Building a PC, advice on SSD/Hybrid Hard Drives

Posted by Jamie Hartnoll on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Jamie Hartnoll
Published on 2012-04-05T08:05:58Z Indexed on 2012/04/05 11:33 UTC
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I am looking at building a new PC, it's mainly for office (graphics heavy) use and programming.

Looking for good performance with opening and closing programs and files as well as a fast boot.

I plan to have 3 primary hard drives

  1. Windows 7
  2. Programs (photoshop etc)
  3. Current Files

(There'll also be a large storage capacity back up drive, but this will be the Seagate drive I already have.)

So, my question is, looking at standard "old fashioned" hard drives and SSD drives, obviously there's a massive price difference.

I have been looking at drives like this:

http://www.ebuyer.com/268693-corsair-120gb-force-3-ssd-cssd-f120gb3-bk-cssd-f120gb3-bk

and this:

http://www.ebuyer.com/321969-momentus-xt-750gb-sata-2-5in-7200rpm-hybrid-8gb-ssd-in-st750lx003

Having no experience of using either I don't know what's the most efficient thing to go for. Clearly the SSD will have better performance, but:

If, for example, I had an SSD for Windows (say about 100gB), that would clearly give me the boot speed I want, then I guess my real questions are:

  1. If I were to buy one more SSD, would it give the greatest improvement on standard performance if used to store programs, or currently used files?
  2. Given that the OS is on an SSD, should I not bother with the 3 drives and instead, partition that Hybrid drive to store programs and currently used files on it?

Obviously, option two is cheaper and option one could cause me storage issues, but that's when I can dump files I am not currently using onto another drive.

Any, I am open to suggestions... so what do you suggest?!

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