New SSD, more RAM, Upgrade strategy for gaming and work

[Sk3ptik0n]

I just purchased a new 256GB SSD from Samsung and 6 GB more of the same brand and type as the ones I currently have. My current specs are at the bottom of the post.

The reason I am posting is this is to hear opinions about a good strategy to follow and if there are any "gotchas" that I would not know about.

I have never used an SSD and I have a lot of games and applications. I am planning to install all my games and most of my applications in a D: drive since my "Games" folder is approaching 600GB and that doesn't count my Steam games (which are still in the "program files" directory).

My games are GTR2 (4 installations for league racing and P&G), iRacing, rFactor 1 & 2 (several different installations of rF1), GSC, F1 2010,11,12, NKpro, the whole "Race 07 by Simbin, Scania truck sim and a couple of combat flight simulators. I am sure I am missing some.

For the regular program my most important is the Adobe Suite, but I also have several highly customized programs I use if not daily, very frequently.

I do not want to "Ghost" my old Win 7 to the SSD. I am actually glad that I get to rebuild my OS. It's time.
But also I don't want to have to spend days validating each game again. I have all my serial numbers and I backup everything.

I plan to install the SSD and have it as the only drive during win 7 64bit installation. Then I am going to reconnect my Marvel RAID that has served as my C: drive and see if I can double booth. Any problems there?

The reason for the above is that I cannot afford either not to work or not to race for the time it will take me to completely restore my ability to do either, so a dual boot would be best for me, but I am concerned about my Marvel RAID as it has been temperamental.

Anyone with some good suggestions?

Thank you for reading my post. Here are my current specs. The only difference is that I have now another GPU in addition to the one listed:

OS: Windows 7 Professional Professional Media Center 6.01.7600 (64-bit)
Processor : Intel Core i7 970 3200MHz - (OC to: 3502.34MHz) - Number of Core :6
Physical Memory : 6144MB [2 GB X3] DDR3-1600 - Corsair Dominator
Video Card : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460
Hard Disk : Seagate ST32000542AS ATA Device (2000GB)
Hard Disk : MARVELL Raid VD 0 SCSI Disk Device (1000GB)
DVD-Rom Drive : Optiarc DVD RW AD-7260S
Monitor Type : ViewSonic VX2235wm - 22 inches
Mainboard : Asus P6X58D-E
Physical Memory : 6144MB DDR3-SDRAM
Network Card : Marvell Semiconductor (Was: Galileo Technology Yukon 88E8056 PCIe Gigabit Ethernet Controller
Mainboard : Asus P6X58D-E
Bios : American Megatrends Inc.
Chipset :Intel X58 LPC bus :Yes | PCI Bus: Yes | Bus PCI-Express: Yes | USB Bus: Yes | SMBus/i2c Bus: Yes
Bus HyperTransport: No | Bus QPI:Yes | Bus CardBus :No | Bus FireWire:Yes

 

[Jim Cole]

There isn't really going to be much of a problem dual booting your PC other than what you have said about your RAID giving you troubles at times. This being your first SSD there is something you should know though.

First off never ever run defrag on your SSD as this will seriously shorten the life of it and is not necessary as there is no platter where the data is stored, it is all digital.

Second, other than the OS, running anything else from the SSD will only speed up the load time and won't really help with the normal operation of the program unless there are large reads and writes that need to happen when using the program.

I would spend some time getting things going to where you don't need to dual boot at some point though, if for no other reason than to eliminate the tedium of having to reboot and choose which drive to boot from when you are changing from doing one thing or another. Unfortunately there is no real good way to move programs from one OS install to another without doing a reinstall of the programs.

 

[Alberto Casado]

You have plenty of space for windows and pretty much any application you use, so put them in the SSD. Games are very big and, unless you have a particular title that loads very often and very slow from the disk (for example, if you make loads of quick races with f12010).

One caveat, the life of the SSD is decreased with writes (they have a limited number). Check threads like this http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/290956-14-windows-symlink-users or similar for instructions on moving your user folder (my documents, profiles, etc, things that get written everyday) out of the SSD. Same goes for web browser cache. Log services, the same, either deactivate or place elsewhere. And I think W7 already deactivates it, but check in case that the file properties in the SSD are not being updated (the 'last accessed' field). Google a bit and you should get step by step instructions for all of this.

Or, you can just pass. After all, maybe in 5 years you will bin the drive in any case.

I am not sure you really needed those extra 6 gb ram, but they cannot hurt anyway.

 

[Tom]

Hard Disk : Seagate ST32000542AS ATA Device (2000GB)
Hard Disk : MARVELL Raid VD 0 SCSI Disk Device (1000GB)

Stay away from Seagate and OCZ, honestly. I've had nothing but trouble with both manufacturers so far this year. Go for WD, if possible.

 

[Sk3ptik0n]

I wanted to thank you guys for your responses. My rig is now officially in wroking conditions and I am really ahppy with it. It's fast as hell and so far very reliable.
Indeed the only thing running in the SSD is the OS. Everything else uses my D drive. The only program I am running off the SSD is the Adobe suite.

As far as the RAM, of course I did not get a big boost in speed because of the extra 6 GB.Certainly not like it used to be and not like the SSD speed boost. But now I have loads of RAM and I can keep more programs open without hitting the ceiling so it was worth the $80 I spent on it. I used to run out of memory before and it hasn't happened since.

 

[Jim Cole]

Glad to hear it Corrado, the extra ram will definitely help with Photoshop.

 

[4 8 15 16 23 42 108]

Do I understand correctly you use your SSD for Windows (yes!) and Photoshop (yes!) only (noooo!)?
I believe you still have >200GB free? Well, maybe "move" some games to it. Hmm, only by the hard way-reinstalling.
The improvement will be loading times only, but free SSD space really is a pity.

Another hint: I run two 64GB Crucial M4s (better would be one 128GB due to faster interface/allocation I know) and have applied an "mklink" to put my 40GB Race07 package to the SSD. Reason is my SSD is too small for the whole Steam folder.
This will work for whole (single) games aswell. Will cost you 5min per game but reward you with some seconds every starting these games^^ You can easily find guides on the web.

Special offer:^^ I think you can move over your Steam folder in any case and it will "repair" itself and/or his links, so there won't happen much. But please can somebody confirm this?

 

[Jim Cole]

Easiest way to move steam install is to copy the Steamapps folder and steam.exe to the location you wish to start it from, then double click on steam.exe. This will update steam, basically reinstalling to new location, and then all you have to do is verify game integrity.