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Using an old 32gig SSD as my Win7 boot drive?

JEDI

JEDI

Lifer
cpu = amd phenom II x4 960t (3ghz)
ram= 4gig
hd = 1tb (175gig free)

my hd thrashes now but win7 says it's not fragmented.

i was going to buy a 240gig ssd as my win boot/programs drive and use a 1tb hd as the data drive.

but i found an old Patriot Torqx2 32gig ssd (sata II 3gps).

i use my computer to surf the web and do light word/excel.

How's this idea?
32gig ssd: Win 7 + 6gig fixed swap drive only
1tb hd: programs and data
 
Somewhat of an aside: Have you checked SMART drive health? A sudden increase in "thrashing" can indicate a drive that's about to fail. That's what I was experiencing right before my media drive died a thrashy death.

I have installed Win7 on a 32GB SSD, but even after some optimizations, there wasn't a lot of spare room. It can certainly be done, but probably not the best long term solution.
 
LoveMachine said:
Somewhat of an aside: Have you checked SMART drive health? A sudden increase in "thrashing" can indicate a drive that's about to fail. That's what I was experiencing right before my media drive died a thrashy death.

I have installed Win7 on a 32GB SSD, but even after some optimizations, there wasn't a lot of spare room. It can certainly be done, but probably not the best long term solution.
Click to expand...

how do I check smart drive health?

and a win7 pro 64bit install takes up that much room?!
(with 6gig fixed swap drive)
 
I did a stripped down install of Win 7 yesterday and it still took 5+ gb. After Office and a few add ons, was up to 12+gb..
 
A 32GB SSD makes a fine Windows 7 boot drive, if you don't install too many games or applications (or if you do, put them on the D drive HDD).

I gave a friend of mine a 30GB OCZ Agility, he's been using it for 3 years, usually has around 3GB free. (His machine has 4GB of RAM.)

Unfortunately, it may be due for a secure-erase and re-format. He's getting "pauses" when using the system, which may be due to SSD GC having to find and scavenge free blocks to write to during use.

If you can afford it ($50-60), I would strongly suggest going with a 120GB SSD. Much more room for OS + apps + swap file, with room to spare (good for longevity / speed / maintenance).
 
VirtualLarry said:
I gave a friend of mine a 30GB OCZ Agility, he's been using it for 3 years, usually has around 3GB free. (His machine has 4GB of RAM.)

Unfortunately, it may be due for a secure-erase and re-format. He's getting "pauses" when using the system, which may be due to SSD GC having to find and scavenge free blocks to write to during use.
Click to expand...

This is exactly why running an SSD at 90% of capacity isn't a good idea, especially on a really small drive which doesn't have much spare area to begin with.

Speed is a great SSD benefit, but what you really notice is consistently high speeds. If you have a drive that's too small or too full and seeing multi-second pauses, you might as well be using an HDD because the overall experience is roughly the same. Actually the HDD may be a better experience because you'll see smoother performance degradation.
 
a 64GB SSD is like $50 or less. Its a better option because then you can update windows without an issue. My W7 64bit with updates takes like 20GB. Its doable in the 32GB SSD but if you are going to waste time trying to delete stuff so you can download security updates then its not worth it
 
LoveMachine said:
Somewhat of an aside: Have you checked SMART drive health? A sudden increase in "thrashing" can indicate a drive that's about to fail. That's what I was experiencing right before my media drive died a thrashy death.

I have installed Win7 on a 32GB SSD, but even after some optimizations, there wasn't a lot of spare room. It can certainly be done, but probably not the best long term solution.
Click to expand...

naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh

it's thrashing because everything is swapping out because Chrome uses so much ram these days

and smart rarely tells you anything useful it just tells you park/unpark counts and such with a silly low number for the lifetime like "500"
 
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OP, I think you're going to be OK.

There are Windows tablets on the market with only 32 GB of storage, and those still include a crapload of extraneous stuff.

As long as you keep the installed programs to a minimum (hint: use portable applications as much as possible!), you should be absolutely OK.
 
soccerballtux said:
anti-what?

just don't visit shady websites
Click to expand...
Like Guru3D, or the WSJ (the only two sites I've gotten attacks from, in recent memory, on my PCs)? Back when it was script kiddies wrapping trojans in warez releases, sure, but today, the concern is more of getting bundles from fake sites, that non-techies, even who know to be wary, can be fooled by*, and being protected from 3rd-party asset delivery on sites people visit all the time.

