Good drive/partition strategy for a new Windows 7 SSD installation?

cgwaters

Reputable
Dec 11, 2014
9
0
4,510
I recently purchased a new Samsung 500GB SSD for a very low price. I'll be using it as the primary drive for my desktop on which I'm re-installing Windows 7--replacing a 750GB HDD.

A 500GB SSD is too large for just the OS. I was thinking of dividing it into a ~200GB partition for the OS and a ~300GB partition for data (in particular, a default location for some of the Windows libraries), using the HDD as an ancillary data drive for larger files such as videos, virtual machine images, etc. Is this a good approach? Other than separation of the data should the OS become corrupt, is anything gained by partitioning the SSD?
 

cgwaters

Reputable
Dec 11, 2014
9
0
4,510


But keeping the SSD in one large partition makes it difficult to re-install Windows without losing user data; i.e., C:\Users.
 

cgwaters

Reputable
Dec 11, 2014
9
0
4,510


Are you referring to the Windows paging file? I have 24GB of RAM in this PC. With that much memory and with an SSD, the general consensus, from reviewing various posts and articles, is to define a minimal paging file (500MB initial, 1GB maximum).
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Since this is on a desktop, obtain and install another drive or two.
Partitioning that SSD will certainly result in one partition or the other being 'not quite enough' a couple of months from now.

And since you are still keeping the 750GB HDD, just use that. I would not bother partitioning the SSD.
SSD = OS and all applications. Plus whatever games fit.
HDD = all that other junk.

If you reinstall the OS, you have to reinstall the applications anyway, so no gain there.
 

cgwaters

Reputable
Dec 11, 2014
9
0
4,510

Thanks. I considered that configuration prior to my initial post. Although the price for the 500GB SSD wasn't much more than that of the 256GB, in my case, much of that extra space would go to waste. That's why I'm so interested in effective ways to store at least some user data on it.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator


At most, I'd just split it half.