10,000 RPM HDD (WD VelociRaptor) vs SSD for OS?

Posted by GiH on Super User See other posts from Super User or by GiH
Published on 2009-10-26T17:06:47Z Indexed on 2010/04/04 4:03 UTC
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ssd

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hard-drive

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operating-systems

I currently have a 10,00RPM 150GB Raptor that I use for Vista. I'm about to upgrade to Windows 7, and while doing that I thought I'd buy another drive and install Ubuntu 9.10 on it. I don't want to partition the current drive I have, but I don't need 150GB for another OS.

So, I'm having trouble deciding whether its worth it to buy a 64 GB SSD at the same price point as the 150GB WD VelociRaptor? Or should I just get a 7,200 RPM drive for really cheap (around $50)?

Would it be better to use an SSD for the OS than a mechanical drive? I could always get a 32GB SSD too...

Oh, and I don't want to virtualize Ubuntu because I'm going to be testing to see the differences in networking and overall performance.

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