Mike,

In addition to already supplied excellent answers,
there is a great caveat in what your are tempted or planning to do.

Let's face it, you are dealing with an older computer with an older OS.
  No disparaging remarks here - I still run XP Pro among others.

The problem lies with both the OS and the motherboard and components.

Don't be swayed by the fantastic speeds you're reading about SSD.
In all likelyhood , your system won't be able to take advantage of them.

SATA controllers are limited to the speed they were designed for,
so in the end, they are the limiting factor, but so are RAM, CPU and Video
RAM
speeds.

You will never be able to reach any of the advertised speeds of SSDs
especially not the newer ones.
The "System" as a whole can just not accommodate them.

See also this article- one of many similar.
Difference between SATA I, SATA II and SATA III
http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8142/~/difference-between-sata-i,-sata-ii-and-sata-iii

The OS will benefit to some extent from an SSD, but as mentioned, speed
will be limited as to the SATA port limitations.
It'll be quieter , but possibly only a little faster ,compared with the
present HDD
and it's speeds.

My personal view on SSDs is that they can provide a real boost to an OS,
but on a relatively small drive - 128 to max 256.
Also for graphic intense content or programs such as Photoshop etc
which benefit from a separate small SSD  for caching purposes

Storage or backup can benefit from increased transfer or backup speeds,
but since in your case the speeds are limited anyway, I would opt for
"conventional" HDDs.

I would certainly not go over 1 TB -and both storage an backup , should be
backed up to temporarily connected External drives.
The loss will be just too large if those internal drives fail.

SSDs sofar don't have much greater reliability than a quality HDD, but this
differs
for manufacturers and models. Reports on that vary wildly.
http://beta.slashdot.org/story/191535  SSD vs HDD failure rates.
Highly skewed according to feedback.

Anyway, just another point of view.

Peter E.




On Sun, Aug 17, 2014 at 3:31 PM, Michael Eisenstadt mike.eisenstadt
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi all!
>
> I recently started art documenting with a dSLR tethered to a PC.
> Now I am faced with passive memory space and backup issues.
> Apparently best practice is multiple SATA harddrives. I see that
> HD prices are at selloff price points. I presently have an 80G
> Western Digital hd in an old Asus  full tower case with a new
> 600W power supply. There are additional bays for more
> harddrives. OS is WinXP Pro. Is it a good idea to marry SSD
> harddrive(s)  with the WD harddrive? Any brand
> recommendations will be very helpful.
>
> Thanks in advance for your advice.
>
> Mike Eisenstadt
>
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