Problem with ssd however is limited size. A ssd per GB is a lot more expensive then a normal drive.
A problem with RAM is it's limited size. RAM per GB is a lot more expensive than a normal SSD.
Makes about as much sense. SSDs are mid-way between RAM And HDDs; the only reason you think of them as storage is the impermanence of RAM(this too may change in the not too distance future).
I for one think its pretty pertinent that the form of volatile storage that cannot be used to store things past a single boot is not thought of as storage. In fact, if you do, you are an idiot. Tell me, are you someone who would install his OS on a lone ramdisk?
Seriously though, an SSD is a great thing to upgrade but you need to understand how to use it. You don't need anything more than a slightly competent CPU to see the full benefits but if you expect it to cure all your ails you're wrong. An SSD will massively speed up OS boot times, application launch times, and if you are tight on RAM even ingame performance. You need to know to only install your OS and games and stuff on the ssd and leave videos, pictures, programs that dont need it, etc on your main HD.
I for one think its pretty pertinent that the form of volatile storage that cannot be used to store things past a single boot is not thought of as storage.
It is. But RAM capable of storing data indefinetly(e.g. MRAM) still shouldn't be thought of as storage, nor should an SSD. It's not a replacement for the hard drive.
You bring the stuff you use often from the HDD to the SSD. (manually)
You bring the stuff you use often from the SSD to the RAM. (programmer's choice)
You bring the stuff you use often from the RAM to the cache. (CPU's choice)
<shrug> do what you think is best. I know that my ssd blew my old hdd out of the water and was easily the best single upgrade i habe ever done.
Back to OP. Hdd noise is either impending failure with the drive continually skipping from data tracks to reserve tracks, corrupted data tracks error checking, fragmented sequential data, excessive swapping or badly fitted drive resonating on a crap case.
Clone the drive or make sure it is backed up, defrag, refit in case, get more ram if necessary.
In some cases compressing the folder THEN defragging can increase performance: cpu overhead on compressed folders is negligible wirh modern cpus, whereas sequentially stored data is more desirable on spinning rust drives.
Get an ssd and use steammover to junctionpoint games.
Mhh... Is it possible, that the multi-threaded precaching causes the hard drive to jump from file to file (each time another thread gets time to read on the hard drive) making this noises? This would also mean, that the multi-threaded precaching is slower (than a single-threaded) if you don't have NS2 installed on a SSD. Because the hard drive can't read a consecutive stream and is therefor slowed by the caused "jumping".
Would love to get a clarification from the devs here.
Comments
Seriously though, an SSD is a great thing to upgrade but you need to understand how to use it. You don't need anything more than a slightly competent CPU to see the full benefits but if you expect it to cure all your ails you're wrong. An SSD will massively speed up OS boot times, application launch times, and if you are tight on RAM even ingame performance. You need to know to only install your OS and games and stuff on the ssd and leave videos, pictures, programs that dont need it, etc on your main HD.
It is. But RAM capable of storing data indefinetly(e.g. MRAM) still shouldn't be thought of as storage, nor should an SSD. It's not a replacement for the hard drive.
You bring the stuff you use often from the HDD to the SSD. (manually)
You bring the stuff you use often from the SSD to the RAM. (programmer's choice)
You bring the stuff you use often from the RAM to the cache. (CPU's choice)
Back to OP. Hdd noise is either impending failure with the drive continually skipping from data tracks to reserve tracks, corrupted data tracks error checking, fragmented sequential data, excessive swapping or badly fitted drive resonating on a crap case.
Clone the drive or make sure it is backed up, defrag, refit in case, get more ram if necessary.
In some cases compressing the folder THEN defragging can increase performance: cpu overhead on compressed folders is negligible wirh modern cpus, whereas sequentially stored data is more desirable on spinning rust drives.
Get an ssd and use steammover to junctionpoint games.
Would love to get a clarification from the devs here.