SSD as addiditional storage/gaming drive under XP

I'm going to upgrade my wife's SSD to a larger drive, and need to find a good use for her old 32GB SSD. I am considering passing it down to my XP machine.

My concern is that using the SSD as the actual system drive will prematurely (and perhaps very quickly?) age the drive. So if that's not a good option, I'd like to know if it's okay to use the drive as a data or gaming drive? For example, storing and playing music, or running games from it.

Given that the XP O/S wouldn't actually be stored on that drive, would it be safe to do this?

 

Obviously, that is too small to be of much good for storage. So if me, I would install it, re-letter it to P: and move my Page File to it for its exclusive use. SSDs are ideally suited for Page Files (see SSD FAQs, Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?).

 

Odd, we have VDI vm's running xp with full blown office 2010 running with a total of 15 Gig of space. 32 Gig is fine. Why waste a 32 GB drive for the page file anyway?

 

The mean time between failures on a SSD is 2 million hours compared to a HDD with 1.5 million hours. That suggests that your SSD is not more likely to fail due to use than a HDD. As theefool pointed out, drive space shouldn't be an issue either.

 

Please go back and note his opening post. He said, the 32Gb drive is to be replaced, with no designated re-purposing.

Using this "extra" SSD for the PF (and again PFs and SSDs are perfect together) is a smart use for a small SSD that might otherwise go on the shelf and serve no purpose but to collect dust.

I don't call that a waste at all.

If running VMs and running Office in the SSD is something the OP desires, then great. But that's not what his opening post suggests he's doing.

 

Sorry for the slow response - I thought I had subscribed to this thread by default but I hadn't, and I need to check my settings again.

I understand that SSDs have much improved since they were first launched and last a great deal longer. My limited understanding of the problem is that the way an O/S interacts with a storage device uses more operations (presumably reads and writes) with an SSD, than with a normal HDD. So because of this, an SSD becomes prematurely aged under O/S' that don't let the SSD conduct these operations themselves, and therefore goes bad much faster. Specifically I'm talking about Window's 7 use of TRIM, and XP and Vista's lack of it. As I say, I'm working on limited knowledge of the hardware so you're all encouraged to correct me there.

I like the page file idea a lot, it makes a lot of sense for me. I don't run a VM (and I'm stuck with windows XP for now regardless), and only very occasionally use MS Office, photoshop etc. Gaming is a real option for me as I pretty much stick to one game until I burn out and then move to the next.

In any case my real concern is whether I can use the SSD under XP safely for anything -the page file, games etc? Or is the problem just with using the SSD as the drive in which XP is installed onto?

 

I don't see where it takes any more or less operations to write or read a 10Mb file whether on HD, SSD, Flash drive, or even an optical. It was just that early SSDs were limited in the number of times they could write. They still are - but we're talking millions of times and 500,000 MTBF hours - that's 57+ years!

To me, this just validates using it for your page file. For one, since this apparently is an older SSD, nothing will be lost but your page file should it fail. And that's no big deal.

The big deal is how fast your CPU and Windows can stuff and yank data into and out of the page file once on SSD. Even the best HDs are still among slowest storage devices on our systems.

While that FAQ was centered around Windows 7, it applies to any version of Windows. How the OS uses the page file has not changed in any significant way in years. It is primarily the way Windows manages the size of the PF that has - you can trust it now.

I generally recommend a fixed size for XP (especially when disk space was limited with smaller drives) and to let Windows 7 manage the size.

No doubt, 32Gb is HUGE for a page file. So you could give 10Gb to the PF and create a second partition for something else.

 

Sorry, I was wrong. Try 2,000,000 MTBF hours! :major

 

What SSD do you have?

 

Hmmm, my apologies to Just Playin. I must have skimmed right over your comments about MTBF. They did not need to be repeated.

 

After you Log In, go to the User CP and select Edit Options.

In the box titled Default Thread Subscription Mode, select anything EXCEPT "Do Not Subscribe".

 

Digerati and everyone:
If the lifespan of the SSD is as long or longer than a typical HDD, would I not receive a better performance boost from using it as the drive the O/S is installed on rather than just the page file? Or even to use it for both, given that my XP install is just 7.5GB and I assume SSDs don't have the performance slowdown that HDDs have when trying to access two parts of the drive at the same time?

