's been my experience that an SSD is not that great as an O/S drive unless you raid them. If you use it to hold as just WoW it should be fine.

I have 4 on a caching raid controller as raid-0 and the machine smokes. Have the O/S and WoW both.
When I tried just one drive as an O/S drive I got small 1-2 second lock ups during use. SSD is wonderful if you're mostly reading the drive. When it's your O/S drive you end up writing to the pagefile all the time and for some reason you get blazing speed and then as if the cache is full the drive takes a second to clear it's buffer or something. I never liked SSD on my laptop, I couldn't stand the lockups.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Catamer

it's been my experience that an SSD is not that great as an O/S drive unless you raid them. If you use it to hold as just WoW it should be fine.

I have 4 on a caching raid controller as raid-0 and the machine smokes. Have the O/S and WoW both.
When I tried just one drive as an O/S drive I got small 1-2 second lock ups during use. SSD is wonderful if you're mostly reading the drive. When it's your O/S drive you end up writing to the pagefile all the time and for some reason you get blazing speed and then as if the cache is full the drive takes a second to clear it's buffer or something. I never liked SSD on my laptop, I couldn't stand the lockups.

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Is this other peoples experience with OS & wow on 1 SSD? I almost at the point to get a new computer built.

But this comment leaves me second guessing the 1 SSD that I was planning on getting for OS & wow.

First let me thank EaTCarbS, Ualaa, Ughmahedhurtz, and Catamer,

I had to be away for a couple of days and the four of you sure opened up a whole new perspective for me. Now I am looking for a good 64 GB ! I don't know about the symbolic links that EaTCarbs and Ualaa mentioned but I will look into it. And I really appreciated Ughmahedhurtz tip on partitioning the active sectors to 80% drive size. Would the same work if one decided to not even format 20% of the drive? What a great idea.
Do these SSDs go on sale regularly? I keep reading about people saying, "I got mine for $99. last week." Right now I am looking at, but I am completely open to suggestions, the Crucial RealSSD C300 CTFDDAC064MAG-1G1 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820148357

And lastly, I too am curious if Catamer's experience has been the experience of many?

Thanks again, I would not even be able to contemplate all of this seriously without all of you good folks to pitch in your real life expertise and opinions.

-Grail

That sounds like some sort of firmware/driver/power options/trim issue. Did you build or customize this laptop because I find it hard to believe a name brand laptop configured from the factory would do this. If it did then they all would and it would be an easy known issue to find the solution. Its been my experience even the cheapest ssd will outperform the best platter drive and I have not experienced any 1-2 second delay running my OS off of a sdd.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Grail

Do these SSDs go on sale regularly? I keep reading about people saying, "I got mine for $99. last week." Right now I am looking at, but I am completely open to suggestions, the Crucial RealSSD C300 CTFDDAC064MAG-1G1 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820148357

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You missed the sale on those 11 days ago. Keep your eye open though, when I bought my Intel 510's at $60+
off on the overall total.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Grail

And lastly, I too am curious if Catamer's experience has been the experience of many?

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Not sure, I have one SSD for my OS drive and one for my games drive. Seeing as these are the first SSDs I
had ever purchased I have nothing else to compare them to. When you RAID SSDs together you lose the TRIM
support for the drive and have to rely on the drive's internal garbage collection to do its thing. With as many
people that seem to like the TRIM feature and unless I had money to burn or needed ultimate fast speed (as if
they're not fast enough already) I personally wouldn't RAID SSDs together -- but that's just me.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fenril

You missed the sale on those 11 days ago. Keep your eye open though, when I bought my Intel 510's at $60+
off on the overall total.

Not sure, I have one SSD for my OS drive and one for my games drive. Seeing as these are the first SSDs I
had ever purchased I have nothing else to compare them to. When you RAID SSDs together you lose the TRIM
support for the drive and have to rely on the drive's internal garbage collection to do its thing. With as many
people that seem to like the TRIM feature and unless I had money to burn or needed ultimate fast speed (as if
they're not fast enough already) I personally wouldn't RAID SSDs together -- but that's just me.

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and other applications get installed on a 3rd standard drive?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Acidburning

and other applications get installed on a 3rd standard drive?

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Yes, I have a drive for FRAPS and then another few TB of storage in RAID for everything else.

EDIT: Sorry, some programs I do install on my OS SSD and somethings I install on the storage drive.

I have 64GB OS drive and a 128GB games drive. Both about 280/220 MB/sec read/write. I love them and haven't had any problems with them. OS is big enough to put all programs on it (Office, video converting software, etc). Games drive is big enough to put all games on it (WOW, SC1-2, Warcraft III, Diablo 2, RTS's, etc). I have a 500GB spinning HD for my big storage (videos mostly). I put my swap file on it since I am pretending that it would wear out an SSD to do constant writes to it. Yeah, I should have enough RAM so that doesn't happen often, but still. I partitioned the 64GB OS drive for 60GB (to allow for wearing) and the 128GB drive for 120GB.

I am not an expert, just my thoughts and info.
The thing I would recommend as much as an authenticator now that drives are cheap is a full 100% backup of your OS and a 100% backup of your WTF folder for WOW. You really don't want to have to do all the customizing you did to get WOW to play how you want it again.

I don't know I was dissatisfied with my SSD, (ozc revo drive 50G)

http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-rev...press-ssd.html

Gonna try and sell it for $190. Looking at specs it should be blowing away hard drives but I just dont see that. Maybe you have to defrag them daily to get that I dont know but after a week or so they is not so hots.

Maybe its cause it didnt have trim or is like one generation old but Im going back to Raptors.

