Which size SSD boot drive? 40GB or 60GB?

[ac3320]

I would like to add an Optibay type thingy to my superdrive slot, and add an OWC SSD 3G drive as my boot drive. Is 40 GB enough? Or will 60 GB be the better choice? (Or perhaps the 115GB version)? Price-wise the 40 GB is around $100, the 60 GB is about $120, and the 115 GB is around $190.

I plan on having the OS, all apps, and the home folder on the SSD, with the iTunes, iPhoto library and all other data on the HDD.

I've heard different things about how SSDs need 'more' free space than the average HDD, but I don't know if that's true.

How much space does OS X take up in general?

 

[ac3320]

As you can see, all 'non-data' type stuff "System, Applications, Library" (basically everything excluding the Users/Home folder), only takes up 25.25 GB. I will probably uninstall MS Office 2008 if I go through with everything (though I truly believe that Keynote is the balls when it comes to opening PPT files...it is just SO slow). But anyways, seems like 40 GB *should* be sufficient?

But maybe $1/additional GB (for 20 more GB) is worth it? I don't see 115 GB as necessary, as I just won't be storing any data on the SSD.

 

[tersono]

Don't forget that there's a swapfile to deal with which will vary in size. To be honest, I'd say 64gb was a bare minimum if you're not going to find yourself running out of room fairly quickly...

 

[ac3320]

Don't forget that there's a swapfile to deal with which will vary in size. To be honest, I'd say 64gb was a bare minimum if you're not going to find yourself running out of room fairly quickly...

1. Do I really need to worry about a swap file with 8 GB of RAM? I don't use any of the Adobe Creative Suite; at most I usually have like 5 or 6 Cocoa applications running, and maybe Reeder or Aperture once in a while...

2. Heck, I even contemplating disabling virtual memory since Lion saves everything now anyways (unless one has turned that feature off).

3. Moreover, I think some people have talked about making OS X write the swap file to a different drive than the boot drive.

What do you think about all that?