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Expanding SSD Space

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  • SSD
  • OCZ
  • Storage
  • NAS / RAID
Last response: in Storage
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October 14, 2013 8:41:12 AM

I currently have OCZ Agility 3 120GB (Sata III). I am running low on space and am trying to figure out the best course to expand. I was trying to install the BF4 beta and it was about to eat up the remaining space I have on my SSD. I don't have anything I can really remove from the drive to free space.

The machine that I am talking about is primarily used for gaming and storage is not my need (I have a NAS where all important docs, files, music, everything...is stored). I am trying to consider the following options (all SATA III):

1) buy another Agility III (manuf refurb is all I can locate) - run in Raid 0 (failure does not matter to me per NAS above). This will effectively double my SSD storage. - I am concerned about this route as I have read that TRIM does not work
2) Buy a new 256 GB drive (was looking at OCZ Vector)
3) Buy the Agility III mentioned above and use it just as a secondary drive (not RAID) on the machine.

My preference is to have just the one C drive on the machine so that W7 sees everything as one drive and allocates any installations, programs, etc... to the single drive.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
LEIP

More about : expanding ssd space

October 14, 2013 8:50:21 AM

Go for the second drive without RAID. The speed benefits of RAID 0 aren't going to be very significant in anything but sequential read/writes, which you would only be able to take advantage of while copying to/from another SSD or RAMDisk.

No reason to get the same SSD, find a good deal on whatever. Having another drive other than the C drive isn't that big of a deal. Steam and Origin make it pretty easy to change the default directory to install games.. Steam now prompts you per-game, while Origin its just a quick change in the settings and leaves your current installs where they are.
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a b G Storage
October 14, 2013 9:01:50 AM

Do you have quite a few games installed on the ssd have you? Benefit of doubt albeit ideal setup is to have a conventional hdd (Western digital/Seagate) used for random stuff like music/vids/downloads.

Would recommend Samsung 256/512GB SSD though.
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a c 952 G Storage
October 14, 2013 9:41:51 AM

Option 2 or 3 will work.
And you can cause game installations to go elsewhere. Steam is especially good with this. You can designate other drive and folders for where things go.
No need to have the whole thing seen as a C drive. Windows does not care if something is on D, X, Z, whatever...as long as you tell it that during the installation.

See my shameless self-promotion tutorial here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-1834397/ssd-redirect...

(this is a work in progress)
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October 14, 2013 10:09:12 AM

USAFRet said:
Option 2 or 3 will work.
And you can cause game installations to go elsewhere. Steam is especially good with this. You can designate other drive and folders for where things go.
No need to have the whole thing seen as a C drive. Windows does not care if something is on D, X, Z, whatever...as long as you tell it that during the installation.

See my shameless self-promotion tutorial here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-1834397/ssd-redirect...

(this is a work in progress)


Thank you for the suggestions and tutorial. If I go with option 3 do I need to worry about a performance hit? I guess I always believed that everything needed to reside on the same drive to optimize performance, but in logically thinking about that - that thought process does not actually seem logical:pt1cable: 

If its on an SSD and mapped properly during install, it will be just as fast...correct?
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a c 952 G Storage
October 14, 2013 10:19:27 AM

LEIP said:
USAFRet said:
Option 2 or 3 will work.
And you can cause game installations to go elsewhere. Steam is especially good with this. You can designate other drive and folders for where things go.
No need to have the whole thing seen as a C drive. Windows does not care if something is on D, X, Z, whatever...as long as you tell it that during the installation.

See my shameless self-promotion tutorial here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-1834397/ssd-redirect...

(this is a work in progress)


Thank you for the suggestions and tutorial. If I go with option 3 do I need to worry about a performance hit? I guess I always believed that everything needed to reside on the same drive to optimize performance, but in logically thinking about that - that thought process does not actually seem logical:pt1cable: 

If its on an SSD and mapped properly during install, it will be just as fast...correct?


There will be no performance hit.
I have my OS and applications on one SSD, and working documents and one or two other applications on another SSD.
Zero noticeable performance impact in loading/manipulating/saving a file...large or small...on the OS SSD vs the other one.
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October 14, 2013 10:24:16 AM

USAFRet said:
LEIP said:
USAFRet said:
Option 2 or 3 will work.
And you can cause game installations to go elsewhere. Steam is especially good with this. You can designate other drive and folders for where things go.
No need to have the whole thing seen as a C drive. Windows does not care if something is on D, X, Z, whatever...as long as you tell it that during the installation.

See my shameless self-promotion tutorial here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-1834397/ssd-redirect...

(this is a work in progress)


Thank you for the suggestions and tutorial. If I go with option 3 do I need to worry about a performance hit? I guess I always believed that everything needed to reside on the same drive to optimize performance, but in logically thinking about that - that thought process does not actually seem logical:pt1cable: 

If its on an SSD and mapped properly during install, it will be just as fast...correct?


There will be no performance hit.
I have my OS and applications on one SSD, and working documents and one or two other applications on another SSD.
Zero noticeable performance impact in loading/manipulating/saving a file...large or small...on the OS SSD vs the other one.


Thank you
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