Install Visual Studio 2010 on SSD drive, or HDD for better performance?

Question

I'm going to be installing Visual Studio 2010. I already have my source code on the SSD. For best performance, especially time to open the solution and compiling time, would it be better to install VS 2010 on the SSD or install it on the HDD.

If both were on the SSD, loading the VS 2010 files would be quicker, but there would be contention between loading the source and the program files.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Unless your SSD is really small you should just re-install it on SSD and hard disk and measure cold start, warm start and build times. I tried this with Visual Studio 2008 installed on Intel x25-m and WD 640GB Blue and got:

• cold start: 15 s on HDD, 3 s on SSD
• new WPF project, first run: 20 s on HDD, 5 s on SSD
• new WPF project, second run: 5 s on HDD, 2 s on SSD
• Add a reference: 9 s on HDD, 2 s on SSD
• compile VS6 project: 4 s on HDD, 4 s on SSD

As you can see, results are not always intuitive