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Adding an SSD to my Laptop

rhufus
Level 8
I have been wondering if having a platter HDD and an SSD both whether it would be better for my gaming laptop to have the OS on the platter drive and my Steam Library on the Secondary SSD drive. I realize the boot times wouldn't change but considering it's a gaming rig, wouldn't my games load faster and transition between maps faster? The boot time doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things, the gaming does. Any thoughts?
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17 REPLIES 17

I did it on my old PC, with a little extra ram it turns the computer and gives it a second life. On the other hand, putting an SSD can be an opportunity to redo a clean installation: Windows and software will probably behave even better by detecting the SSD from the beginning, and thus optimize the system for this SSD.:)


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Appvalley Tutuapp Tweakbox

Weirdoutworld wrote:
You want your OS on the ssd. Its not just the boot time that improves. In gaming you will only see a slight difference in loading times. Very little gaming gains going from HDD - sata3.

No offense but Its almost silly to want your OS on the HDD & games on SSD.


Personally I've found that HDD to SSD has given a decent cut to loading times/scenes in some games, not so much in others.

In regards to M.2 (PCIE not SATA mode) though, that was a very nice speed boost, for either boot or games (now it's hosting some VMs for work though).

Erratum wrote:
Personally I've found that HDD to SSD has given a decent cut to loading times/scenes in some games, not so much in others.

In regards to M.2 (PCIE not SATA mode) though, that was a very nice speed boost, for either boot or games (now it's hosting some VMs for work though).


Not surprising, those m.2 drives are quick little things.

rhufus
Level 8
88 people have looked at this thread and only 2 have responded; That's so sad.

Korth
Level 14
SSDs fail. HDDs fail. If you use enough of them over a long enough time then the question is not "if?" or "when?" but "how many?" or "how often?" ... remember that most RAID implementations are built around mirrored redundancy and recovery, not for pure (gamer-centric) performance gains.

To be honest, a beefy laptop with one or two drives shouldn't really be expected to experience drive failure within the machine's expected lifespan. A consumer needn't worry much about the reliability and longevity aspects of storage media, only the compatibility and price and performance aspects. If a drive fails within warranty then a drive is replaced within warranty, if a drive fails after warranty then it's already fulfilled its rated expectations. I admit I'm assuming no real data loss (the presence of a working backup/recovery strategy), and I admit that (sadly) this might be a foolish assumption.

I agree with above comments, placing OS onto (slow) HDD and applications/data onto (fast) SSD is self-defeating, the performance benefits of the SSD will be largely wasted because the entire system will consistently be bottlenecked within HDD performances. If you want real SSD performance advantages on your OS *and* on your games/apps then you need real SSD hardware for them both to run on ... buy a large-capacity decent-speed SSD and migrate your data onto it, your old HDD can be kept as a backup.

SSD has other advantages over HDD in laptops - they consume much less power so your battery will last longer, they usually generate less heat so your temps will be more manageable (or less limiting), they're a lot more resistant to drops/shocks/impacts which occur frequently on laptops, they don't suffer wear-and-tear from being operated in differing orientations, etc.
"All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others." - Douglas Adams

[/Korth]

Korth wrote:
SSDs fail. HDDs fail. If you use enough of them over a long enough time then the question is not "if?" or "when?" but "how many?" or "how often?" ... remember that most RAID implementations are built around mirrored redundancy and recovery, not for pure (gamer-centric) performance gains.

To be honest, a beefy laptop with one or two drives shouldn't really be expected to experience drive failure within the machine's expected lifespan. A consumer needn't worry much about the reliability and longevity aspects of storage media, only the compatibility and price and performance aspects. If a drive fails within warranty then a drive is replaced within warranty, if a drive fails after warranty then it's already fulfilled its rated expectations. I admit I'm assuming no real data loss (the presence of a working backup/recovery strategy), and I admit that (sadly) this might be a foolish assumption.

I agree with above comments, placing OS onto (slow) HDD and applications/data onto (fast) SSD is self-defeating, the performance benefits of the SSD will be largely wasted because the entire system will consistently be bottlenecked within HDD performances. If you want real SSD performance advantages on your OS *and* on your games/apps then you need real SSD hardware for them both to run on ... buy a large-capacity decent-speed SSD and migrate your data onto it, your old HDD can be kept as a backup.

SSD has other advantages over HDD in laptops - they consume much less power so your battery will last longer, they usually generate less heat so your temps will be more manageable (or less limiting), they're a lot more resistant to drops/shocks/impacts which occur frequently on laptops, they don't suffer wear-and-tear from being operated in differing orientations, etc.


You a probably correct; I'm not sure if my Brain is going to let this go until I try it myself though. I'll always be wondering. Thank you all for your input.

rhufus
Level 8
Been gone for a while, lost my internet right before getting the drive from Amazon. Didn't actually do it but maybe if I realized my second SATA bay was SATA2 I would have.

bobbagels
Level 7
My solution
M.2 for OS
SSD 860 Pro - Games
WD Black, 1 Tb for everything else.

Honestly, only thing it helps in games with is load time. Everything else seems the same as one of my other machines which runs games off a HDd.

Other thing is the M.2
It definitely improves the OS boot up A LOT !
And improves many other things in my opinion also. responsiveness is great. But I also think the best benefit to a M.2 drive would be file transfers and things like that.