Trying to trim down the OS installed size

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tom2u

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System32 is 1.7gb.
Installer is 1gb
assembly is 730mb
$hf_mig$ is 600mb
Microsoft Net is 600mb
Servicepack files are 500mb

Are these really necessary?
There are also a few hidden folders (1 is 9b88f8eee882daa1c7d97a4b). Can I get rid of this? Its empty. I just want to de-clutter everything so I can navigate quicker.
 
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pyro226
>Does using it as a pagefile location accelerate the wear much? Am I risking wearing it out? I'm using a SSD for the OS. Would it be better to use a partition on that drive as a pagefile or use a partition on a separate 7200rpm SATA drive?
If you research it, almost all sources suggest moving the pagefile to an HDD. It's just SSD writing that can be prevented and is done to try to keep the SSD running as long as possible. If you're not using the SSD though, feel free to use it for paging.

> Isn't that if the graphics are built on to the motherboard?
It also applies when using a physical graphics card when your memory is limited to 4GB by a 32bit operating system without PAE (physical address extension) enabled. But your setup...
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tom2u

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C'mon. You can do better than that! You either need a file or you don't. I realize this is technical, hence my question here. But many installed files just aren't needed after the install yet they stay there cluttering up your drive. I want to use very small SSD's (for cost savings) and multiple OS's. Plus I just want to eliminate bloat by principle.
 
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pyro226

pyro226

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Don't delete system files unless you know what you are doing.

Are you running out of hard drive space? Ccleaner can delete a bunch of files (including hotfix uninstallers as a non-default advanced feature), but you should read through and understand what it is deleting. WinDirStat can help you figure out which of your personal files are biggest if you want to start backing them up to alternate media or deleting them. You can also reduce the amount of space your System Restore uses (I always disable it completely because it never works for me, but my dad always has luck with System Restore).

If you're really feeling adventurous, there is nLite which will allow you to slipstream service pack upgrades and can cut some from the initial XP install. The time it takes to reinstall isn't worth the amount of disk space saved though and removing random parts can have some pretty weird consequences requiring another setting up nLite and reformatting.
 
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tom2u

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> if you still running xp, maybe a new computer is what you need.

I prefer it in many ways over anything more recent. A lot of recent Windows renditions are so dumbed down. It started in Vista of course.

Programs that clean out stuff don't usually get rid of a lot of stuff that you don't need. Of course its a good start though. And I should use them as a reference to start with. Besides CCleaner, are there other programs that are recommended? I want aggressive ones.
 
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pyro226

pyro226

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I use Bleachbit for Linux (there's also a Windows version) and I have used Glary Utilities in the past. I've done a bit with Advanced System care, but whatever you do, don't use it's optimization feature to "boost speed" of your computer as it messes up the GUI (I now just avoid that program entirely).

Disable Hibernation, reduce pagefile size (really, you want pagefile to a HDD anyway as it tends to wear out the SSD, especially if you're limited to the <4GB of ram limit and your graphics card likely reduces that number too).

Also consider using NTFS compression to reduce the size of the files.

It just dawned on me, but XP doesn't really make best use of SSDs anyway. To get the best performance of SSDs, you need it to run in Sata mode using AHCI configuration. XP will require additional drivers to support this mode (and a registry change). Also, XP does not support trim. Thus you will need either a drive with garbage collecting or your performance will reduce over time until you do a complete SSD wipe using the manufacture's utility.
 
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tom2u

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> reduce pagefile size (really, you want pagefile to a HDD anyway as it tends to wear out the SSD, especially if you're limited to the <4GB of ram limit and your graphics card likely reduces that number too)

I have my pagefile currently on a standalone SSD (it was lying around collecting dust) so its faster. I think I set it to about 15gb. I use 2gb of ram. So that will wear out the SSD? Its an older 30gb model. Graphics is a 1gb Sapphire (I don't do any gaming). When I watch HD, the CPU strains (only a 1.8ghz dual core Intel).
 
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pyro226

pyro226

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In Windows XP 32-bit, you can only allot 4GB per drive to be useable for pagefile, but you can go higher in later operating systems.

