Should I install antivirus software on my SSD?

I know I'm supposed to install my games and resource-intensive apps on my solid state drive, but should I install my antivirus software, spyware removal tools, Trillian, and other frequently used apps on my SSD?

Or should I put them on my regular hard drive? And yes – I do use the above mentioned apps every day.

Anthony

Posted 2011-01-12T01:07:37.497

Reputation: 11

Answers

Well, it depends. Here's my take...

For:

Putting the Apps on your SSD will increase the speed at which they run.

Against:

Putting the Apps on your SSD will decrease the available space on your SSD and as SSDs are currently still very expensive per GB, this might therefore be a reason not to do this.
Trillian doesn't need a fast running hard drive to work well, so doesn't benefit from being on the SSD, plus the AV and spyware can be set to run "out of hours" from your storage drive.

I think the bottom line here is that if you have enough space, then it won't do any harm to load up the SSD with your Apps. If you don't have that much space, then I suggest only putting Apps on the SSD that will benefit from being there due to their need for fast access speeds, such as games or multimedia editors.

Paul

Posted 2011-01-12T01:07:37.497

Reputation: 4 434

1I have a RAID0 which reads about 20% faster than the SSD -- so I put my antivirus on the RAID0. Plus, I don't like to make a ton of little writes to my SSD every time the AV needs a new update. Plus, I think that I get a mild performance boost by having software loaded in roughly equal measures from 2 drives, rather than all bottleneck through the SSD. – Rolnik – 2011-01-16T18:55:34.250

You know of course that RAID0 is not RAID at all, and any failure will result in complete loss of data, so you obviously have amazing backups. – None – 2012-07-18T02:56:39.263

Anti virus is likely to load once then stay in memory, so putting your AV software there probably won't offer much of a performance improvement other than helping Windows boot a bit faster.

Your SSD is better used for your pagefile and TEMP folder, and any games.

Mikel

Posted 2011-01-12T01:07:37.497

Reputation: 7 890

IMHO user146720 has missed the point of SSD. The reason why you get a SSD is primarily to enjoy its performance benefits. Why would you want to sabotage those performance benefits by not using it for the Page file and Temp folder? My Intel SSD 520 is guaranteed to endure 20GB writes per day for 5 years, and most modern SSDs guarantee similar levels of endurance. At that rate I can't see any reason not to have the Page file and temporary folder on it. Put your audio and video files on a regular hard drive though. – misha256 – 2014-12-04T07:20:10.607

1Page files and temporary folders should not be stored on an SSD, because the increased I/O will kill them faster. – None – 2012-07-18T02:12:46.450