I've seen many people talk about having a solid state drive and a hard disk drive together, but I am wondering if the hard disk drive will slow down the computer, or not allow the solid state drive to operate at its own regular speed.
I mean if I were to install all my games on my HDD and leave the SSD for the operating system, will launching games from the slow HDD bottleneck the SSD speed? Should I just install games and applications on my small SSD if I want programs to run faster and then leave my HDD just for files such as music/documents/pictures etc.?
But then this ties into a different question. Will having a 7200rpm HDD just plugged in slow down the computer while Windows is operating? For example, if I leave my external HDD (5400rpm or 7200rpm, not sure) plugged in and allow it to go into standby while not in use, I have to wait for it to start back up when launching programs on my computer (from my internal HDD.) (Program hangs/slows down when external is starting back up.)
In other words, even though I've installed programs onto my internal HDD and launched programs from my internal HDD, the external is still being required somehow. I just leave the external unplugged because it slows down my performance, with programs hanging and being forced to wait for the external to start back up should the external go into standby mode.
In general, will a 7200rpm HDD bottleneck a SSD's speed?
In RAID? Yes. Otherwise, no. It is not possible to bottleneck a SSD with a HDD. The games will load slower because they are on the regular hard drive but it won't affect the SSD at all.
So programs installed on the HDD will run at regular speed, as if I wasn't using a SSD. I guess that means that the games/applications that I want to run faster should be installed on the SSD.
But how does a SSD really affect performance? In games and applications, does it only speed up boot time, and not operating time? E.g. will the only performance boost in games be level loading time and in applications, startup time?
Sorry I'm pretty new to the SSD scene.
Well obviously if you only install your OS on your SSD, you won't get any performance boost on your games. Mostly boot time and some OS features will run faster.
Alright thanks. What about the second question in the OP? With leaving a slower HDD plugged in.
There's no bottleneck. If I read your post right, your external HDD backs up stuff from your internal HDD automatically and it slows everything down.
Well yeah, this has nothing to do with the SSD. Your HDD can only write/read so much at a time, eg. You're opening up a program, said program writes something on the HDD and the external reads the data while it's writing and reading, it slows everything down.
[editline]1st April 2011[/editline]
Oh and check your drives with HDTune, maybe one of them has a problem.
I suggest you update the RAID drivers for your motherboard. I have a SSD + RAID1 config (two Samsung F2s) and a 1TB external hard drive. Before I installed newer RAID drivers my external drive would unnecessarily be accessed, slowing down performance of the whole system. If I disconnected it the computer would BSOD and the drive would never stop spinning despite not being in use. The enclosure was pretty hot at the end of the day since the drive never spun down, which also took a good deal off its life span I'd imagine.
I'm sorry if I confused anyone. I have no RAID setup. I am not using the HDD for any automatic backing up. Just using it as a regular drive. As to my external drive slowdown problem, that just happens when the external drive is plugged into my computer. Currently I have 1 7200rpm HDD and 1 external HDD. I am planning on getting a SSD, but I am wondering if just having an internal HDD plugged in will affect the SSD speed (similar to my internal 7200rpm HDD with an external HDD problem in the OP, except this time with a SSD and internal 7200rpm HDD.)
In other words, would the SSD have to "wait" for the 7200rpm HDD to process things, like with my external?
Yes, but that's only if the drive has spun down. Since certain programs and processes will depend on that hard drive to function that won't happen unless you leave the computer alone for a long period of time, then windows automatically stops the drives. Sometimes after leaving my PC alone for a long period of time my F2s stop spinning, then I have to wait for them to start back up before I can do certain things.
Since SSDs have no moving parts they'll always be faster than hard drives, starting up at least.
[QUOTE=ze beaver;28930375]Well obviously if you only install your OS on your SSD, you won't get any performance boost on your games. Mostly boot time and some OS features will run faster.[/QUOTE]
Since some necessary DLLs to run the game are on the SSD, games from the HDD will get a LITTLE boost.
Also: I put all my binaries of games to my SSD (SymLink) and the content on the HDD. Games are starting in 1-2 seconds but maps take longer obviously.
Alright thanks. Got what I needed. :smile:
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