Going to need some advice

Going to upgrade to Windows 7 64 bit. I currently have 32 bit installed, thanks in part to a mix up at the electronics store I frequent. I want to put it on an SSID this time. I see that they are still ridiculously expensive though. I saw a 256GB drive for 499.00. My question is:
A: is it worth it?. Will there be a performance difference in boot/load times?
and :
B: If it is worth it, which drives should I look at?. And maybe an install tip or two about proper partitioning etc.
I imagine I will have to move most of my other programs to the 1TB SATA drive considering the amount of space I'll be losing with the SSID.
and:
C: If it isn't worth it, how about a healthy alternative? (Maybe a 10,000 rpm raptor drive or something?).
Any info would be well appreciated.

SSID drives as far as I am concerned are worth it. Yes they are faster than your standard hard drives.. they are also more reliable because of the no moving disk to crash or scratch.

A:Yes
B:I think they are worth it.

Juim said:
A: is it worth it?. Will there be a performance difference in boot/load times?

No. The performance in theory is fantastic ... but there's a bit of an issue when you talk about how Windows treats the disc. It's unhealthy for flash memory, as a result latency actually grows over time ... and there's no such thing as "defragmentation" for it. My understanding is that hardware manufacturers are using new techniques to offset this drop off in performance ... but even if it yields same performance over time as a HDD, it's still not worth it. (And to note, it doesn't)

Juim said:
B: If it is worth it, which drives should I look at?. And maybe an install tip or two about proper partitioning etc.
I imagine I will have to move most of my other programs to the 1TB SATA drive considering the amount of space I'll be losing with the SSID.

If it worked ... partitioning wouldn't really matter. You could partition it however you wanted.

Juim said:
C: If it isn't worth it, how about a healthy alternative? (Maybe a 10,000 rpm raptor drive or something?).
Any info would be well appreciated.

Frankly, you should go for data redundancy with some good sized drives. Speed, isn't really a big deal when it comes to the disc. You're not going to see revolutionary speed differences between 10K RPM disc and a brand new SSD and such.

What you want to focus on, is caches. They're the biggest bang for your buck ... I mean, if you don't even HAVE to look at the disc that'll be faster than anything else. There's some pretty recent "green" drives, which spin lower, but have enormous cache sizes, that could be worth a look.

Also, For $500 you could build an entire HDD Raid Array ... instead of a single SSD drive, so it's REALLY not worth the money. Those are also handy because of data redundancy. Even if a drive dies, your data will be around still and you don't even have to turn the system off to swap it out. I don't think it's so smooth running Windows, but it works everywhere else.

You could also, if you're not that hardcore ... just get some new drive(s) for internally and a couple for externally. You can build a network HDD storage array, for example, those are very handy for backing up information (or imaging the entire partition)

To be honest, the biggest failure possibility in a standard HDD is the motor dying. It's very unlikely that the heads are going to land on the disc. If they do, then it's a manufacturing defect and covered under warranty. Such as, faulty parts or contaminated air.

The main issue with SSD, again, is not the technology behind it. You know, transistor based memory is FAR more reliable than magnetic polarization and mechanical motors ... HOWEVER, there's a fundamental SOFTWARE problem with the interface on the drives. If they didn't run through a SATA interface and if Operating Systems like Windows didn't treat it just like a HDD writing entire "cylinders" at a time, it would be totally worth it. As it stands, it's got some nonsense software compatibility just to make it "work" not be optimized (this would require them to write an entirely new file system, I believe) and as a result, the performance drops like a rock until eventually (within a year usually) the performance on the SSD is WORSE than on your standard HDD. Like I said, a lot of manufacturers are putting in measures so that the drives can perform better for longer ... but ... it still doesn't eliminate the issue ... and considering just how much more the things cost ... it's simply not worth it.

Just consider that a 2TB drive with a huge cache and lower RPM (performance will be on par with a 7200RPM drive) with a 3-5 year warranty ... is only about $100USD. You could get 5 for the same price have a 4 TB redundancy raid array AND a 2TB external drive (you'd have to buy an enclosure, which is how you should do it) for mobile large storage (or network storage) ... does that seem worth more than a single 250GB SSD drive?

Example Even Warranty extension for a year is only $10 (worth it!)

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Thanks Munhay and Crono!. Your reply especially was just what I was looking for. I kinda like the idea of two 1TB drives in a RAID Array, with an external back up. I think that's gonna be the plan. I'll wait until I upgrade to a Sandy Bridge (or even Ivy Bridge I think the next one will be) CPU and hope they have the SSD thing worked out by then. Right now I'm still using my Core2Quad Q9550 set up, and, until my business picks up, that's what I'll be sticking with.
Again, thanks for the input.

