How big a hard drive I really need for trading?

Approximately....

MT4 as a program has 10-15Mb.

History of your timeframe - not greater 1Mb for each currency.

But if you will load 1min history... that may be 100-200Mb.

That's all about MetaTrader4.

It also depends on how many copies of metatrader will be installed with which kind of systems and timeframes of the charts: https://www.mql5.com/en/forum/general

Hello,

With windows and all the habitual stuff, java, flash, acrobat reader, etc .

I prefer a 60 giga model. That's not metatrader which take so much room but this shit of windows

For exemple you have the OCZ VERTEX 2 series, a very good ssd and cheap, in my country : 60 giga for 150 euros, (read : 285 mb/s, write : 275 mb/s )

IMHO : don't focus on price and buy the cheapest ssd, you need good values in read and write files.

dukascopy tick data

I use dukascopy history ticks data for testing.

It causes me 100+GB

wow! There is a lot of hype about bigger is better... but I am reading about how SSDs slow down when the CPU (core2duo) in low power/battery mode, then push the cpu to max in full power mode/mains power: http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/510791-ssd-slow-down-low-power-mode.html

Not sure if the $99USD OWC mercury extreme would overcome this. Maybe I need to stick with a normal 7200 rpm hdd to overcome this as I want to stay mobile...???

Will 8Gb of ram offer any advantage over 4Gb for running 2 large monitors of multiple small charts off my lenovo x200 laptop?

Just find that, if you want bigger :

An hybrid hard drive, with 7200 rpm 500 giga + 4 giga of flash memory in it.

You have the boost you want and the bigger you need, all in 2.5 inch for 150 euros !

Seagate Delivers World's Fastest Hard Drive For Laptop Computers; Momentus XT Solid State Hybrid Drive Offers Solid State Performance With The Capacity And Value Of Hard Disk Drives | Seagate

Yeah ! Guys, i find my new hard drive

i think intel are releasing a new SSD drive soon that is supposed to be even faster.

You don't need much for forward trading. It is backtest data that takes up alot.

Chris

only back testing manually with forextester2

I'm more curious about processor requirements... my computer has a really heavy time when backtesting...