120GB SSD That Needs a Purpose

[Proin Drakenzol]

Hokiedokie. So after the Fukushima thing Japan's power around Tokyo got sucky because -1 reactor. This caused my beast of a 1kW power supply in my desktop to die protecting the rest of my computer.

I just got my desktop back from storage and am back in SoCal (where I'm originally from). So I went over to Fry's Electronics to get a new power supply. I ended up finding the one I wanted (another Corsair modular, this one is 1050W instead of 1kW, so upgrade-ish). Now, I used to work at a Fry's and I know they get commission, so I took my purchase over to the sales guy working so he could get credit for it. I also asked if they had any good deals going on (because Fry's always has something. Well they had a 120GB Corsair SSD for $60.

So I bought it because sixty dollars.


But I don't know what to do with it. My desktop has 2x 40GB SSDs striped for my OS. I don't need more storage for just the OS and striped is faster anyway. It also has no more SATA ports (1x BL/HD-DVD Burner, 1x 320 10k RPM HDD, 1x 1TB HDD standalone, 4x 1TB HDD in RAID 5). My laptop has no room for another drive. My uITX case is pretty stuffed with stuff (it's a uITX case).

So, what should I do with this drive? Suggestions need to be such that the drive stays in my possession and is used in a manner consistent with its intended purpose as an SSD.

[kitamesume]

replace the 10K RPM HDD, thats the most logical thing i can think of. pros would be less latency and most likely more throughput, and less power consumption.

edit: if you really got no use for it tho, sell it for about 90$ to someone, you'd get a profit of 30$.

[Proin Drakenzol]

replace the 10K RPM HDD, thats the most logical thing i can think of. pros would be less latency and most likely more throughput.

the 320GB 10krpm drive is almost full, the 120GB wouldn't cut it, unfortunately :/

[kitamesume]

then its either move the contents to the 1TB and leave a few in the SSD, or sell the SSD for a little profit.

[GoGeTa006]

Fack, I was about to buy a 79.99 120 GB from Newegg for the same reason as you (its cheap. . .but I dont really need it)

but now that you mentioned they can go down all the way to 60, I'll wait for them to drop there

[datora]

.
Don't know what you use your computers for.  If you do video editing/rendering/encoding, heavy graphics editing, lots of games, then the SSD is a good scratch drive or game drive.  Should give an edge over the 10K drive, but won't be spectacular.

Buy an add-in card such as:

 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132012

I have a couple.  They work great in a wide variety of rigs if you have a slot for them.  Reliable tech, even though this one is only SATA I (1.5 Gb/s).  Run your BL/HD-DVD Burner off one of its SATA ports.  You can also look around for something with more throughput if you think you need it, but it's plenty for a BD burner.  DISCLOSURE: I've not used mine for BD burners, only DVD, both SATA & PATA ... but, the tech specs on bandwidth for BD shouldn't be able to use all of 1.5 Gb/s.

Anyway.  You now have a SATA port on your mobo open, which I would expect is SATA III (6 Gb/s) given the specs on your other hardware.  Work your SSD into that config somehow and it should be your second fastest option after your pair of 40 GB SSDs.


Another option is replace your main drive in your laptop with it.  Use your current laptop drive as a portable storage device.  Buy a USB 3.0 enclosure for it and you can plug it into any system, your laptop included, as a mass data storage device while the SSD should vastly increase your laptop performance and reduce its power draw.  A USB 3 portable storage will saturate bandwidth for USB 2 ports, so you should generally see an increase in mass data transfer over USB 2 ... otherwise, in most cases, you never really need much more than about half what USB 2 provides for things such as streaming or torrenting.

[Freedom Kira]

then its either move the contents to the 1TB and leave a few in the SSD, or sell the SSD for a little profit.

I think you missed this part:

So, what should I do with this drive? Suggestions need to be such that the drive stays in my possession and is used in a manner consistent with its intended purpose as an SSD.

I think you could build a pretty decent NAS by moving that array of 1TB disks you have into a dedicated box and using the SSD as the OS drive for that. That should take a load off your desktop as well.

Alternatively, you could move the two striped SSDs into the NAS as well, along with the CPU, mobo, and PSU, and build yourself a new desktop. I would put into the NAS the striped SSDs if your new SSD is SATA III, or the new SSD if it's SATA II. A single 120GB SATA III SSD, assuming you got a good one, should outperform the striped 40GB SSDs and last longer, which would make it the better choice for your upgraded desktop.

Both options do involve buying more hardware though, which you may or may not be happy with...

You should also totally upgrade those 1TB disks to 4TB or 3TB disks. I have a 6x3TB disk RAID5 array myself that I built nearly a year ago and it's still doing great, though Newegg seems to have discontinued the line of Hitachis I got for $120 each back then.

[lapa321]

Use it for video editing.

[kitamesume]

no i didnt, its the last ditch resort other than using it as a paper weight, why wouldnt you sell it for a profit? you could always buy another one.

[Proin Drakenzol]

I've been thinking about what I want to do with it and... I still don't know!

I have no need of a NAS as there's only one of me, if I'm on either my midget computer or my laptop I'm not using the desktop so it can function as a NAS with no performance issues.

What I'd really like to do is build around it and make a UMPC or something but I don't know if that's feasible.

[kitamesume]

how about tweaking your laptop to be battery efficient? like replacing the HDDs with SSDs and under-volting the ram/cpu/gpu and then removing the odd? it should be quite something and it should get results of battery life going up by around 20% at least.
if that weren't possible tho then maybe a 14" i3-ivy laptop would fit for an UMPC.

edit: but if you'll be after a desktop thats ultra portable then its a different story, depending on it's usage you can pull one off using an i3-ivy[-S] and a uITX form factor motherboard with a slim uITX case, most likely you won't be able to fit an ODD in it and one or two SSD would barely fit, usually they come with a flex PSU and pretty uncommon form factor for a case tho Antec ISK 310-150 comes to mind.
if you plan to game on it then theres powercolor's or sapphire's HD7750 single slot low profile card, won't push games at 1080p[high] but it sure will handle 720p[high].

[Freedom Kira]

I've been thinking about what I want to do with it and... I still don't know!

I have no need of a NAS as there's only one of me, if I'm on either my midget computer or my laptop I'm not using the desktop so it can function as a NAS with no performance issues.

What I'd really like to do is build around it and make a UMPC or something but I don't know if that's feasible.

In that case, two more suggestions - replace your laptop's HDD with the SSD (assuming you haven't done so already), or build yourself an HTPC.

[Saras]

I'd replace the two intels. There is little to no reason to strip SSD's.

[per]

I would add it as a cache-disk for storage drives.

But I am somewhat biased, I guess, since that is the use I am putting most of my SSD:s to.