I am getting a new system with a Corsair force 120Gb SSD and a 1Tb Samsung spinpoint F3 HDD. Can you advise me on the best usage of these drives with regard to what to load on the SSD verses the HDD? My initial thoughts were to use the SSD for Win 7, Photoshop and Office 2007 and the HDD for everthing else. Am I thinking along the right lines here or should I be doing something else? Thanks for your help.
Indeed I'm sure you can fit a lot more than that on a 120gb ssd. I fit all my applications on my 128gb ssd, along with a handful of games that I play regularly. You can also use Steam Mover (http://www.traynier.com/software/steammover) to move any installed programs between drives without reinstalling etc.
You definately will be able to fit more than that on your SSD. I've currently got just windows 7 installed on mine and its just using over 10gb with a few tweaks. Along with BFBC:2 I've only used 20gb of my 64gb ssd.
So, am I right in thinking that installing programs to the SSD is the correct idea, and using the HDD to keep all the rewritable data on? For example word and excel files, documents pictures videos and downloaded items?
yes that would be correct. i recommend using audit mode during install to create junction points for \users, \programdata, to point to your hdd. it's nice for transparency during usage and ensures temp files are written to hdd instead of ssd.
Can you not only use audit mode when first setting up windows? Got an idea of making a custom windows rom file now with all my basic install stuff on it hmmh.
I wouldnt mind a little expansion on that too- you can only run audit mode once when you initially install the OS, but, since I am in the process of buying an SSD and new HDD a guide for relocating \users & \programdata would be nice ( even a link to a guide )?...
see here. yes you can only use audit mode during install. you can still move things afterwards, but it involves creating a new user account and deleting your old one if you want to relocate everything. you can also do it via a bunch of regedits, but i don't recommend. [edit] actually never mind that last, check this guide to move after installation.
this is how i did it step by step How to change folder locations. Step1: open ‘My Computer’ Step2: open ‘C:’ Step3: open ‘Users’ Step4: open {username} Step5: right click on ‘My Documents’ Step6: select properties Step7: select location tab Step8: select move button Step9: locate the drive you want to move it to, and create a new folder called ‘My Documents’ Step10: highlight the new folder, and click select folder It will ask if you want to move the contents to the new folder say yes and your away. just repeat the above steps for each folder you want to move
I've found with games that there isn't much benefit from running them off SSD apart from a handful of games such as World of Warcraft. Most other games I've tried tend to load as fast as an SSD, or only a tiny bit faster.
That was the process I followed, except that I created the new folders on the HDD first. the rest of the process was the same as above except that now when I open libraries I seem to have two identical locations on the HDD!
Why move ProgramData? It's only a gigabyte or two in most cases. Moving that to HDD would only hinder your application startup speed as the SSD would have to wait on the HDD to load the relevant user settings that have been saved in ProgramData.
i didn't personally, but the thinking behind it is primarily for r/w cycle saving. it is basically the same as the all users directory under \users, which has a junction to that anyway. there are a lot of temp files written often to that location. you could argue some of the same about moving the entire \users directory as well. there are some VERY important files located there, like things required for the system to boot. but for ease of use it outweighs the cons in my opinion. if you want to move things off the ssd its just easier to 'move' the directory with a junction that to dick around with each thing separate. but if you wanted to, you could just as easily create a junction for music, documents, video, etc individually. and leave everything else in its default location on the ssd. and really it dosen't effect the speed of loading much. maybe a second or two but its still very fast, as it almost works like raid 0 when loading as it will load stuff from the ssd and hdd at once. when i first set up like this i actually had my \users on a sata 1.5gbps disk and it was still fast as hell.