SSD and HDD configuration question

[paul mohr]

I am going to get an intel X25 V tonight I think and add it into my system with my existing 160 gig sata HDD. What is the best configuration for this for best performance? The SSD is small one at 40Gigs but its all I can afford, but with windows 7 and the programs I currently have I am only using 29 gigs of my hard drive anyway.

From what I can gather I want the ssd to be my C drive with the operating system and any much used programs on it, which are not many to be honest I run a pretty lean set up.

My question is should I leave my swap file on the ssd or move it to the hdd? Should I keep using ready boost with a usb drive? Is there anything else I should move to the D drive or anything I need to change in the bios in order to make it work right?

Really the only thing I do with this computer is surf the net and play Second Life. And I use some editing stuff like Gimp to make textures.

And I assume a fresh install of windows 7 is my best bet as well.

Any help would greatly appreciated thank you.

 

[foscooter]

You're thinking along the correct lines.

40GB is lean for an OS drive, but I only use 22+ GB of my 80GB setup.

Yes, fresh install of Windows 7, to make sure it's "aligned."

Plug the SSD into the first SATA port on the mobo, and the HDD into any other, probably the next port.

Set up BIOS as DVD as first boot, to install the OS, then after install, set it to the SSD drive as first boot.

Enable ACHI, if you have an Intel based mobo (X58 or P55 shipset).

Let Windows 7 install format the drive, and leave the 100MB System Reserved partition it creates alone.

As for the pagfile.sys, if you have 4+GB of RAM, go ahead and move it to a HDD. It won't be used much.

Move all you "Libraries" to the HDD: My Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, Videos, etc, after the new install.

Here is a good read, but I didn't do any of it. But do turn of Hibernate: The SSD Review

 

[paul mohr]

thanks guys, I just got the drive home, not sure if I want to tackle it tonight or wait until tomorrow lol. I have an AMD machine with Nvidia chip set so I guess I don't have to mess with the ACHI thing.

Guess I could have mentioned some of my set up.
AMD X4 945 3.0 quad core
windows 7 64 bit
4 gigs of ddr2
and a PNY XLR8 GTS 250 video card with a gig of DDR3 on it.

And the hard drive is the drive that came with the machine, I forget the model I looked it up once but forgot. But its a 7200 rpm 160 gig sata drive. I have a 2 year old E machine that I have basically gutted and changed everything in except the case and drive lol.

Thanks for the advice, I will let you know how it goes when I done.

Paul

 

[paul mohr]

Well I got it installed and put the OS on it all seems to be fine. It does boot faster, about like how it was coming out of hibernation. But then mine always did boot fast since I have almost no programs that load at boot up.

I can tell a slight difference in how some applications open haven't really done a lot of playing yet though.

I followed some of the steps on that website, but I left the ones to do with my registry alone, I don't want to mess with that.

As far as ready boost, it wouldn't let me use it. I put the usb drive in and tried to turn on ready boost and said it was not available because the drive I have is too fast to utilize it! woo hoo.

Install was easy as pie by the way, thanks for the help. The amazing thing is I have the upgrade version of windows 7 and it still loaded and verified. I though sure I would have to put vista or xp on it first to get it to work. Guess I got lucky.

 

[paul mohr]

Ok, I have another question, how do I move my libraries to the other drive? I tried to just drag them there but it didn't work. How do I move them, and is it possible for them to still be linked correctly in the start menu correctly?

Other than that this thing is working great. Doesn't seem to do me much good in Second Life, but online virtual worlds are dependent on so many factors I am not shocked. Texture do load faster though out of my cache, sort of like when I had a ram drive set up.

But regular programs load as fast as I can click on them so that is kind of cool.

 

[mark_k]

Do a google search on "move libraries to HDD" and see what you get. I know MicroSoft has an articel on how to do this.