Considering swapping Seagate HDD for Crucial SSD for Virtual Machine host drive

Discussion in 'SSD and HDD storage' started by PatrickP, Feb 14, 2017.

  1. PatrickP

    PatrickP Guest

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    I was wondering if I could get some opinions out there. I am considering purchasing the Crucial MX300 2Tb Solid State drive for my Dell Presario m4800 mobile workstation. It currently has two Seagate 1Tb Hybrid drives (ST1000LM014-1EJ164) and the main computer performs very well.

    However, I predominantly run virtual machines (both VMware and VirtualBox) and this is the crux of my question. When I first purchased this laptop, I only had a single hard drive in it. I quickly found that running a VM on the boot drive would really hog the machine down. So I installed the second, identical drive and moved all VM activity to that drive. The performance difference was rather stunning as both the host OS and any VM’s really picked up speed.

    Now, I am considering replacing the second drive with a Crucial MX300 2Tb Solid State drive (leaving the boot drive as is, mostly due to cost.) and running the VM’s on it. I googled around and came across guru3d’s review of this drive.

    (Amended - I tried to post the link here but the forum wouldn't let me. So just go to guru3d.com and search for "Crucial MX300 2TB SSD review". I'm sure you will find it.)

    I would be lying if I said that I understood all of the tests, so I just smiled and nodded as I clicked through the pages. I’m more a “car driver” kind of computer user, meaning I know how to put gas in it and drive down the road. I’m not really sure about what’s happening under the hood. So most of those charts and graphs really didn’t mean much to me.

    However, the conclusion on page 19 causes me to write this post. In general, they concluded that this SSD is well worth it for typical activity. However, it went on to suggest that perhaps there was not so much of a performance advantage when reading/writing large files, which is predominantly what a VM does, by my observation (is this even true?).

    So this gives me pause… I would happily buy and install this drive if I could feel a performance difference on the VM’s. I neglected to say earlier that there are times the second drive gets pounded pretty hard and the VM’s can become rather sluggish. So if I could feel a difference by swapping this drive out, I’m in. But I would HATE to spend that kind of money and then not feel any sort of performance boost.

    So I’m hoping that the person who wrote the above article I have referenced sees my question. And/or any guru’s out there who may have some experience in this area. Do you think it would be worth it to spring for this SSD? Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

    --Patrick
     
  2. Agent-A01

    Agent-A01 Ancient Guru

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    Running SSD will make a machine feel like a ferrari compared to HDDs.

    Doesn't matter what your workload is, it will benefit everything immensely.
     
  3. joey79

    joey79 Guest

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    Hey, I got a HDD and a SSD in my work laptop. I run two different VMs, one Windows 7 and one Windows 8.1. Since the SSD is only 250GB I have one VM on the HDD and the other on the SSD. And yes...it's a difference. Like day and night.
     

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