I'm not quite sure but I think you're talking about one of those new hard drives. Anyway, talk to Riven. He was telling me some stories about them you might want to hear.
or...

Seems Master Crono has described it down to the very nuts and bolts.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Sandy Bridge is good for embedded devices and devices you don't want to change, like entry level computers or consoles ... but a bad idea for desktop gaming. Unless it plays nice with existing GPUs, but the entire purpose of architecture is to remove the need for external GPUs.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Well, I finally did it. I purchased two Western Digital Black Caviar 1Tb drives and set them up in RAID0 config, installed W7 Ultimate 64 bit.I must admit(and you can tell by this post) that I am so new to this that I obviously missed something.
Under the volume creation window it showed all the different RAID options, but only 1 and 0 were actively selectable.I went with 0 (Which I seem to remember Crono saying was worthless, for it's lack of security and redundancy). I opted for it for performance sakes, and have almost 1.5Tb of non-raid disks on which to set up my back up, so I hope I'm covered. It's all part of my gradual upgrade cycle, which has been greatly delayed due to the Motion Picture Industry drying up some two years ago now.

But I was a bit naughty. I shouldn't have, but while at my favorite toy store, I also grabbed a set of these:
http://www.logitech.com/en-us/webcam-communications/internet-headsets-phones/devices/5095

and since I was throwing caution to the wind I grabbed this as well:
http://www.soundscienceaudio.com/Product-Overview.php

So I'm glad my upgrade finally went smooth and I may be starting a full time show in May, and if that happens, I'll be moving on to the hardware phase.
New CPU/Mobo/RAM/Case(maybe)and Monitor.

You're not covered, at all ... in fact you're more vulnerable. Raid 0 is pretty crappy. Not only is the partition table going to be larger and potentially take more time to access, but if one of the drives, physically, fails the other disc is USELESS.

It is IRREPLACEABLE Unless you're using 0+1, there is no reason to use 0, just get a bigger hard drive (which is cheaper anyway!)

The idea that RAID 0 is faster than a single disc is rather ridiculous. The cylinders are already accessed simultaneously on the top and bottom of multiple platters ... a physically separate disc will not make accessing data faster! In fact, if something is stored across both physical drives, it'll likely have a slower access time. There's also the issue of synchronizing two physical drives ... which, mechanically speaking, isn't exactly fast.

There is seriously no advantage to RAID 0 outside the fact that you can go "Hey look, I have a 4TB partition", but why would you want one anyway? Especially in Windows. It sounds more like boasting than anything else.

I'd argue you should split your discs partitions up. If that partition table gets messed up (pretty common in Windows) ALL the accessible data is just, effectively, gone. (For example, you should, generally, make a smaller partition just for Windows. If THAT partition gets messed up, the data partitions are untouched. Not to mention, all the partitions can be altered in size later using various tools)

The only way you can retrieve stuff from a disc when the partition table is destroyed is at a byte level.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

You can still go with Raid 1 (Mirrored) and get better read speeds: redundant data in two places means you can read from two areas, effectively lowering read times. Being that most games are reading some large file you can see where the advantage comes from. The only way Raid 1 suffers is when its writing to the array, because it needs to wait for both drives to confirm that the data is written. You also get the redundancy part which is handy.

Raid 0 (Striped) you get better read seeds because, once again, you can split up the data to be accessed from two sources rather than from one. write speeds get doubled as well. However the data is split across so if one drive fails then your F'd.

I would go with Raid 1 for read speeds. But put your pagefile on another single drive in your system.

omegaslayer said:
Raid 0 (Striped) you get better read seeds because, once again, you can split up the data to be accessed from two sources rather than from one. write speeds get doubled as well. However the data is split across so if one drive fails then your F'd.

This is only theoretical, not real-world common. It's also largely dependent on your RAID controller and how well it can parallelize.

In real use, it almost never performs better, and is largely application reliant. The best you can really hope for is matching single drive speeds.

Also, you should be aware, failure rate, potential, is about double using RAID 0. (Meaning, if you buy two drives that have a 5% failure rate within 3 years ... then the potential rate for a RAID 0 setup is almost 10%)

There's just a difference between how something is suppose to act and how it does act. And due to implementations and real-world imperfectness, this is one area where they greatly differ.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

I think you went the right way with drives. My experience with comps tells me that somthings are best waiting until the tech is developed longer b4 buying it.
Also the price will drop dramaticaly eventually.
Performance maybe faster in some regards but not so much I feel to justify the cost IMHO.

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Light is faster than sound:That is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

Your riches in life are family and friends, everything else is just a distraction.