HD vs SSD

[Duce]

I have a 32 GB SSD in my SAM 440 and love it.

USB support is fine, I've used a 1 TB WD USB HD for external storage when needed, but now just have the AOS machine on my Windows network and read everything off Windows shares via SAMBA.

[Duce]

A 32 GB SSD runs my machine and an entire BBS, which includes a full Aminet mirror.  I think my OS partition is 5 GB and OS4 hasn't even dented that, with the SDK installed.

Put a SSD boot drive in it if you like for the speed boosts, and throw a traditional HD in it for storage.

[Duce]

Seaside is correct - AmigaOS does not support TRIM.  That being said, I've had no issues with the SSD in my SAM since I got a good SSD in it (see below) even without TRIM support.

My first real experiences with SSD's was not good.  This was some time ago, and I'd bought 2 for my gaming PC for use in a RAID bootdrive setup, and 2 32 GB ones for my SAM 440ep.

All of them died.  Within months.  Same brand - Patriot.  Sent them back, they sent exact replacements.  I put them all in my one PC, again all of them died.  By this time I was more than a little annoyed, and got down the neck of the warranty guy there and he said they had some big issues with their first SSD's.  They sent me the next gen models of their SSD's as  replacements, all of which are working fine, including the one 32 GB Patriot SSD in my SAM 440ep machine.  I would stick with the big names, SSD wise - Intel, etc.  I have a OCZ Vertex III in this Windows 7 machine (i7 2600k, 32 GB RAM, 590 GTX) and it's been just super so far, so I'd recommend OCZ wholeheartedly.

You will want to check on the SAM 460ex machine if you need an additional SATA controller to have multiple drives.  I believe it was like that at one time.

[Duce]

SSD's are getting much better, but still have a higher MTBF than traditional drives.

As for dealing with Acube, I bought my SAM from Amigakit, but have dealt with Acube via email a few times and found them great.

I'd have no hesitations dealing with ACube, Amigakit or Vesalia for your purchase, and I'm sure all of them would be happy to answer questions.

If you wanted a lower cost solution, there's always the PPC Mac/MorphOS and the AROS options.  None of the modern gen Amiga systems will run old legacy Amiga programs flawlessly.

[Duce]

A SWAP file is a section of a hard disk set aside to function as virtual RAM memory, should you run out of the actual physical random access memory - the system hits the hard disk.

Windows works in a way you really never have to deal with SWAP files or virtual RAM partitions much in regards to setup, but Amiga OS4, like Linux - you create a SWAP file upon setup of the hard disk.  When you setup a new 4.1 machine, or put a new hard disk in a AOS4 machine that does not have a swap file partition, you will be prompted to set one up.  IIRC, the recommendation for OS4.1 is 2x your physical RAM.  My SAM 440 has 512 MB, so 1024 (1 GB) was recommended, but I think I bumped SWAP up to 1.5 GB just to be safe.  And I don't think I've ever had to hit SWAP once yet, but I cranked it up pretty high once I put the SSD in.  Setting up a SWAP partition in OS4 is extremely easy, no more difficult than it is in one of the popular GUI based Linux distros.

Essentially, you reserve a portion of the hard disk to act as RAM should you actually ever run the SIMM/DIMM ram chips right down and out of memory.  This hopefully means you'll never get an out of memory message

[Duce]

Win8 builds its own swapfile/pagefile just like the previous versions.  Can be disabled, of course.