SSD drive swap

Willowhoop · 22 Jul 2010

Hi guys,
Thanks for this great forum.

I have a little problem, I thought there may be someone here who may be able to offer a solution other than the obvious one of swapping drives over, which I realise I may have to do. It pays to mention that I have a 3 year warranty on my hardware. So physically swapping drives will need to be done in shop.

I purchased this PC in February this year. (Absolutely love Windows7 too).

I had the PC custom built and the guy that built it loaded the SSD as 'C' drive. The SSD was meant to be for Photo shop. Obviously a 64gig SSD is not big enough. After installing Win7 and trying to direct any software I could to my terabyte drive I find that I now only have just over 1gig left on the SSD. Screen shots below (ain't the snip tool awesome!!).

Is there anyway of directing software that I can not physically direct myself to another drive other than C?
I read the tutorial about changing the registry and tried it, but it didn't work.
Any assistance would be great thank you. Hope I've given you enough info too

Regards Willow

sygnus21 · 22 Jul 2010

Willowhoop said:

Is there anyway of directing software that I can not physically direct myself to another drive other than C?
I read the tutorial about changing the registry and tried it, but it didn't work.
Any assistance would be great thank you. Hope I've given you enough info too

Hi Willohoop,

You can have programs installed where you want by simply doing a "custom" install and choosing the drive you want to program installed on. Nearly all software programs allow you to change the install directory, you just need to tell it where to go. This option is usually called custom install.

Hope this answered your question.

Willowhoop · 22 Jul 2010

Hey, thanks. I meant the software that you can't redirect yourself I know that you can redirect most software to another drive. There are quite a few that you can't. I also have Corel Paintshop Photo X3 and have installed it to an external, some parts of the software went to 'C' by default as do the updates and it is those components of a lot of software that are using the space. There is other software such as McAfee and Adobe that use a lot of space. Even though they are installed on an external HD.
I guess I'm just going to have to swap the drives around and make the internal terabyte my 'C' drive.
Thanks for your help

whs · 22 Jul 2010

I would move the user files (documents, pictures, videos etc.) to the HDD. Just go to Properties of those folders and click the location tab. Make sure that you have a defined folder on the HDD to where you move it and NOT the drive. There are some instructions in the video tutorial that I made a while ago.

I guess I'm just going to have to swap the drives around and make the internal terabyte my 'C' drive.

That would be a big mistake. You'll loose a lot of performance.

sygnus21 · 22 Jul 2010

Willowhoop said:

I also have Corel Paintshop Photo X3 and have installed it to an external, some parts of the software went to 'C' by default as do the updates and it is those components of a lot of software that are using the space. There is other software such as McAfee and Adobe that use a lot of space.

In addition to what whs has said you can also move your Adobe cache files which can get quite large to another drive as well. Just go to Edit, Preferences, Plug-Ins & Scratch Disks and choose a drive you want to use for the cache files...

You can also do the same for Adobe Bride as well...

SSD drive swap-adobe-bridge-preferences.jpg

If you work with large files those cache files can get quite (gigabyte) large. You might also see if this option is available in your other editing programs.

Good luck

Willowhoop · 23 Jul 2010

Guys you rock, thanks

After all is said and done, I think I may have to go out and purchase a larger SSD and replace the 64gig with it. I don't have any docs, pics, videos, music or such in C drive. I've had 2 HD's for a while now and my habit is to place everything other than what has to go to C drive, onto an external. Keeping the C drive as free as possible.

I do appreciate your assistance and time. I just thought that Win7 may have had something hidden amongst all these new tricks it continually surprises and delights me with.

Buying a larger SSD is going to solve the problem, so I'm off to hunt around for one online... any tips would be welcome

Have a great day, and thanks again
Regards

MK2 · 23 Jul 2010

Hi,

I don't know what your budget is but if you want speed the OCZ Vertex 2 drives would be
a good choice.
I think it's one of the best drives around at the moment.

MK2

whs · 23 Jul 2010

What on earth is all this stuff you have on your drive. I run my Win7 since half a year on an Intel 80GB and Win7 never took more than 18GBs - and that even includes the pagefile.
As to extending your capacity you could consider an additional 64GB drive and set it up as RAID0 - that would double your capacity too.

MK2 · 23 Jul 2010

Good tip on raid 0 whs, would speed things up as well!

Same here, I use only 17Gb with W7 and several programs.

MK2

Willowhoop · 23 Jul 2010

Only the dog knows what is clogging the SSD...

I know nothing about computers but I am doing all I can to learn more.
Here are some screens, if you can make sense of them