SSD boot drive vs. hard drive with large cache for boot drive? speed difference?

I'm planning to purchase a new Dell PC. I'm a fairly typical user- I use MS
Office, Paintshop Pro for some amateur photo stuff, and I now enjoy amateur
video editing- and I do lots of web surfing.

I'm comparing a Dell with a SSD boot drive (and a 2nd drive for data) with a
standard hard drive with a 32 gig cache.

Is there likely to be a dramatic difference in speed between the two?

no doubt the SSD will boot up faster- but beyond that, will ordinary use of
the computer seem much faster?

if the SSD boot drive will be much faster I'll spring for the extra cost-
but if it's only, say, 20% faster- I probably can't afford it for that
benefit.

Joe

Joe wrote:
I'm planning to purchase a new Dell PC. I'm a fairly typical user- I use MS
Office, Paintshop Pro for some amateur photo stuff, and I now enjoy amateur
video editing- and I do lots of web surfing.

I'm comparing a Dell with a SSD boot drive (and a 2nd drive for data) with a
standard hard drive with a 32 gig cache.

Is there likely to be a dramatic difference in speed between the two?

no doubt the SSD will boot up faster- but beyond that, will ordinary use of
the computer seem much faster?

if the SSD boot drive will be much faster I'll spring for the extra cost-
but if it's only, say, 20% faster- I probably can't afford it for that
benefit.

Joe


SSD will be MUCH faster, but at a cost. They have a finite number of
read/write cycles and when they fail, it's a total loss.

--
Steve W.

On Saturday, October 11, 2014 7:45:32 AM UTC-4, Joe wrote:
I'm planning to purchase a new Dell PC. I'm a fairly typical user- I use MS

Office, Paintshop Pro for some amateur photo stuff, and I now enjoy amateur

video editing- and I do lots of web surfing.



I'm comparing a Dell with a SSD boot drive (and a 2nd drive for data) with a

standard hard drive with a 32 gig cache.



Is there likely to be a dramatic difference in speed between the two?



no doubt the SSD will boot up faster- but beyond that, will ordinary use of

the computer seem much faster?



if the SSD boot drive will be much faster I'll spring for the extra cost-

but if it's only, say, 20% faster- I probably can't afford it for that

benefit.



Joe

Which model of Dell? My primary experience is with systems that have only SSDs. My own laptop boots from its SSD in maybe 30 seconds. I replaced the hard drive in my client's laptop with a 512GB Samsung SSD. For the client, booting up includes starting up Outlook with a 6GB Outlook PST file to manage her daily life. Before SSD, the boot up was in minutes, enough to power up the machine, walk away, have breakfast, then come back. After SSD, the boot up time was about a minute with Outlook at the ready. Still running A-OK after 18 months.

Not sure how much improvement comes from having an SSD boot drive alongside a spinning hard drive. It all depends on how Dell has implemented it. I added a 128GB SSD to a Lenovo Thinkpad recently, then ran Lenovo's version of the 3rd party software to manage the speedup. The Lenovo 3rd party "ExpressCache" software allocated only 32GB of the entire 128GB SSD, in mSATA format (same as a wifi card), and I am not too impressed with the speedup. I set up a second 96GB partition to be used for whatever the owner wants... Ben Myers

I should have mentioned the systems- it's their XPS Special Edition models-
there are several: http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-8700-se/pd?ref=PD_OC

in addition to booting faster, I should think programs will run faster too,
but maybe not?

Joe



"Ben Myers" wrote in message
...
On Saturday, October 11, 2014 7:45:32 AM UTC-4, Joe wrote:
I'm planning to purchase a new Dell PC. I'm a fairly typical user- I use
MS

Office, Paintshop Pro for some amateur photo stuff, and I now enjoy
amateur

video editing- and I do lots of web surfing.



I'm comparing a Dell with a SSD boot drive (and a 2nd drive for data) with
a

standard hard drive with a 32 gig cache.



Is there likely to be a dramatic difference in speed between the two?



no doubt the SSD will boot up faster- but beyond that, will ordinary use
of

the computer seem much faster?



if the SSD boot drive will be much faster I'll spring for the extra cost-

but if it's only, say, 20% faster- I probably can't afford it for that

benefit.



Joe

Which model of Dell? My primary experience is with systems that have only
SSDs. My own laptop boots from its SSD in maybe 30 seconds. I replaced the
hard drive in my client's laptop with a 512GB Samsung SSD. For the client,
booting up includes starting up Outlook with a 6GB Outlook PST file to
manage her daily life. Before SSD, the boot up was in minutes, enough to
power up the machine, walk away, have breakfast, then come back. After SSD,
the boot up time was about a minute with Outlook at the ready. Still
running A-OK after 18 months.

Not sure how much improvement comes from having an SSD boot drive alongside
a spinning hard drive. It all depends on how Dell has implemented it. I
added a 128GB SSD to a Lenovo Thinkpad recently, then ran Lenovo's version
of the 3rd party software to manage the speedup. The Lenovo 3rd party
"ExpressCache" software allocated only 32GB of the entire 128GB SSD, in
mSATA format (same as a wifi card), and I am not too impressed with the
speedup. I set up a second 96GB partition to be used for whatever the owner
wants... Ben Myers

On Saturday, October 11, 2014 7:45:32 AM UTC-4, Joe wrote:
I'm planning to purchase a new Dell PC. I'm a fairly typical user- I use MS

Office, Paintshop Pro for some amateur photo stuff, and I now enjoy amateur

video editing- and I do lots of web surfing.