Keeping everything up to date, now that can make a huge difference, for any vulnerability not brand new. One the above, for example, after clicking a link to an article on the WSJ, was a PDF vulnerability, which failed, even with the Adobe Reader plugin happily trying to load it. Within a day or two, news was out about whatever ad servers it was, but that wouldn't have helped with a months-old Reader that could have gone and installed who-knows-what.

These days, I consider Adblock a security feature, and if you want to make your site fail w/o it, you really need to find a way to manage w/o 3rd-party ads, instead (like 1st-party ad hosting, which I do occasionally come across).

* The last one I saw, FI, was a very good Mozilla website fake, including the correct FF downloadable file name and version. If you didn't know the page was supposed to be annoyingly active with those expanding tile things, you'd never know you went to the wrong place.
 
Cerb said:
Like Guru3D, or the WSJ (the only two sites I've gotten attacks from, in recent memory, on my PCs)? Back when it was script kiddies wrapping trojans in warez releases, sure, but today, the concern is more of getting bundles from fake sites, that non-techies, even who know to be wary, can be fooled by*, and being protected from 3rd-party asset delivery on sites people visit all the time.
Click to expand...

Absolutely XSS is a real thing and ad networks don't screen content very carefully at all. Sites that focus heavily on user-generated content even less so. It isn't 1999 anymore, you're probably less likely to get a virus going to a porn site than browsing Facebook.
 
I have a 32gig ssd (sata II) collecting dust.

at first I put it in an old laptop (dual core Pentium U5600).
but win7 pro 64bit + updates + 6gig perm swap file + Avira Antivirus = 7gig free space. 😱

the laptop has a built in SD card reader so I was going to put Office (word/excel/powerpoint) onto a 32gig sd card.
but it seemed like too much trouble.
the sd card sticks about 1/2 way out so I'm worried of leaving the card in there permanently else it gets bent while I'm transporting it. 🙁

then I thought i'll use it for my Win7 desktop (AMD Phenom II x4 960t) as a 6gig perm swap file + Avira antivirus + IE 11 + Chrome.

I'm probably still going to have 20 gigs free.
1) what else to put on the SSD?

2) what other ways can I use this old SSD?

This was the OP the third thread on this 32GB SSD, but I merged it into the second thread (still on the first page!). You don't need to make a new one each time.

mfenn
General Hardware Moderator
 
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Can't you remove all the windows install files to free up space? Do a cleanup in system files, should free up some gigabytes.

dskcl11.png
 
Use Intel Smart Response if you have a motherboard and processor which support it. This really makes a noticeable performance improvement on load times for a lot of apps and you don't need to worry about fitting everything in that small space.

Think of it this way: your Windows folder contains a lot of files which it uses every time you use the computer, it also has many files which are almost never used (language support, help support, a library of obscure drivers for devices you don't own) and Smart Response is able to optimize the use of the small space on the SSD by only actually caching the files which are actually used down to the individual sector level. If you try to manage installing stuff on the SSD, you really can only manage the files on the program level (e.g., you can choose where to install Steam, but it will try to put your whole Steam directory in that location unless you really micromanage it). By using Smart Response, way more programs end up on the SSD than if you individually managed the partitions.

EDIT: I see that you have an AMD system on your desktop, therefore you would need to use an equivalent software like PrimoCache.
 
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Wall Street,

thx but PrimoCache is $30 🙁
any free cache programs?

and I usually put my desktop to sleep. when it wakes up, the swap file gets used the most.
then Avira antivirus.
and the programs I use most is IE and Chrome.

thus why I want to put a fixed 6gig page file, avira, IE, and chrome on this 32gig ssd.
 
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can't you tell Windows to use x amount of space and direct it to your SSD for a page file? Essentially make your SSD ONLY for paging?

PageFile_zps3f056934.jpg
 
Smoove910 said:
can't you tell Windows to use x amount of space and direct it to your SSD for a page file? Essentially make your SSD ONLY for paging?

PageFile_zps3f056934.jpg
Click to expand...

MongGrel said:
I was going to say maybe just page files myself.
Click to expand...

lol.. did either of u read my OP?

"6gig perm swap file + Avira antivirus + IE 11 + Chrome"

besides using it for a swap file and frequently used programs, anything else I can do w/a 32gig ssd?
 
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