Unless its a laptop and you have to chose one or the other, in desktop builds I suggest having one of each.
Here are my reasons:
- SSD's are faster than HDD, so you get the performance gain.
- HDD still present in case of a crashed drive, your far more likely to recover data from a hard drive than a SSD
- Data Storage on HDD is cheaper than on a SSD for price per GB of space used for long term storage of important data.
- Most critical of data you duplicate between the SSD and HDD so that if one drive or the other fails you have a backup
- SSD used for OS and Programs that you want to launch fast
- HDD used for Programs that you dont need fast launching of as well as this is your main work area for projects where data is created and destroyed. *You want to avoid write cycles on the SSD basically by using the HDD which is better for billions of read/write cycles, where as if your read/writing to a SSD your wearing the cells out that have a limited life and fail when used to many times.
- SSD's dont get fragmented like HDD's so you dont have to worry about defragging a SSD, so your OS and everything on it stays running optimal performance while your HDD requires occasional defragmentation so performance of a HDD isnt a constant but varies based on how close to full capacity it is and how much fragmentation you have.
Also to note, a 240GB SSD would be plenty large enough for a double drive desktop computer if your looking to save money and get a cheaper SSD. I have 3 systems with SSDs and the system I have with a 90GB SSD it ran out of space as Microsoft updates made Windows grow in size and I found myself uninstalling software to then reinstall it to the HDD to free up space on the SSD as Windows 7 64-bit continues to grow from updates. The other system I have has a 120GB SSD and that one has 10GB free currently and I am soon going to have to do like I did with the system that has the 90GB and uninstall software and reinstall it onto the HDD to free up SSD space. The system I have with a Crucial 240GB SSD I still have about 50% free drive space left on it, so thats why I suggest 240GB minimum.
Lastly I also do video editing and I work with very large files when I do so. I had a 60GB SSD OCZ brand that I bought cheap for $40 as a means to have a fast place for video editing and conversions to happen, and the SSD was very fast for the editing and conversions with VirtualDUB 64-bit and prior to installation of the SSD my CPU was running at 75% when converting video into an AVI with the HDD running full tilt, and for example a 30GB video file would take about an hour and a half to create an AVI the size of about 1.2GB of. After installing the 60GB SSD drive to be used as a faster work area for the conversion with far faster read/write speed than a HDD I was able to process that same video file in about 55 minutes. Additionally my CPU was also made more useful during the conversion process and I could tell so because the HDD was a speed bottleneck which the CPU was running at 75% and with the faster SSD the CPU wasnt starving for data to crunch and convert so my CPU had all cores go to 98-100% so the system ran more efficient by the CPU not having 25% idle time of wasted processing time due to speed limitation of HDD that was 75% CPU utilization. That being said if you want your video conversions to happen faster if you run a tool to shrink videos to size them down or convert from one format to another a cheap SSD large enough to take on your largest project would make for faster conversions. But if you dont want a SSD and dont mind the extra time it takes to process a conversion or resizing then just having a HDD and no SSD works too. I use to do my conversions right before bed so my system would run into the night while sleeping doing conversions of videogame recorded game play videos in which I use to post them which were 30GB as recorded from FRAPS to 1.2GB AVI files to youtube for guild members to see guild events that they weren't able to attend or have instant replace ability to see how something played out and determine who tripped up that caused a wipe in World of Warcraft for example. NOTE: That 60GB OCZ Agility 3 SATA II SSD MLC is now DEAD. I overworked and killed it after 2 years of use. It didnt like the hours and hours of read/writes I have since gone back to using a HDD for my video editing and conversions.
