Should I use my leftover 30GB SSD as a swap drive?

[shortylickens]

And if so, should I use it in my Win 7 office system or my Win XP game system?

The office machine is used mostly for Office, streaming movies and neffing. Also web games and pretty much all my web browsing. I do not edit or rip movies on it. No serious photo-shopping either.

The game machine is used for high-end games that still work under XP. Some of them are Steam based but I dont do much online gaming as such. I havent touched Guild Wars in over a year and I only do bot CS and UT. It is not used for any photo or video editing even though it has more horsepower.


The office system will now have 120GB for the main drive and 2TB for bulk storage of porn and lol cats. Also some of the apps which I wouldnt want to fill up my 120GB ssd.

The game system has two 1 TB drives for all my games, one for Steam, one for disc based. OS is on one of the hard drives. I thought about putting the OS on the 30GB SSD but realized if the games are loading up from the hard drives it wont matter much.
On the other hand, XP needs much less drive space than Win 7 and I dont have any utilities on it except Avira which is disabled unless I go online. So I'd have plenty of room for both Win XP and a huge swap file appropriate for gaming.

Thoughts?


------------------------
BUMP! New issue!

Is it possibly to copy everything from one hard drive with Win 7 installed to a 2nd drive, and have that drive boot without issue?
Or do I need to reinstall Win 7 from scratch and all my apps again?
----------------------

 

[Emulex]

just boot off the ssd and keep it trim. swap, hibernation,av scan (quick) will go faster. might as well burn it up before it becomes too small to use in future o/s

 

[shortylickens]

just boot off the ssd and keep it trim. swap, hibernation,av scan (quick) will go faster. might as well burn it up before it becomes too small to use in future o/s

OK, so you are saying I should use the old 30GB SSD in my WinXP system for only the OS and swap file, am I right?

 

[groberts101]

I think Emulex is just saying to use and enjoy it for now as it will be small, slow, and obsolete by the time wear out would even be a concern.

Inevitably these smaller early gen drives will be like an overpriced USB stick in a few more years. In fact, I've already retired one of my many 30GB Vertex to portable enclosure duty already. Works like a nice big fast USB stick now.

 

[shortylickens]

Alright obviously I didnt make myself clear.

On my Win 7 office system I have a 30GB drive. After formatting and installing Windows it has very little space left. I was able to squeeze on a stripped down Office 2007 install and some basic utilities and now its pretty much full. No room for a hibernate file or swap file. Thats on my 1TB My Docs drive.

I just got a 120GB vertex 2 drive. Its sitting in front of me right now. I already know this will be my new OS and app drive for my Win 7 office machine.

Want to know what to do with my 30GB drive. Do I leave it on my Win 7 office machine as a swap file drive, even though I dont do much high performance stuff on it and dont necessarily need a quiet swap drive?
Or do I put it on my game system either as just a swap drive or as the OS drive since WinXP needs less space and I dont have any real utilities installed?

 

[Elixer]

You can go either way, you can even use it as a backup device for the OS drive.
If you make it a dedicated swap drive, then it seems like a waste.

 

[shortylickens]

You can go either way, you can even use it as a backup device for the OS drive.
If you make it a dedicated swap drive, then it seems like a waste.

The drive is almost full now.
When I move the OS to the 120 it will have a lot more than 30 gigs worth of stuff on it. How am I gonna backup almost 100 gigs to a 30 gig drive?

I think I'll put it in the XP game machine.

 

[SickBeast]

Just get more RAM and get rid of your swap file entirely.

I would either dedicate that 30gb SSD entirely to a cache, or else you could throw a few of the games you play the most on there.

 

[shortylickens]

My office system has 8 gigs of RAM. Are you saying I can get by with no swap file? Cuz a lot of programs cry if you dont have one, even with gobs of RAM.

As for the game system, unless I move up from XP theres no point in installing more than the 4gb I already have.

I like the idea of installing my favorite games to the 30 gig. Maybe Oblivion since it takes forever to load especially with all the mods.
Ditto Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

 

[Elixer]

The drive is almost full now.
When I move the OS to the 120 it will have a lot more than 30 gigs worth of stuff on it. How am I gonna backup almost 100 gigs to a 30 gig drive?

I think I'll put it in the XP game machine.

Heh, I guess I should have said I would partition the SSD to have a OS partition, since then, it is much easier to backup the data, or just wipe out the OS if need be. You then put your profile directory on your DATA drive/partition.

On my ~90GB SSD (~50 GB used), my backup size was ~25GB.

 

[shortylickens]

------------------------
BUMP! New issue!

Is it possibly to copy everything from one hard drive with Win 7 installed to a 2nd drive, and have that drive boot without issue?
Or do I need to reinstall Win 7 from scratch and all my apps again?
----------------------

 

[Emulex]

yeah acronis easy migrate (comes free with intel ssd) in manual mode. works perfect. free 30 day trial

 

[shortylickens]

Thanks buddy!




CRAP!
Didnt work. Somehow messed up my system just by installing Acronis.
Had to reinstall Windows cuz the old install didnt work any more. Now I gotta figure out how to get settings and shit copied over.
Also have to grind away and install all my apps.

Oh well. Its OK, wont take as long as Win98 thats for sure.

 

[wpcoe]

My office system has 8 gigs of RAM. Are you saying I can get by with no swap file? Cuz a lot of programs cry if you dont have one, even with gobs of RAM

I have a small token swap file set to Custom Size (128MB min and 512MB max) for that reason. I don't check daily, but every so often I'll look and have *never* seen the file expanded beyond 128MB.

 

[Emulex]

weird acronis is what intel gives you for free. works for millions of others. might scan for nasty virus/malware