Any writing wears an SSD. Moving a pagefile to an HDD is an easy way to reduce writing to the SSD, so most people do it to reduce SSD wear. However, if it's an older SSD and you wouldn't be using it anyway, getting a boost from putting a pagefile on it is fine.

My point about ram was that by using a 32-bit system, useable memory is limited to at most 4GB - dedicated hardware memory. If you had 4GB of ram, but are using a 1GB graphics card, you will reduce your useable ram to 3GB. This doesn't really apply to your situation as you are below the 4GB limit. The less ram you have, the more paging though. That being said, 15GB is probably more than what is needed.

If you have a 30GB secondary SSD, why not install XP to it so you can maintain the best performance from your main SSD? If your drive does not have garbage collection, write performance of XP will suffer as time goes on. Later operating systems (Windows 7, but not Vista) use Trim to prevent the problem. I'm not fully sure if putting XP/Vista/non-Trim OS on an SSD with other operating systems will impact the performance of the other operating systems, but I think it will. I know that SSDs don't address sequentially due to wear leveling meaning that partitions aren't necessarily physically grouped like they were when using HDDs.

For Pagefile, if you have a few spare hard drives, put a pagefile on each drive to increase throughput.
 
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tom2u

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> Any writing wears an SSD
Does using it as a pagefile location accelerate the wear much? Am I risking wearing it out? I'm using a SSD for the OS. Would it be better to use a partition on that drive as a pagefile or use a partition on a separate 7200rpm SATA drive?

>If you had 4GB of ram, but are using a 1GB graphics card, you will reduce your useable ram to 3GB.

Isn't that if the graphics are built on to the motherboard?

>If you have a 30GB secondary SSD, why not install XP to it so you can maintain the best performance from your main SSD?
I've done that. The pagefile SSD was another drive gathering dust.

Is it better to have a separate pagefile for each hard drive? I thought I could have one pagefile for all hard drives.
 
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pyro226

pyro226

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>Does using it as a pagefile location accelerate the wear much? Am I risking wearing it out? I'm using a SSD for the OS. Would it be better to use a partition on that drive as a pagefile or use a partition on a separate 7200rpm SATA drive?
If you research it, almost all sources suggest moving the pagefile to an HDD. It's just SSD writing that can be prevented and is done to try to keep the SSD running as long as possible. If you're not using the SSD though, feel free to use it for paging.

> Isn't that if the graphics are built on to the motherboard?
It also applies when using a physical graphics card when your memory is limited to 4GB by a 32bit operating system without PAE (physical address extension) enabled. But your setup isn't affected since you don't have 4GB of memory. I have 8GB of ram. When I run XP, XP has at most 4GB of adress space, but becuase reserved hardware memory is addressed before system memory, my 1GB graphics card is addressed first for graphics use and only 3GB are addressable by the operating system for system memory use. The problem is that they only allow for 32 bit addresses which mean a total of 4GB of address space. PAE allows for more to be addressed, but I haven't figured out a way for XP to treat it as system memory. It shows the ram is useable though (not native system use though), so I set the remainder non-system ram to a ram disk and put my pagefile on it. So my operating system is 1GB graphics memory (dedicated GDDR5 on my graphics card), 3GB of System Memory, and 5GB of ram set to a ramdisk.

> Is it better to have a separate pagefile for each hard drive? I thought I could have one pagefile for all hard drives.
The article was originally referencing Windows 7. I'm not sure if it applies to earlier versions of windows. I'm not sure which other operating systems you are working with. I suggested it as a way to speed up paging if you put the page file on HDD.
"Using multiple page files split over two or more physical disks is an even better idea, because your disk controller can process multiple requests to read or write data concurrently. But don’t make the mistake of creating two or more page files using multiple volumes on a single physical disk."
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff382717.aspx

According to this article, it is possible for different installations of windows to share a pagefile (I've never had multiple Windows installs). You may be able to get it working with multiple pagefiles per OS as well.
http://www.mydigitallife.info/share-same-pagefilesys-virtual-memory-paging-file-for-dual-boot-multiple-windows-to-conserve-disk-space/
 
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