Moving the registry to another location

[Flipe]

In this thread, Niz suggested to move the location of the registry from the original location to a HDD if the OS is installed in a SSD.

Any idea of how to do it?

Thank you very much in advance!

 

[inzone]

That would be something that is extremely dangerous to to and should only be done by experienced tech support personel because if you screw up the registry then you'll be reinstalling the OS.
I read the thread and thought it was very interesting to do that but for myself I would be doing some of the other less risky options to help extend the life of the SSD. If you have enough ram you can turn down or off the page file (virtual memory) and that would save your SSD some needless writes or you can change the page file to a secondary hard drive.

 

[tripledouce]

theoretically you can move the entire config folder to any location on the drive and use junction.exe (as well as Winbolic Link, NTFS Link, and WinHardLink) to create a hard link in the original location that will make the operating system see the registry at 2 different locations within the file system, you are walking on very thin ice and could end up losing everything on the machine.

 

[Guest]

Windows also writes to the registry all the time (at least 10 times a second) even when the computer is idle.

i am not sure that is correct. the registry, like the old ini files that use to be, is the configuration information of hardware and software settings. unless you are installing hard/software i do not see why it would be written to.

 

[bliq]

the registry probably does get written to all the time. it contains a lot more than hardware and software settings. However, the writes and reads are generally TINY and the difference in performance between SSD and HDD, while technically large, are probably imperceptible to a human.

Maybe that recommendation was made because of the limited number of writes that an SSD can do. But in reality, that number is enough to last for years and years for a consumer. It might be different if it was a server that was actually being taxed. But that's what enterprise SSD's are for.

 

[Flipe]

Thanks, Inzone, Tripledoze and Iooniam for your replies!

@ Inzone

I would not mind risking a reinstall, as I will be getting a SSD for the first time and install Windows in there from scratch. So if anything goes wrong with the reallocation of the registry, I assume I would notice it right away (correct me if I am wrong), so it would not be a tragedy having to reinstall.

@ Tripledoze

I had thought of using a junction, but I don't think it would work:

Junction points do not work at boot, so it's impossible to redirect eg: [...] \Windows\Config

(see the wikipedia entry).

And by the way, also "\winnt\profiles\username" for the HKEY_USERS \UserProfile should be moved, shouldn't it?

@ Iooniam

This is what I would also think using my common sense, but Niz appeared to know what he was talking about If the registry is as you say only modified when "necessary", there is no point in moving the registry.

It would be good to have the opinion of someone that knows for sure whether Niz assertion is right or wrong...

 

[Flipe]

Thanks Bliq, I missed your post while writing a reply. Maybe I am being too anxious about limiting the write operations to the SSD, but they are so expensive, I don't want to ruin them. I usually have a computer a loooong time (my last one lasted eight years!) and I try to take loving care of each one of the components so that they survive that long...

 

[inzone]

I agree with your trying to care for and extend the life of your SSD but you can accomplish that with some east to do steps.
Fisrt when you install the SSD make sure that the Sata mode is set to AHCI so that when you install Windows 7 you can have trim support.
Do the page file option I had suggested.
Don't defragment the SSD it's not neede with trim.
Keep 25% of the capacity of the SSD as open space and don't fill the SSD to 80% at all.
Have a secondary hard drive as a storage drive for all the things you don't put on the SSD and if there is a tremendous sale or rebaste offer on a SSD you can always pick up a second SSD and that way all your programs will be on a SSD. I have two 256gb SSDs and don't have a conventional hard drive so everything is on a SSD either as the primary or secondary drive. Unless you have massive amounts of data this does work for people that have around 10 to 15 games and MS Office and some other applications along with a music library and photo folder.
But you can make your SSD last a good long time by keeping an eye on what you do with it.

 

[Guest]

+1 to inzone's reply and a thanks to bliq for pointing out something i missed; the registry would be written to for small things; like a window's size and position or last opened program during a user's session. but to be "ambitious" or "innovative" and move the registry because of that . . . well how about the event log? :lol:
as much as you may be concerned to limit the writes to an SSD; with how much better "write endurance" has advanced where an SSD can have thousands and even tens of thousands of cycles; the only need is to worry about bigger amounts data. SSDs can more than handle the small stuff and still last for several years of premium performance.

 

[Flipe]

Thank you, Inzone and Looniam.

I will follow your advice and keep the registry without changes, as well as Inzone´s proposals. I had never read about keeping 25% capacity free... I will do it anyway. I can feel you know what you are talking about, even if I don´t completely understand why in this case.

 

[Flipe]

Best answer selected by flipe.

 

[inzone]

The 25% or 20% of free space is because with a SSD if you fill it up to say 95% or evn 90% it makes the performance of the SSD slow down a bit and you don't get that fast snappier OS that your used to. So while it may not have a great affect on the life of the SSD it does on the overall performance.

 

[Flipe]

Thanks for the explanation, Inzone! It is always good to know why things are done.