Windows 64 bit SSD memory requirements

[timwil56]

A friend told me that the new SSD drives load Windows faster so I was wondering if this is true is it safe and how much room does Windows 64 Home premium need to run.I am building a new computer so do the solid state drives make a difference or so small that its not an issue as they are much more expensive.

[quaxo]

From what I've seen of Windows loading on SSDs, I don't think you'll be like "Wow, that's so much faster!"

My opinion: They're not worth what they cost yet.

[mroilfield]

Ok isn't Windows 7 still considered fairly new? When did Windows 64 come out and what happened to windows 8 thru 63?

[johnmarkcausin]

A friend told me that the new SSD drives load Windows faster so I was wondering if this is true is it safe and how much room does Windows 64 Home premium need to run.I am building a new computer so do the solid state drives make a difference or so small that its not an issue as they are much more expensive.

Yes, they do boot faster. Actually SSDs are currently the choice of gamers and multimedia enthusiast.

Here is a list of advantages:
1. Not Fragile Like Hard Disk Drives
2. Cooler and Quieter
3. Faster Response Rates

The only disadvantage i could see is that it is quite expensive.

Ok isn't Windows 7 still considered fairly new? When did Windows 64 come out and what happened to windows 8 thru 63?

I believe what timwil56 meant was Windows 7 64 bit. 64 bit Operating systems has been out since 2001 with Windows XP 64-Bit Edition .

[timwil56]

My apologies yes I meant Windows "7" 64 bit but the more important question is  how much room does Windows "7" 64 bit take up on an SSD i.e. what is the minimum size drive that will run Windows "7" 64 bit?

[patio]

My current Win7 64bit install is right around 12G...

Your mileage may vary...

[Salmon Trout]

Just saying, despite the technology used in SSDs, the correct term for the 'room' taken up by a Windows installation is 'disk space', not 'memory'. That's something different. Having got that out of the way, my Windows 7 Professional 64-bit install, just over a year ago, into a 100 GB system partition, was about 12 GB at first, before I installed any programs, and copied my documents, pictures, etc from my older computer,  but it now takes up 46 GB, so I would allow a serious amount of headroom in a real world setup. Like the others, I don't think the expense would be worth it.

[patio]

Just for clarification that 12G i show is just the Windows folder...

I'd consider a 100G partition if your including installed apps...

Course i use more apps than most.

[johnmarkcausin]

Just saying, despite the technology used in SSDs, the correct term for the 'room' taken up by a Windows installation is 'disk space', not 'memory'. That's something different. Having got that out of the way, my Windows 7 Professional 64-bit install, just over a year ago, into a 100 GB system partition, was about 12 GB at first, before I installed any programs, and copied my documents, pictures, etc from my older computer,  but it now takes up 46 GB, so I would allow a serious amount of headroom in a real world setup. Like the others, I don't think the expense would be worth it.

12GB is the initial space it would use. The more programs and updates you install, the more space it would consume from your storage device.

If you are really into PC performance then SSD is for you. Most gamers prefers SSD due to performance. 100 Gb would be good enough for the OS to be in. I suggest have another hard drive for your data.

[Salmon Trout]

There is a Crucial 128 GB SSD which is around $250 right now, although I have seen it on offer at $199. A 100 GB 7200 rpm rotating drive is around $100. As for the performance advantage, personally I feel that SSD's are still much slower than ram. all it really cuts time on is the time it takes to load data into RAM. but no matter if you use SSD or old fashioned hard drives, once the data is loaded into the RAM, it gets processed and used only as fast as the RAM and CPU will allow. So it really only speeds up the 'opening' of programs. many programs use the hard drive a little bit here and there after being loaded, but we're talking about mostly very small files that will load in far under 1 second no matter what type of hard drive.

[BC_Programmer]

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/10/the-state-of-solid-state-hard-drives.html

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/09/revisiting-solid-state-hard-drives.html

[Salmon Trout]

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/10/the-state-of-solid-state-hard-drives.html

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/09/revisiting-solid-state-hard-drives.html

Yes, I rate Jeff Attwood, so after I checked out those 2 items (I had read them before) I had a look at the most recent stuff on Coding Horror, and look what he wrote on 4 May 2011...

May 2, 2011
The Hot/Crazy Solid State Drive Scale

As an early advocate of solid state hard drives …

    The State of Solid State Hard Drives (October 2009)
    Revisiting Solid State Hard Drives (October 2010)

… I feel ethically and morally obligated to let you in on a dirty little secret I've discovered in the last two years of full time SSD ownership. Solid state hard drives fail. A lot. And not just any fail. I'm talking about catastrophic, oh-my-God-what-just-happened-to-all-my-data instant gigafail. It's not pretty.

I bought a set of three Crucial 128 GB SSDs in October 2009 for the original two members of the Stack Overflow team plus myself. As of last month, two out of three of those had failed.

He mentions his friend who bought 8 because of his 2009 article, and they have all failed!

He concludes, however...

Thing is, SSDs are so scorching hot that I'm willing to put up with their craziness. Consider that just in the last two years, their performance has doubled. Doubled! And the latest, fastest SSDs can even saturate existing SATA interfaces; they need brand new 6 Gbps interfaces to fully strut their stuff. No CPU or memory upgrade can come close to touching that kind of real world performance increase.

Just make sure you have a good backup plan if you're running on a SSD.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/index.html

I think that when he says a "good" backup plan he means a good backup plan. Daily image backups? Hourly if you are doing mission critical stuff e.g. development? RAID? To a platter drive?

[patio]

Not only that but i've read 3 articles that all stated they are hard to erase data completely from...if you're concerned about security...

In my mind they are aways from being ready for prime time...

[BC_Programmer]

I don't think I'd personally ever be able to justify the higher price point for a SSD, at least at the prices they are now compared to standard magnetic drives, regardless of the benefits.

As for Atwood/codinghorror, I've always tended to take his blog posts with a grain of salt, especially after he started acting like he was a security expert. What I originally liked about Atwood wasn't his insight or knowledge, but his enthusiasm at learning new things.   He was like a young coder documenting every cool new thing he found and it was a good blog up until the day he decided he had learned enough. But I digress.

Not only that but i've read 3 articles that all stated they are hard to erase data completely from...if you're concerned about security...

arguably, if somebody was concerned about security enough for that to matter, they would already be using something like truecrypt.

[TheShadow]

With brand name 1TB, SATA II drives selling for under $75, and coming down every day, and SATA III drives in the pipeline,  SSD drives are still out of reach for the average user.  I have over 3TB of storage, all on SATA II drives and there's no way in heck that I could ever afford to do that with SSD drives.
Maybe some day, when the bugs have been worked out and the prices come down........ Eh?

Cheers Mates!
Shadow