So ive just built a new pc and im thinking about software setups now

for my pt4 database would it be better to have it on my storage drive or my ssd? im thinking (since i often need to reload windows) i should partion my ssd so when i need to reload windows i wont lose my database. would this run ok? and whats the best software for partitioning? should i partition it after ive loaded windows or before

how big do pt4 databases get? i cheaped out a bit on my ssd as the rest of the build came in so expensive meaning i only got a 60gb drive. will there be plenty of room?

personally I'd spend another $200 for a 120+GB SSD and use hte 60GB for your database

60GB was small for XP, but for Win7 it's tiny. Generally with modern MLC SSDs you don't want to fill them more than 80% or so, and you're already going to be at 10-15GB with just your windows install + updates.

I'd let an SSD expert speak on whether partitioning an SSD is a good or bad idea.

What you need to do is make backups. 60GB is enough for a dedicated poker computer running Windows even a few million hands. What you wont have room for is a ton of other files and programs, your movies and games need to go somewhere else. And you don't have room for a full backup stored on the same drive. Forget about partitioning. Half of your space is gone to Windows and programs. But it can work... you just need to have a backup off of the drive in the event of drive failure.

PS: Freakin has a typo going on with that $200 - good 120GB drives have been showing up on sale for $90 this week and prices continue to drop radically. If you don't have any way to back things up you might as well buy another drive.

Which is the cheapest and good quality external 32GB SSD drive you know out there?

SSD's have slower "write" speeds, compared to HDD with platters. I don't think installing your database on the SSD is a good idea, unless you have other reasons not mentioned here. Is you storage drive internal? Many people install their OS on the SSD, b/c SSD's have faster "read" speeds and startup time, compared to HDD's.

thanks for the replies guys

just to be clear, i have another 2tb drive for general files and an external 1tb drive for important things. so given that, i was planning on purely having windows installation and pokertracker database on the ssd. wont this work?

few guys are recommending getting another drive. tbh in my ideal world i would do that but as i said ive spent ~2.5k on the rest of the build and i am short on funds now. i dont want to get a cheap ssd as the 32gb run of sata 2 so the speeds wont be worth it.

to the guy who talked about write speeds. this is interesting. my ssd has a write speed of 475mb/s where as my hdd is only 156. given that info would you now agree with partitioning the ssd?

when people are talking about backup, are you talking about raid with another ssd?

No idea and I wouldn't recommend anything that small to Windows 7 users

retro I might be misunderstanding, but since you have other drives for backups & other I'm unclear on why you want to partition at all. Or why you need to reload Windows regularly. For Windows and poker related stuff 60gb should be just fine for millions of hands

You could partition the SSD with the database, but the database might outgrow a 32gb HD. You need to allocate %10 of free space for the harddrive to move files around for optimization, otherwise you will take a big performance hit. Last I read, there were problems overseas with SSD oem's. Be careful on your purchase. SSD's also have a limited amount of "writes" before they start degrading on the cheaper SSD's.

Why don't you just backup a copy of your desktop on the external hard drives? Won't this solve some of your requirements?

SSDs have incredibly low random access times which makes them awesome for databases.

damn SSD prices be dropping fast. good 240GB drives are only $200 now.

I stand corrected, I checked latest benchmarks. Ssd's have got much faster at writing.

NCIX had Corsair 240GB sata3 for $169 past weekend. I was tempted to pick one up. Crucial m4 240 was $179.

Also I suggest do not partition SSD. 99% of users that partition their drive that I have seen just cause their system to be less effective and costs trouble.

Your pokertracker database should be contained neatly in a folder so it's easy for you to backup. Partitioning the SSD just isn't worth it, especially because it's so tiny.

Just one thing to add. You can partition a SSD and it has no effect on wear leveling whatsoever.
The disk controller works on a lower level than the file system and any cell can be used for either partitions. So cell X1234 can serve C: today and D: tomorrow, that's the choice of the disk controller.
If it were any different, it wouldn't make any sense to leave out free space on the drive for the controller to shuffle around.

However, with new models you don't need to leave much free space anymore (yet it's always a good idea to have some spare room on your system drive, but that's a windows thing) because producers don't make all the space on the drive available for the file systems anyhow and good quality controllers don't have any considerable performance loss on a full drive anymore.