I have two raptors in raid 0 but they are only getting 100mbs for some reason (well one raptor is old maybe), while a single is getting 75mbs in my other computer.

Think Im going to go to a single 32mcache velociraptor and call it a day. All these other plans don't seem ready for prime time yet. They seem fine with raw specs but dont really seem to make enough difference in game.

50 was to small for wow as you have to leave like 16-20 empty. 64 will be ok for now but 1 or 2 more expansions and it will fill again. My wow folder is 36G right now but I am sure you can get by with less as there might be some SS and to many addons ....

I think money is way better spent at this point for 2G video ram card and just as much system ram as you can get.


Still as you have read many are happy with their SSD choice, so maybe i just bought the wrong one .....

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sam DeathWalker

Gonna try and sell it for $190. Looking at specs it should be blowing away hard drives but I just dont see that. Maybe you have to defrag them daily to get that I dont know but after a week or so they is not so hots.

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I hope for your SSD's sake that you're trying to troll us all by saying you defrag your SSD...

Without trim you need to do something daily but its not a defrag exactly, ya I know does sound stupid to defrag a SSD. Some kind of garbage collection or something, not really sure.

Anyway here is some lastest infos:

http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1437&pageID=5993

Look at the 4K read chart. Now wow does a lot of reading in tiny chunks (cept when zoneing) as textures of individual characters are going to be really small, so the 4K test is best for WoW (cept when zoneing).

The Intel SSD comes out on top at 22Mb/sec. But the thing to note is that 22Mb/sec sux compared to the 400Mb/sec you get when you move large files that are next to each other. Out of the box I was getting 400Mb/sec with my revo on the Sandra test, which isn't limited to 4K blocks.

Now I am started to see what is going on here, why SSD are not feeling like they are blowing away HD like their specs indicate. Ya the velociraptors are doing 1-2Mb/sec and the SSD is 10X or more faster but it still is sux at 22Mb/sec (another reason why my old buss is up to the task). And why there is no noticable speed up using the 6G sata vs. the 3G or even the 1.5 sata connection, as you are miles away from stressing even the 1.5 sata. Heck you not even up to 133 IDE speed.

SSD or HD, if you have to go to the drive for textures you screwed. You are screwed less with the SSD but you are still screwed.

Of course loading the game or loading the OS and your SSD will feel a lot faster but for running around in org .... nope.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sam DeathWalker

Without trim you need to do something daily but its not a defrag exactly, ya I know does sound stupid to defrag a SSD. Some kind of garbage collection or something, not really sure.

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Gotcha. TRIM or not, each manufacturer does have some sort of app that you run on the SSD. My Intel drives
have the Intel SSD Toolbox that I do run daily.

Thanks to Starbuck_Jones, ElectronDF, Sam_Deathwalker, Acidburning, and all who have pitched in here.

I also was thinking I could go with a 10,000 rpm raptor (not Veloci) for OS, 64 GB for WoW, and then a 640 GB Caviar Black for everything else. I have the two platter drives on a shelf. Just need to decide what to do about an SSD. If I can catch one on sale, I just about get next years prices I suppose.

Thank you Fenril for tipping me off to that site. Might make it easier for me to find deals.

I realize that for my new build, if I don't put the OS on an SSD I might not get 7 sec boot up times, but that is fine. The new computer I built for my brother boots from a cold start to a Firefox in about a minute and ten seconds. That is very good in my book for now. And, I might have a faster cpu and the 10,000 rpm hard drive. But, ...

If I use the 64 GB SSD just for the WoW folder, will I see the same kind of gains as I would if it shared the space with an OS? In other words, I know the OS will not be operating at blazing speeds, but will I still see the kinds of gains to make a gamer smile? Right now, I am having problems loading when I first log in and then new zones, etc. Game play is mostly good.

So is that where my SSD Read speeds are going to come in handy?

Thanks!

-Grail

Once you are in the game I would think that the OS is stable. Its not the OS per se its the pagefile where a lot of writing and reading is going on. The drive that the OS is on is only important for loading windows at the very start, once it is loading thats the end of the good use of that drive. The swap file is different as that is always in use, but you can put the swap file (about 1.5X times your system ram ... thats a rough figure some say zero others say 3X) on any drive.

Anyway you can fit the pagefile and the full wow folder on a 64G SSD, and you should see whatever gains you will get. But keep in mind my prior post. 22Mb/sec is sux no matter what even if a Raptor is only 1-2Mb/sec under the same circumstances.

I think it is very important you run that program for the SSD every 24 hours as Fenril pointed out. After doing nothing for 30 days my SSD was worthless.

Thanks Sam!

You have a great way of explaining things.

-Grail

I have a question. I have setup the SSD drive with and downloaded a fresh client of WoW to it, Should I also put ISBoxer on the SSD.

(the main OS is on another IDE drive)

And... if I should put ISBoxer on it.. (which I think I should), can I migrate files somehow, or do I have to setup all new teams again and setup all the addons etc etc?

Not needed. Once ISB loads, it doesn't swap much data at all.

You should be able to just copy all your XML files from the ISB folder to the new ISB folder and File-->Load/Open (I can't remember the exact menu option) them up and have it Just Work(tm). Much like copying your WTF folder over.

eh? lost me. Are you trying to say. No. Dont install ISBoxer on the new SSD. and. Reconfigure the current ISBoxer to point to the new WoW.exe drive location?

Yes. No need to move ISB to the SSD.

My second comment was meant to elaborate on what to do if you decided to move it anyway. ;)

Great, thanks.