Platter drive to SSD worth the upgrade?

[equlizer]

I do hate how long it takes to load maximus.  Im also running winXP 32 bit.  Could i switch it up to win7 64bit? 

[Gatt]

Before I could answer your OS question,  I'd need to know your system specs.

As far as the SSD goes,  it depends.  Right now,  an SSD is best used for a OS drive and for applications.  They're relatively small,  and while reliable,  they do have finite lifespans.  A hard drive will usually give you a warning it's about to die giving you time to backup your data.  An SSD won't.  Hence why it's not a good idea to use it for long term storage.

Further,  with MAME,  you'll notice no difference if you store your roms on the SSD.  The majority of games are so small that the throughput of an SSD is wasted on them,  SSD's throughput shows when you're loading many files or a large file,  files that are a couple of hundred kilobytes won't benefit significantly.

That said,  I love my SSD and when I build my next system I'll use one again for my OS drive.  Loading windows,  or games,  is incredibly fast.  In fact,  the biggest drawback I can think of is that things load so fast that all of those tips they put in games on loading screens are gone before I can even read them since load times are a couple seconds at worst generally.

[equlizer]

as i said i dont like how long it takes to load windows and into maximus but i guess you answered my question in a long winded paragraph    Its an I5 system with 6gig of ram and a 6850 video card.

I used winxp because someone told me (last year) that maximus didnt like win7.

[paigeoliver]

I have an SSD on my system. I originally used it on the drive I used for my Steam games, and I noticed almost no difference in performance, not even with the Steam games on that drive.

I changed it to my boot drive and the performance difference was night and day.

[equlizer]

Thx, I know i wont need more than 128gigs anyways.  I just wanted windows to load faster and get into the front end faster.  Are you running win7 or xp? could i run 64bit win7?

[MTPPC]

.. They're relatively small,  and while reliable,  they do have finite lifespans.  A hard drive will usually give you a warning it's about to die giving you time to backup your data.  An SSD won't.  Hence why it's not a good idea to use it for long term storage...

I think your comment is inaccurate for cabinet applications. If you check the MTBFs, SSDs are comparable to HDs these days. While the AFR (annual failure rate) data suggest that conventional HDs are more dependable, the benefits of an SSD in a cabinet (especially a pinball machine with real nudging) outweighs the expected shorter lifespan. Arcade cabinets take a beating and if you include the physical abuse cabinet HDs take in your calculus, I believe the SSD is superior to a conventional HD for cabinet

[wxforecaster]

Wouldn't a relatively small SSD be useful for rapidly booting Windows almost instantly upon turn-on, with a typical HDD use to store your ROMs, front end, etc...

[hypernova]

Wouldn't a relatively small SSD be useful for rapidly booting Windows almost instantly upon turn-on, with a typical HDD use to store your ROMs, front end, etc...

That's what is being suggested.  I think mtppc's comments on the pros outweighing the cons of the SSD are more opinion than anything.  I'd certainly not want a much more expensive SSD than a regular HDD for my ROMs and other smaller files.  SSDs are best used for the larger files/programs and OS files as previously mentioned for now.