1 large SSD vs 2 medium

[koshling]

I'm not immediatwly about to pull the trigger on a build, so likely I'm able to wait until late this year when there should be 3rd gen SSDs available, however, this question will almost certainly still stand.

I will certainly want my OS/apps on an SSD (I have an Intel G2 160G in that role in my current system), but I also want a fair chunk of app data on SSD too in my next system - in particular I want to host my VMs on one (which I don't have space to do in my current system).

Right now it is my intention to go entirely SSD (and keep archived bulk data I only need occassional access to on another machine, which has a large spindle drive). That means I'll need circa 100G+ for my OS+apps+systemy stuff, and then at least another 250G (ideally more) for app data (VMs, development source/objects etc.). I'm not sure whether it would be best to separate these onto two physical SSDs, or go for one big one. As I see it the pros and cons (of 2 SSDs reather than 1 big one) are:

Pro: Can stabilize the OS drive and still be able to switch out/upgrade the app drive independently (easily)

Pro: cheaper, at last unless the price-size ratio profile for SSDs changes soon

Pro (maybe?): With Windows 8 approaching and its use of storage pools, I could partition both physical drives and have mirrored partitions for key data. Partitioning would be necessary though, since the boot partition cannot be a storage pool, and because I won't want to take the capacity hit for mirroring everything

Con: one SSD would amortize the free space, probably leaving a higher free-space ratio which helps garbage collection performance

Opinions...?

 

[exdeath]

Only time two drives > one drive is when you are on older SATA specs and can leverage RAID to increase aggregate interface bandwidth. Otherwise it's better to just have a single larger drive.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

As long as you aren't RAIDing the two together, then two SSDs can be a very valid option over one large one. Lots of times, the larger drive that is double the size, is *more* than double the cost. That has never made much sense to me.

I don't think you can use a drive in a Win8 Storage Pool without giving the whole drive to the pool. IE you can't partition part of it to use as a boot partition, and then have a partition you give over to the Storage Pool. Could be wrong there.

To restate your last con there, when you have two smaller drives it's easier to fill one of them up and have lots of free space on the other.

My opinion is that if you can afford it, a larger drive is always the better choice.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Only time two drives > one drive is when you are on older SATA specs and can leverage RAID to increase aggregate interface bandwidth. Otherwise it's better to just have a single larger drive.

This. Although, depending on drive firmware and support for GC, two drives in RAID-0 can degrade to a slower speed than a single drive. It happened to me in only a week of using my RAID-0 OCZ Agility SSDs. Granted, these SSDs were cheap and are basically the bottom of the barrel, but the same thing can happen to higher-end SSDs as well.