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General discussion

Question about SSD driver in a Desktop Computer

May 21, 2012 12:26AM PDT

I am interested in purchasing a desk top computer with a SSD hard drive and a 1 TB SATA hard driver.
I want to know if SSD driver can be my main operating system driver and the SATA hard drive be used to hold my programs and storage.
My understanding of having a SSD hard drive is that it will be faster than the SATA hard drive.
can anyone give me some information about this before I purchase a new Dell desktop computer.
Thank you for any help

Discussion is locked

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Windows? No.
May 21, 2012 12:31AM PDT

For over a decade folk have tried to install Office without anything on the boot or drive C. None have succeeded.

You can successfully put files on other drives but programs still have items and registry entries on the boot drive.

Why is this a concern and why after all this time is this not known?
Bob

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SSD Driver
May 21, 2012 4:35AM PDT

Bob I was under the impression that SSD drivers are faster drivers than the regular hard drives. That is or was the reason I wanted to purchase an SSD driver for it's speed of booting up a computer. Also the SSD driver is only 128 GB.
Am I not under standing the different between the two hard drives and what they do.
Thanks again for your help

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Drive vs. Driver.
May 21, 2012 4:42AM PDT

Please be careful that these words do not mean the same thing.

SSD so far does require DRIVERS and APPLICATIONS for the current Windows 7 to work well with the SSD (drive.)

I find most PC owners to be in the dark about this and even moderators were caught unaware on this (but we shared notes and more!)

Since you have 128GB for the Windows boot drive you should be fine. There are some that want NOTHING OF ANY APPLICATION THEY INSTALL to land on the C drive but as we know, this is not possible today. Something always seems to get put on C even if we tell the app to go to another drive.

We could cut it finely and discuss simple apps that require no install but for most of us, we use a lot of apps.

My advice is to read one more thing, backup and backup what you can't lose then enjoy the machine. Here I went with HYBRID HDDs to avoid the still finicky Windows OS and SSD driver/app brew/issues.

Read http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html

Now you know and now you can enjoy your new machine.
Bob

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Driver vs Driver
May 21, 2012 10:47AM PDT

Thank You Bob and KenHusVeg for your valuable information. I now feel I can make a wise decision about purchasing a new desktop computer.

You guys at CNET are the best.

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SSD driver in a Desktop Computer
May 21, 2012 1:00AM PDT

Any programs you install on your SATA they will run at the speed of that drive. As Bob stated they will still write some files to the registry on the SSD. Your only advantage is the storage space saving on the SSD. I would install essential programs, for your needs, on your SSD and use the SATA for non-essential programs and storage.