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Partioning a System with a New SSD?

N

ncage

Golden Member
Ok I finally decided to make the jump to SSD. Seen a deal on a OCZ Vertex 120GB but after some research i decided to go with the Intel 160GB G2 series for just slightly over $100. Also i seen some issues with the vertex drives. I just have more faith in the verfiication process of Intel over OCZ/Indilinx.


Anways, my current system consist of the following:
1) Boot Drive - Velociraptor 300GB
2) Data Drive - 750GB 7200 RPM WD

I'll probably keep both those drives in my system and use the SSD as the boot drive. The main question i have is HOW careful do i need to be in partitioning everything so nothing that writes frequently is on the SSD so as to resit wear / slowdowns

For example you could try partition everything that does a lot of writing to the velociraptor:
1) Page File
2) Temp Files
3) Hybernate File - don't know if you can change the location but i'll check into it if i need to
4) Browser Cache
5) ect......

Depending on what the Write/Read ratio is you might be missing a lot of benefit of what the SSD gives you. For example you might be missing the benefit of having your system QUICKLY come out of hybernate if you move the hybernate file.

Also, i'm mostly doing this for Visual Studio .Net (programming) improvements. Visual Studio projects are "generally" not that that huge but visual studio does lots and lots of small writes/reads when doing stuff like reflection,compiling ect. I'd like to put these projects on the SSD of course because of speed improvements but i don't want to cause performance degradation on my SSD because of it.

I know the intel drive (along with the vertex drive) has TRIM which reduces this but i'm sure TRIM is not perfect and you will still see some performance degredation over time.TRIM just probably reduces it. Oh, and by the way, i am using Windows 7 x64.

Of course there is a lot more examples:
1) Lightroom and its database that its constantly updating
2) Photoshop with its scratch space.
3) SQL Server
4) I'm sure the list could go on and on but i'm sure you get the point.

So when partitioning your drive how anal do you have to be with stuff that does writing to the disk. Some of the slowest apps do a lot of writing and probably would be helped greatly by a SSD.

I was even considering (maybe still slightly) of putting this thing in my labtop and if i did that i wouldn't have a choice. I would have one drive so everything would have to go on the SSD.

Any help would be appreciated.
 
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I don't understand what you mean by partitioning everything. Are you planning on doing multiple partitions on the Intel drive? If so, I would not do that. There's no real reason to, it's not like you could manage to get the OS closer to the outer edges of the platter or something; it's an SSD there's no physical locations to really think about like in a hard drive.

Or do you mean where you put certain things like the page file, like on one disk or another?

Don't worry about wearing out the SSD. You can write 100gb a day to an 80gb drive for 5 years and the drive will be fine according to Intel. You can probably do at least 200gb a day on your 160gb drive for 5 years. There's no way a pagefile will be doing 200gb a day.

You bought the SSD to be fast, so put your pagefile on it and your cache, same with the scratch space for photoshop.
 
The main question i have is HOW careful do i need to be in partitioning everything so nothing that writes frequently is on the SSD so as to resit wear / slowdowns
Click to expand...

If you're going to use Windows there's not much you can do. It will always need to write to the registry and various other places in \windows.
 
By the time these things wear out, there will be much faster / cheaper products on the market. I simply left mine alone (let Windows 7 do the work) as one big partition. I didn't do any "SSD optimizations," so the page file, hibernation file, temp directory, etc. is all still on the drive. On my desktop, I have a second HDD for my own storage and games.
 
ncage said:
Ok I finally decided to make the jump to SSD. Seen a deal on a OCZ Vertex 120GB but after some research i decided to go with the Intel 160GB G2 series for just slightly over $100. Also i seen some issues with the vertex drives. I just have more faith in the verfiication process of Intel over OCZ/Indilinx.
Click to expand...

Wha...? WHERE?
 
I was pretty much asking if i just need to be careful of how i configure my system so anything that writes a LOT of data to the system should write the the velociraptor rather than SSD. I'm not only concerned with wear/tear but also slowdown over time.
 
oh yes and forgot to also ive heard you should leave quite a bit of free space for speed. How much should you leave free?
 
20% free for speed on Intel drives.

First thing you do before installing anything is shrink the partition by 20%. Anand details exactly how in one of his SSD articles.

Install Windows and turn off hibernation in the CMD and install your programs. Move the locations for all your libraries to your data drive from the 'properties' tab. Thats it. Leave everything else alone. Let W7 do its thing. There are all kinds of half-assed theories on what you should turn off and why but in the end just leave everything alone and enjoy your new SSD. In about five years it will begin to wear out. Accept it. Enojoy it. Leave it alone.
 
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garritynet said:
20% free for speed on Intel drives.

First thing you do before installing anything is shrink the partition by 20%. Anand details exactly how in one of his SSD articles.

Install Windows and turn off hibernation in the CMD. Thats it. Leave everything else alone. Let W7 do its thing. There are all kinds of half-assed theories on what you should turn off and why but in the end just leave everything alone and enjoy your new SSD. In about five years it will begin to wear out. Accept it. Enojoy it. Leave it alone.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. Why do you say turn off hibernate? Thats one of the main things i do. Windows home server wakes all my PCs up in the middle of the night to backup and other misc task. Are you saying turn off hibernate because the huge amount of data it writes to the drive? If that is maybe the case maybe thats the only small thing i'll do is try to change where it writes the hibernate file to.
 
ncage said:
Thanks for the reply. Why do you say turn off hibernate? Thats one of the main things i do. Windows home server wakes all my PCs up in the middle of the night to backup and other misc task. Are you saying turn off hibernate because the huge amount of data it writes to the drive? If that is maybe the case maybe thats the only small thing i'll do is try to change where it writes the hibernate file to.
Click to expand...

Hibernation is mainly for laptops who aren't always plugged into the grid. I'd just use sleep mode on a desktop. Hibernation takes up disk space, which on an SSD is valuable.
 
Also: SSDs boot really fast. I push the power button as I walk to my computer and by the time I am comfortable in my seat I am ready to log in. Hibernation is for laptops that may run out of battery even with very low power draw. Sleep is for computers that are plugged into the wall.
 
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