I have a now very old (6 years?) Raptor... possibly this one. The SSD is comparatively new at less than a year old, so I hope it has quite a bit more life in it. I intend to clone onto the SSD (once I get the go ahead here), and then keep the raptor in store as a backup.

Just Playin:
I just bought her this: Patriot Torqx 2 PT264GS25SSDR 2.5" 64GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) at $40 after rebate. Her old one is exactly the same but 32GB.

mjnc:
Thank you for the directions for subscribing. They were already set correctly, the problem instead was user error! I had recently changed my email password and I had not noticed it was failing to download new emails. It was quite nice not getting emails for a few days I must say.

Everyone:
Do SSDs fail in a similar manner to HDDs? Ie would you start seeing random errors, events in the Event Viewer about locations being unable to be accessed, 'NTFS' and 'Disk' events in the EV, claims of bad sectors under CHKDSK etc?

 

While XP doesn't have TRIM, your drive does have Garbage Collection which performs a similar service as long as it has some free space and idle time to work in.

They have a XP/Vista TRIM tool in beta for certain drives. This Patriot forum thread has more info and a link.
http://www.patriotmemory.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-7955.html?

 

If that SSD did not already have a couple years under its belt, I would say yes, maybe. But that's just me.

And certainly, for any new build today, if SSDs can fit in the budget, that is how I would go.

But to revamp an XP machine? No. XP needs to go away. It is obsolete - superseded several times over. XP was designed well over 10 years ago to support DOS era hardware and software and with security as an afterthought. I no long have any desire to keep those old XP systems chugging along. They need to join the piles of perfectly good, but obsolete CRT monitors. JMHO.

As you noted, XP does not take up much space so it would fit nicely on that 32-bit SSD. But Windows 7 Pro 64-bit will not - or at least a new install will soon grow out of that space. I note I only keep the OS and HW drivers on my boot drive (plus a few programs that refuse to install anywhere but the boot drive ) and it uses a little over 40Gb - and that's with My Documents and temp files moved to another drive.

If you are considering putting the SSD in the boot position with XP, I would put its page file on the SSD too. In fact, I would do a fresh OS install.

No. It is my experience when they fail, SSDs just stop working - with no warning. But that is very rare and typically, if it is going to happen, it happens sooner (like when relatively new), rather than later.

 

JP:
Great link! It didn't occur to me that there would be a software substitute to hunt for, but I will very much try it out.

Digerati
Okay so you're recommending I use it to hold page files rather than the O/S simply to avoid the drive failing in an irritating way. I'm going to take your compromised option of installing the O/S and pagefile onto the SSD (and those few programs that refuse to go elsewhere!).

XP rocks. It is outdated I agree, but it's still way smaller and a lot less demanding than Vista and 7. While you may or may not agree with that, I'm sure you would agree that it's the cheapest-best solution for this particular PC, as switching to 7 would requiring buying the disk, buying a larger hard drive, and preferably more RAM (I have 2x 2GB).

Anyway, everyone has answered all my questions and helped a bunch. Thank you guys, I very much appreciate all of your advice!

 

Well, I don't know of any way a drive can fail that is not irritating.

If you keep a current backup - who cares? I tend to be lazy. If my current boot drive is working, swapping in a different boot drive (and transferring the OS and everything else on the disk) is much more involved than adding a extra drive and setting up a PF on it.

If this were a new 320Gb SSD, I might feel different.

 

Have you considered Ubuntu or one of it's derivatives? It's free, up to date and it can boot from a CD or USB drive for a test drive.

 

Based on what I've read here, I feel that the 2 yrld SSD will last longer than the 6yrld Raptor HDD on paper. Because of that it makes sense for me to migrate the O/S to the newer, faster drive. Also I asked on a different thread some weeks/months ago about cloning to an SSD, which doesn't seem terribly difficult (or problematic, as I had believed beforehand). I guess I don't feel there's much incentive in not using the SSD as the new home for the O/S, but plenty to gain. I've also filled all my SATAs and IDEs so adding the SSD rather than replacing the raptor with it means dropping at least a TB, which I failed to mention earlier.

I would love a 320GB SSD, think of me when you're Christmas shopping