Hello,
I'm setting up a new box for mainly 3D purposes. I also got a 64 GB SSD for it and want to use it in the best possible way to speed up Poser and Carrara.

Often I read about amazing boot times when using a SSD, but IMHO this is a waste,
gaining maybe 10 seconds a few times a day.
I also decided against using it as swap space / paging file, because the new box will have enough RAM.

My runtimes are too big to fit on it completely. Therefore I see the following two options left:

1. use it for Poser / other application temp files (hair, dynamic cloth, IDL).
       Problem: most of these files are created in the current / pz3 file directory.
2. use it for portions of the runtimes. While my current system (XP64) does not support symbolic links, Windows 7 does (finally!!!) and I could symlink all Runtime/libraries directories to folders on the SSD.
     The trigger for this is, that PoserPro2010 starts to develop the same ugly behaviour as Poser 8 right now (= taking several minutes for startup for refreshing the library), and I think for library search, textures and geometries will not be needed (while taking more than 50% of the space in my runtimes)
      Possible problem: With > 20 runtimes, it will take some work to set it up, and I do not know if Poser will follow the symlinks.

Has anyone used / compared these two options and can post some experience? Or does anyone know a better use for the SSD?

Best regards,
    Michael

I can't see any real advantages of using an SSD for Poser other than minor speed improvements and as you say, 64Gb is a bit small for big runtimes.

I'd use it as your boot drive: as well as faster boot times, whenever Windows or an application needs to access stuff in the Windows folder (all your system files, drivers, etc. etc.) it will speed things up. If you install Programs to that drive, they'll launch faster too.

I haven't tried using symlinks with my runtimes because, I suspect, that way madness lies!

Michael,
I would certainly be interested in seeing what gains you get if you used the SSD for the temp file location. I use XP with only 2Gb of RAM, and most of my scenes are not that large or intense, but I hear my HD clattering all throughout my renders. If there is a gain there, let me know.

Thanks
Mark

Hi Mark,
what you experience is most likely swapping, I had the same effect with larger scenes
when using only 4 GB of RAM. Since I added more RAM, that's completely gone.
If possible, add 2 more Gigs of RAM, that will be much more effective than a SSD.

Best regards,
    Michael

I appreciate the advice, and I'm sure you're right. I using XP right now though, so I don't think I can get any real gain with a RAM increase until I switch to a 64 bit operating system. I don't know when that will be, but probably my next PC.

Thanks