I'm comparing a Dell with a SSD boot drive (and a 2nd drive for data) with a

standard hard drive with a 32 gig cache.



Is there likely to be a dramatic difference in speed between the two?



no doubt the SSD will boot up faster- but beyond that, will ordinary use of

the computer seem much faster?



if the SSD boot drive will be much faster I'll spring for the extra cost-

but if it's only, say, 20% faster- I probably can't afford it for that

benefit.



Joe

The Dell web site has XPS 8700 drivers for the Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver. The Intel documentation is very vague as to what it does and how it works, except that you can do some RAID with it. But RAID is not necessarily faster than a plain single hard drive.

The mSATA SSD software, ExpressCache, I've used is done by the Diskeepper company, same ones who did the defragmenting software for Windows. The Condusiv (real name of company now) web site has a web page about its OEM softwa http://www.condusiv.com/products/oem/

It makes claims, but I am skeptical.

Dell does not say which software it provides for its mSATA SSDs, nor does it really say that it is used for booting the system, or how much of the operating system is stored there. It's a big darn promotional black hole... Ben Myers

well, before I buy a new computer, every several years, I'm at a loss since
I don't keep up with changes--- regarding this issue, I've asked in many
online places and I'm concluding I might as well spring for the 256 G SSD as
a boot drive rather than their HDD with an attached 32 G SSD as a cache

Joe


"Ben Myers" wrote in message
...
On Saturday, October 11, 2014 7:45:32 AM UTC-4, Joe wrote:
I'm planning to purchase a new Dell PC. I'm a fairly typical user- I use
MS

Office, Paintshop Pro for some amateur photo stuff, and I now enjoy
amateur

video editing- and I do lots of web surfing.



I'm comparing a Dell with a SSD boot drive (and a 2nd drive for data) with
a

standard hard drive with a 32 gig cache.



Is there likely to be a dramatic difference in speed between the two?



no doubt the SSD will boot up faster- but beyond that, will ordinary use
of

the computer seem much faster?



if the SSD boot drive will be much faster I'll spring for the extra cost-

but if it's only, say, 20% faster- I probably can't afford it for that

benefit.



Joe

The Dell web site has XPS 8700 drivers for the Intel Rapid Storage
Technology Driver. The Intel documentation is very vague as to what it does
and how it works, except that you can do some RAID with it. But RAID is not
necessarily faster than a plain single hard drive.

The mSATA SSD software, ExpressCache, I've used is done by the Diskeepper
company, same ones who did the defragmenting software for Windows. The
Condusiv (real name of company now) web site has a web page about its OEM
softwa http://www.condusiv.com/products/oem/

It makes claims, but I am skeptical.

Dell does not say which software it provides for its mSATA SSDs, nor does it
really say that it is used for booting the system, or how much of the
operating system is stored there. It's a big darn promotional black hole...
Ben Myers

On Tuesday, October 14, 2014 7:58:17 AM UTC-4, Joe wrote:
well, before I buy a new computer, every several years, I'm at a loss since

I don't keep up with changes--- regarding this issue, I've asked in many

online places and I'm concluding I might as well spring for the 256 G SSD as

a boot drive rather than their HDD with an attached 32 G SSD as a cache



Joe





"Ben Myers" wrote in message

...

On Saturday, October 11, 2014 7:45:32 AM UTC-4, Joe wrote:

I'm planning to purchase a new Dell PC. I'm a fairly typical user- I use

MS



Office, Paintshop Pro for some amateur photo stuff, and I now enjoy

amateur



video editing- and I do lots of web surfing.







I'm comparing a Dell with a SSD boot drive (and a 2nd drive for data) with

a



standard hard drive with a 32 gig cache.







Is there likely to be a dramatic difference in speed between the two?







no doubt the SSD will boot up faster- but beyond that, will ordinary use

of



the computer seem much faster?







if the SSD boot drive will be much faster I'll spring for the extra cost-



but if it's only, say, 20% faster- I probably can't afford it for that



benefit.







Joe



The Dell web site has XPS 8700 drivers for the Intel Rapid Storage

Technology Driver. The Intel documentation is very vague as to what it does

and how it works, except that you can do some RAID with it. But RAID is not

necessarily faster than a plain single hard drive.



The mSATA SSD software, ExpressCache, I've used is done by the Diskeepper

company, same ones who did the defragmenting software for Windows. The

Condusiv (real name of company now) web site has a web page about its OEM

softwa http://www.condusiv.com/products/oem/



It makes claims, but I am skeptical.



Dell does not say which software it provides for its mSATA SSDs, nor does it

really say that it is used for booting the system, or how much of the

operating system is stored there. It's a big darn promotional black hole....

Ben Myers

With SSD prices dropping somewhat, you might find it better overall to buy a system with a traditional hard drive, buy an SSD, and clone the contents of the hard drive onto the SSD. The free Partition Wizard does the job nicely, taking into account the sector alignment needed by SSDs to work well. You may end up with more computer for less money plus some work.

Of course, this is easy for me to say, because I have done this sort of replacement numerous times, saving one of my clients some money and giving me some 500GB laptop hard drives to be used elsewhere. On Amazon you can get a 256GB Samsung SSD for $128.99 and a 512GB one for $219.99. Samsung SSDs are quite good, but then so are Intel's, Crucial's, and some others... Ben Myers