SSD as primary boot and ___

beany323

Senior member
Jan 11, 2005
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Hi!
looking at building a new comp and would like to get a ssd as my main hdd for os.(I think i am saying this correctly). the plan is when i build it, to only have the ssd hooked up initially and download only the os and any drivers. Not sure how much space i need for that. and if i have enough left over to maybe, maybe toss on my game of the month. I will move that game program once a new one comes out... so basically, how much drive space should i be looking at? less then 100gb or more?

kinda of confused at the moment. thanks in advance.
 

Zorander

Golden Member
Nov 3, 2010
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I am managing my Win7 installation on a 35GB partition with 5-8GB of free space. I would prefer to allocate it to a 50GB partition but I had to make space for my games and programs (which are stored in a separate partition that takes up the remaining SSD capacity).

As for how much space you need for your games, that depends on how many games you plan to have installed on the drive at the same time.

Cheers!
 

FishAk

Senior member
Jun 13, 2010
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You didn't say which OS you plan to use, but a stock install of W7/Vista is under 15GB. Other operating systems take much less space. For instance XP is about 4.5GB. 25GB is quite a bit of room for OS and programs. The trouble is that often, User folders, a programs data, and caches and are allowed to stay in their default location on the OS partition, causing it to grow considerably. When possible, this should all be moved out of the OS partition if it's more than a few hundred MBs.

Normally it makes sense to keep programs in the OS partition, since programs must be reinstalled with the OS regardless of their location. There is seldom a valid reason to install programs outside the OS partition. Keeping programs in the OS partition makes creating an image file, or recovering the OS more straight forward. However, because you plan to rotate games frequently, putting them in another partition is warranted. It will allow image sets of the OS to be smaller and easier to store- i.e. without an outdated game taking up space in the image file.

Because an SSD generally looses it's advantage over a HDD when file sizes get around 64k, it's better to keep most data on a HDD with it's price advantage. The more free space an SSD has, the better it will perform. For any data under 32k that you need fast access to, the SSD is the best choice- but outside of the OS partition so it doesn't get included in an image file. (Data can be simply backed up, and an image isn't required.) This doesn't include the page or hibernate files which don't get included in an image anyway. If you don't use hybrid sleep, you can disable it to free up space on the OS partition equal to your RAM volume.

Alignment and AHCI are both very important for an SSD. W7 properly aligns partitions when it creates them, but other OSs don't.

You can initially install the OS and programs to an extra large 40GB or so partition, make your adjustments, then boot to a Live CD and shrink the OS partition to 5ish GB over the actual used space. Also, if you will use W7, but you don't plan to use BitLocker (motherboard doesn't support it- you prefer open source encryption- etc.), you can pre-partition the SSD to keep Windows from creating that pesky little 100MB system partition, and you can keep all the OS stuff on just one partition.
 
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Shmee

Memory & Storage, Graphics Cards Mod Elite Member
Super Moderator
Sep 13, 2008
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what SSD you looking to get?
 

sequoia464

Senior member
Feb 12, 2003
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Don't forget that as the WINSXS folder grows you will need additional space for it. Mine is at 11 gigs currently; bumping my 15 gig windows 7 install to 26 gigs and growing.
 

FishAk

Senior member
Jun 13, 2010
987
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Don't forget that as the WINSXS folder...

You should be able to cut that down considerably with Disk Cleanup run as an Admin. Mine isn't yet 7GB. It's fully updated with SP1. You may still have your SP1 install files in there for instance.