How do you set your SSD up?

[AndyUK]

.....I'm a bit wary of puttng an OS on it, especially after it's started developing some interesting behaviour just from the activity it does do. I had my OS swap on it for a while but thought better of that.....

I hope the "interesting behaviour" doesn't lead to it failing like mine did a couple of days ago! I had Win7, but not the pagefile, plus a few apps on mine and when it worked it was excellent in terms of boot speed etc but then it started playing up. First a couple of apps just vanished, then a few weeks later the PC blue screened and the final act was for it to cease to exist completely as far as the BIOS is concerned. Not good especially as it's less than 9 months old.

I expect the supplier will insist on giving me a replacement rather than a refund but I'm seriously considering getting a fast mechanical drive for the OS and relegating the replacement SSD to holding TS2012 and FSX. Perhaps I've been unlucky, but doing some Googling it seems that SSD reliability isn't yet as good as the makers would have us believe.

Andy L

[Kariban]

It vanished totally, needed two full power-off/plugs out cycles to bring it back, and occasionally I get some regular rhythmic pausing for general ops that I think might be drive read retries. No logged errors though, so I don't know. At that point I started backing the entire drive up every 4 hours.

[erikkr]

An OS writes an enormous amount of small files to the HD; much more than you think.
Extra problem for the SSD is that it cant overwrite a small file ( as an mechanical HD can ) ; it has to rewrite a complete block ( in an empty block or in an previous erased block ) ; this gives extra wear to the cells.
Therefore its not a good idea to install an OS on a SSD.

[Kernow2]

Check out Intel Rapid Storage Technology.
Use your SSD as a fast Cache and put all your stuff (and OS) on a good fast HDD. Set your BIOS for RAID before installing anything! Do your homework, maybe watch some youtube clips on setting it up.
There's no need to put your OS on a separate drive - there's nothing to be gained in practice - in theory some say there is but bespoke PC builders for high end systems don't bother so that was good enough for me!
I spent £1500 on my system and it flies. Don't bother setting a 30fps limit. If you've got the hardware let the sim run and sort its self out. 30+ -100fps+ isn't a waste - it's just doing what it does so why impose a limit? It's just giving it something more to manage that it doesn't need to.

Set it up right and Enjoy Playing Trains not twiddling with computers - unless that's what you enjoy

Good Luck,
G

[lemberg]

You certainly don't need a swop file with 16 gig of ram, mines only 8 gig and I don't have one.Does'nt run to bad with my old 4870 hd graphics either.

Keith

[smartie38]

You certainly don't need a swop file with 16 gig of ram, mines only 8 gig and I don't have one.Does'nt run to bad with my old 4870 hd graphics either.

Keith

Not wise running the OS without a swap file, don't matter how much ram you have, I'm runing 16gb and still have one although it's set to a small size, there's quite a few programs that refuse to run without a swap file being present, last time I tried running with no page file it didn't go too well, had a number of programs either act weird or just refuse to work correctly.

[Kariban]

You certainly do when you've got a few heavy graphics apps up, although Photoshop manages it's own swap. I'm considering another 12GB at this point...

[paulz6]

Intel RST (Rapid Store Technology) caching is how I set my system up. A 64 GB cache (maximum configurable) should be enough to hold the frequently used parts of the operating system and frequently used applications/games in that space. However, it is not for those who want an SSD to last, in either mode (enhanced or maximised), it will be using the drive as a write cache. It did leave me with 48GB of SSD space which I will use to mount RW. If that becomes insufficient, then I will mount the RW source directory back on to a another partition on the hard drive.

[paulz6]

I'd seriously like to know who can get 60fps with RW on maximum settings.
3x3 SSAA on full graphics settings pretty much kills my system. However, 2x2 SSAA works fairly well. In fact, it seems to make very little difference to the lower settings. However, I have one of the fastest overclocked chips on the market, with a pretty decent graphics card to go with it. So I will ask again, who is getting 60fps on their system?
Everything seems so dark though. I might have to turn of the DOF because I already think I need glasses, and I don't need this particular confirm.