I'm gaming on a laptop with only 1 hdd tray. At the moment I've got a basic 750GB hdd and it does well enough. But I've been wanting to try out an SSD to improve load times and have it make slightly less noise but I dont want to go down in storage size. Then I noticed my laptop has a free mSATA slot.
How different are SSD speeds from mSATA? Also would this drive be any good (when it drops in price);
http://www.proshop.dk/Harddisk/Samsung-840-EVO-mSATA-SSD-1TB-2433720.html
The mSATA version of the Samsung 840 EVO's are very close to the regular SATA models in performance. I'd definitely consider one of those today. For the larger drives the price does not differ a whole lot either. Though on the other hand perhaps on a laptop it would be nice to be able to ditch the mechanical drive anyway, to save power and make the system less sensitive to being moved around while on. The current drive could be put in a USB 3.0 case for storage.
So the samsung EVO is a good drive. I was thinking about only getting the mSATA and use that for windows/games and leave the hdd in the machine and use it for general storage. When it's not in use, it will be turned off will it not?
There's also this solution
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236642
Lets you access both the 120gb SSD and the 1TB HDD seperately after you install drivers, so It's a botable SSD that you can load games onto and has an extra 1TB of HDD space for mass storage.
Now, they use the same SATA connection so accessing both would obviously saturate the port but for laptops with a single sata spot this should be an excellent option.
Yes, the Windows default (since Vista) is to turn off idle drives after 20 minutes. You could change that timer in the Power Options. Especially useful if the drive is noticeably noisy.