Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread II

[Zelig]

I'd go 256, 128 is pretty tight with how many documents you can have or how many games installed at a time. The Crucial MX100 kind of blew apart pricing for high-end drives, you can get a 256GB MX100 now for what a 128GB drive would have cost you a few months ago.

Also SSDs really struggle if you completely fill them up. Win7 doesn't deal with SSDs as well as Win8 - best practice on Win7 is to make your OS partition about 85% of the total space, leave the rest unallocated, and then the drive controller will take care of it.

 

[bhsup]

Well, I was probably going to jump back into Win 8.1 if I do this... And yeah, that MX100 is what I was eying at the 256 level. Newegg has them for $99 & free shipping right now. Irritatingly, that beats out Amazon Prime.

But as regards what you said about games, I was going to install all my apps and games on my old 1GB HDD.

EDIT: I meant 1 TB HDD.

 

[Zelig]

Oh right, you're one of those people who installs all the games...

I'd still install your apps on the SSD though, they should fit easily.

The 256GB drive is also faster and longer-lasting (due to keeping more % of free space, decreasing write amplification) than the 128GB drive... though I'm doubtful either of those effects would be noticeable.

 

[Quintillus]

For the OS itself and a few main programs, you could get away with 128 GB, but I'd recommend going up to 256 GB. I had an 80 GB SSD for the past 2.5 years, and it's really not enough to install a lot on it while still leaving a respectable amount of free space. So I had nearly all of my larger programs on my hard drive instead. Essentially, the 128 GB vs. 256 GB boils down to being able to install games and other large programs on the SSD or not. Depending on how many you have some might still need to go on the hard drive, but with 256 GB you'll probably be able to comfortably put your most used ones on the solid state drive.

256 GB is also a better value-per-GB than 128. $75 for the 128 GB vs. $101 for the 256 GB, with the 256 allowing more than twice as many programs to be installed (since the OS will be the same size on both) - it's kind of silly to go with the 128 GB IMO.

I followed my own advice yesterday and bought an MX-100. Still pretty fresh with hardly anything installed, but in a week or so I ought to have an idea how much of a difference it's making from the old, slower SSD.

 

[Mise]

There's no easy way of swapping which games are on SSD and which are on HDD through Steam is there? I know there are things you can do with symlink but is there any "supported" mechanism?

 

[Michkov]

You can choose on which partition to install a game. I have no idea if its possible to move a already installed game though. You could always uninstall and reinstall a game to different partition though.

 

[Mise]

Yeah, all my games are currently installed to my 3TB HDD, but if I got an SSD I'd want to move them to that. I don't fancy moving them all manually or even "as necessary", because that basically means I'll never move them.

 

[bhsup]

Well, it looks like I won't be doing this after all. I'd forgotten my case only has mounting for one HDD and I'm not going to velcro the second one in there. I was thinking about replacing my cheapo 5400 "green" WD drive with a nice fancy seagate 1TB hybrid, but that's also almost pointless since my motherboard is only SATA II.

 

[Zelig]

That seems... odd. Remember SSDs are only 2.5", so you can fit them in any of 5.25/3.5/2.5" slots.

 

[bhsup]

There's only one, though. Er, at least I think so. I'll check tonight, but it occurred to me today that I thought I remembered there only being one HDD mounting bracket in the case.

 

[Zelig]

To be fair, you also could pretty reasonably just velcro it, SSDs are kind of small:

 

[leif erikson]

To be fair, you also could pretty reasonably just velcro it, SSDs are kind of small

And they have no moving parts.

 

[timtofly]

What is the concern with moving parts? Fans are moving parts, should we not use them? Seriously though. I have a desktop with a portable sata drive just sitting on a DVD drive, and it operates just fine. The sata cable and the power cable are enough to resist the internal spinning drive to vibrate it elsewhere. Depending on the length of cables used, a SSD can be pretty much placed or mounted on any surface in any direction that keeps it away from the MB and it's components.

 

[bhsup]

It wasn't a concern with moving parts so much on my part as it was me just hating the idea of a drive not being properly mounted. It's just -wrong- in my mind. It would bug me. Every time I looked at the computer case, I would know (holy cow, my spelling was just autocorrected, I don't remember that ever happening at CFC before) it and it would drive me bat-poopie insane.

 

[timtofly]

Depending on one's aesthetics and the availability of a few decent holes in a metal structure, the drive should come with mounting screws, and can be attached that way. Back in the day the drive bays were so large, we had to purchase spacers for the new 3.5 drives. The 2.5 drives are even lighter and smaller and do not need that much support. They can be mounted flat on the surface and do not have to be positioned like HDD's.

 

[leif erikson]

What is the concern with moving parts?

Don't think it would be too smart to stick a conventional hard drive onto something in the case subject to a case getting a knock or two. Those parts inside the HDD probably wouldn't like that too much whereas an SSD doesn't have those issues because they have no parts to get knocked out of whack.

 

[Souron]

I have the same problem. I'm pretty sure there are brackets for fitting a 2.5" drive in a 3.5" slot. Then again, the store that I looked in didn't have any, and I've since left the drive sitting, running, unattached to the case. That was over a year ago and it's been entirely without problems.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

I was looking up some info for something, and found this quote:

yes it's Win8 problem, Win XP,VISTA,7 have WEANETR.dll storaged in the Windows folder. Its a file that keeps old programs/games to run as they are supposed to. that's why Windows 8 sucks my epic balls, it can't do crap.

And it had me thinking. Are there any old DLL files I could use that would help my Windows 8.1 pc be able to run old games that otherwise wouldn't work? I still have an HDD from my HDX laptop that died over 2 years ago, and was wondering if, since it was a 64-bit win 7 pro pc, I would be able to copypasta any of the system dll files still on there onto my win 8.1 machine so I could run my favorite old games again that Win 8.1/currently refuses to run?

 

[Mise]

That quote doesn't sound like it's true at all. I mean it just smells like BS. Sorry I can't be any more helpful!

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Heh, kinda figured that. Thanks.