SSD: How big if only to store programs in new computer?

[Fauxtoto]

Bonjour,

If, in a new Windows desktop computer, I just want to use SSD drive to store programs so they start and/or behave faster, how big should the SSD drive be? As an indication, to make such determination, to what extend can I rely on the “system requirements” recommendations from the software authors on how much free room there should be on the hard drive to install.

I did a quick search, and found the following recommendations for PC:
- Windows 10: 16GB for 32 bits and 20 GB for 64 bits
- Photoshop cc and cs6: 2.5 GB
- Elements 14: 5 GB
- Elements Premiere 14: 10GB to install, 5 GB to download
- Lightroom 6: 2 GB
- Office 2016: 3 GB

Thank you!

[Squirrel2014]

I originally had an SSD in my PC, now over 3 yrs old, which became too small and, because it got so full, my PC kept crashing. I now have 500Gb SSD, which has 312Gb free of 476Gb. I only have programs on this drive, with a 1Tb HDD. I think I probably have quite a number of programs installed, though.

I think it's maybe worth getting a larger SSD than you think you'll need.

Julie

[Tpgettys]

I have a 256 GB SSD and it is just a tad over half full.

[Andy]

I've got a 120Gb SSD as my primary drive (Win10, 64-bit, PSE, Lightroom, onOne, Topaz Suite, Office) and it is about 75% full. All my data is on a separate drive.

[elines]

I think that if you double the size of an ssd it costs say 25% more so it becomes easier to justify a bigger ssd than you think you will need and generally computers seem to get full pretty quickly.

So not a specific answer but point is that erring on the side of caution is not that expensive once you have decided on an ssd.

[cats4jan]

Nov 7, 2015 22:44:14 GMT elines said:

point is that erring on the side of caution is not that expensive once you have decided on an ssd.

It's alot harder to fix the problem, than to anticipate the problem. Hard drives do tend to fill up much faster than we'd ever think, don't they?

It's this hobby. Photos and Photoshop - you really need to buy the fastest computer with the largest hard drive that you can afford. Think about the future - first and foremost.

I really want an SSD on my next computer - how are they holding up compared to the mechanical ones?

[Tpgettys]

Nov 9, 2015 15:35:01 GMT cats4jan said:

I really want an SSD on my next computer - how are they holding up compared to the mechanical ones?

By their mechanical nature, a traditional HD will fail much sooner than an SSD which has no moving parts.

[Andy]

A different view from me:
- SSD's may not be prone to mechanical failure, but have limits on their writes, so they fail in a different way
- I'll posit that if you are using up too much space on your operating system drive (no data) then you might need to clean up. Especially on Windows operating systems, over time performance can degrade due to installs/uninstalls/upgrades/etc. You may also have temporary files and other stuff you don't need. I'm totally supportive of having big drives for data, but I prefer to be lean on my OS drive.

[Tpgettys]

Nov 10, 2015 0:31:03 GMT Andy said:

SSD's may not be prone to mechanical failure, but have limits on their writes, so they fail in a different way

Yep, that's true.  However, if you should ever reach the write limit (very unlikely) you can no longer write to the drive but it is still operational as a read-only device.  The SSD firmware has become quite sophisticated, scheduling writes so that all bits get written to uniformly, extending the write limit for the drive overall.  You can expect to replace the fans, power supply capacitors, and probably the entire machine containing the SSD because of obsolescence before the SSD fails.