Well, I can confirm that an SSD speeds up things. Unfortunately, NVidia seriously screwed up their NForce chipset (which I already knew) so I'll have to live with below par transfer rates in the SATA1..1.5 range (180 Mbps or so). I know this SSD can do around 500, but not on this mainboard. (Though frankly I haven't tried to hard to twiddle and tweak this time.)
Worse though, is that Windows 7 made a half hearted attempt at properly using the SSD. (Mind you, brand new install.) Yes, it enabled trim, but it forgot to disable superfetch, prefetch, indexing, etc. so a little additional manual work was required to keep the SSD in shape. It should be fine now.
Then again, it is indeed faster than my Velociraptor Raid 0. Not necessarily much in transfer speed itself, but in search time. Things work definitely faster.
Oh well. This PC is beginning to age anyway. If either the power supply or the mainboard goes, I'll have to say goodby to this Dell XPS BTX and return to some homebuild system. At least I know I'll have a fast SSD at hand then
As for the discussion of placing your temp file on an SSD or regular HDD. It (lifespan wise) doesn't probably matter much, but it's probably performance wise not that important either. Why? Well, temp folders are typically used for small files, often written and removed. Thus the main speed advantage of an SSD (reading) is partially annihilated by all that writing (except perhaps for the Samsung Evo, but alas). Obviously, a large cache on your HDD helps here, so do higher SATA speeds. For example the Caviar Black with its 64 MB cache helps if files stay below 64 MB
)
BUT don't forget Windows which does write caching as well, so files are being written asynchronous to the disc, thus if files stay inside the windows buffers (dunno' how large those buffers are) it won't matter much if the temp folder resides on a regular HDD. Even the temp stuff windows dumps in there doesn't seem to matter much.
Now if files written to the temp folder are getting VERY LARGE the SSD will slow down, as its slower in writing, in which case its prime advantages over a regular HDD won't help that much (access time and read speed). Funny there's little consideration of Windows caching when you visit all those websites dedicated to the wonders of SSD
Conclusion: put it where you like it, it won't matter much, unless you have a drive that consistently writes fast in which case it might be better to keep it on the SSD.
Lifespan-wise it's probably relative. If you're a very intensive SSD user, you'll probably be able to afford a new SSD after three years or so
And if you're using it primarily as a small boot drive, then there's little writing thus little wear thus longer life span.
Oh well. I'll return to my poor performing SSD, and cherish the thought that with a disastrous breakdown of my PC, at least I'm ready for top of the line disk speeds on my next rig. To end with a dutch quote:
"Wie tot blijdschap bereid is vind zelfs in de hel een gezellig plekje dicht bij het vuur."
