Is it a good idea to have the operating system on a solid state drive?

There is something I don't quite understand. I know a SSD helps with OS load times, but I'm not sure if all this boost is only noticeable/interesting when booting, or gives an all around considerably better experience thereafter.

I am interested in having a quick and responsive environment after booting, which leads me to think that it'd be better to spend the SSD capacity in my most used apps (and the page file? Another inside question) and not the OS itself. This, of course, means that I don't know just how much the OS reads/writes its files during normal usage.

So, how good an idea is it to dump the whole 11GB+ of Windows 7 OS into the SSD (considering the hefty price per GB of SSD capacity) if I can put up with the usual hard disk boot times? Is there any performance to be gained during normal usage if I dump the OS in the SSD?

Solution 1:

The link posted by Harrymc is a good one. anandtech.com is pretty-much the definitive site for SSD testing these days. I have SSDs in 2 laptops and I can tell you the performance difference is very obvious. Even with an X25-M Gen 1 I haven't noticed it slow down. Both of my laptops boot much faster and are more responsive than my desktop which hasa faster CPU and 2x WD Raptors.

As for lifespan, that is not a concern. See http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html for the maths on that one.

OS drives thrive on fast access times and small random read / writes which SSDs deliver vastly better than anything with mechanical moving heads. Sequential writes are actually often slower on SSDs than on spinning rust. OS drives don't tend to do a lot of that. If you're writing large, sequential files then add Raptor or something like that for them.

It is easy to over-think the leap to an SSD. I don't know one person who says moving their OS & apps to an SSD made their life worse.

Just do it.

Solution 2:

I ended up testing both alternatives. I can now say with confidence that the OS on the SSD gives far better performance (it feels better).

I later brought up the resource monitor to check the disk usage, and there is constant activity on OS files.