Installing Win 7 onto SSD

Now that SSD prices are coming down to sensible(ish) levels I have decided to buy a Crucial M225 64Gb. Searching around, most of the installation guides I have found refer to notebooks and are quite minimalist installs, stripping out unneccessary components to get everything squeezed onto very small drives. Obviously 64Gb is not tiny for a SSD but it will still take a bit of thought to make a desktop workstation install practical.

I use a Readynas for all of my media & data so my present Win7 install is not huge at 74Gb but I will obviously need to install some of my usual graphics progs (Office, Corel Draw, Adobe CS4 etc) onto my conventional Samsung HD to ensure that I don't clog up the system SSD.

So where do I start? Is it just a case of installing ALL progs onto the conventional drive, leaving Win7 to languish on the SSD or is there a more progressive approach?

I would put Programs on the same drive as OS.

You can put your user files on another HD: User Folders - Change Default Location

Thanks guys,

In an ideal situation all of my progs would go on the SSD along with Windows to keep everything buzzing along nicely. I was a bit concerned that as my prog list grew bigger, the space would rapidly disappear as some of my graphics progs are pretty big (I'm a graphic designer) However I will give it a try and maybe get a second SSD later and make them a RAID array to get more space if required.

The page & restore file ideas are exactly the sort of thing I need to do - that should keep some of the temp stuff away from the SSD but it shouldnt slow things down too much As pointed out, it is surprising how much disc space is gobbled up with those features - I wonder if the restore images can be saved in an alternate location.

My initial thought was to use Acronis to transfer an image ftom the old installation but on second thought a fresh install will be the order of the day and then to transfer all of my old settings with the File Transfer Wizard - an image file might mess up the required drivers & settings like trim, defrag etc.

Just a little update - I have installed Win7 on my SSD and WOW what a difference!
Boot up and shut down times are now half of what they were and my progs open up almost instantly!

Installation was a breeze once I'd figured out the correct SATA settings in bios (AHCI is the one to go for) I updated to the latest Crucial firmware (1916) and my WEI score is now 7.3 (was 5.9) which is now on par with the rest of my system.

Whoooosh!