New laptop setup, SSD questions

I ordered a new laptop that should be delivered tomorrow, and I was hoping someone could answer a few questions for me. This is the laptop I ordered: Buy.com - Toshiba Satellite U845W 14.4" Core i5 6GB Widescreen Ultrabook

Toshiba Satellite U845W-S410 14.4" Widescreen Ultrabook, Intel Core i5-3317U, 6GB DDR3, 500GB HDD, 32GB SSD, Windows 7 Home Premium (64-Bit) - PSU5RU-00Q003

I have never had a SSD before. The Windows 7 will be already installed on the SSD. I was mainly wondering how I go about installing the programs that I use. The SSD is only 32 GB. How much space does the OS take up, and is it advisable to install all or most programs on the SSD (or at least certain programs I use often - Firefox, Thunderbird) - or do those use too much space?

My other question is... I believe Toshiba installs a lot of crapware on their machines. Is it possible to download a clean copy of Windows 7 Home Premium and use the activation key that comes with my notebook to replace the operating system? Or should I just uninstall as much of it as possible?

When I received my current desktop computer, I didn't realize how helpful it would have been to create a partition for just the OS and programs, keeping my data separate. It would have made the backup process much simpler for me. I am hoping to do a better job setting this one up. Any advice or recommendations are appreciated! :)

I have been searching for more information about SSD/HDD, and came across the advice quoted below to

1. Move the Windows paging file to the HDD
3. Move the Windows restore points off the SSD.

Would either of these be useful and perhaps give me a little extra space for at least a few main programs? I am thinking my email program will be way too big, and Firefox itself might fit, but if I stream a movie or something would it automatically be temporarily saving all that data to the SSD also?

Programs and files on SSD vs HDD for max performance... - config-customize - windows-7
First thing you always want to do if you have your boot disk as SSD and second internal HDD get the Windows paging file off of the SSD. Reasons are that SSDs are expensive, the page file takes up some space but that is neglegeable, the paging file is constantly changing and parts are over written which is bad for an SSD because SSD has shorter life time of rewrites then HDD so the page file is needlessly eating away at parts of your precious SSD.

To do this click start>right click computer>properties>on left side tab click "advanced system settings" you need administrative rights>Performance>go to advanced tab>under virtual memory select "change">uncheck "Automatically manage" at top>now all your partitions should be listed, in this order select a partition on your HDD. Easiest to select system managed because if you don't know what your doing you can degrade windows performance>Now select you SSD partition and pick none.
Remember you did this because later if you want to format and repartition that drive it won't let you until you go back in and re/move page file to a new partition. Forgetting and having to figure out errors causes headaches and I speak from personal experience.

It opens page file up to fragmentation. I just make partition only for page file and if fragmentation is a problem, ill just reformat the partition. No harm done to anything else. If you choose to make partition for page file make it atleast the size of your ram, 1.5 x ram is better go no bigger than 2 x ram or your wasting space, especially if you have a lot of ram and windows doesn't do much paging...


Third is to check for Windows restore points because they can take up lots of space, move them off of your SSD or delete them/disable new ones from being made if you don't need them. I only keep until a little after a windows update or installing new drivers until I am pretty sure everything is running fine, and I typically only keep one. My preference though! I make my own drive images and backup. Google for a tutorial dealing with those restore points, there are tons.

Thank you for the link to the clean install tutorial, LittleJay. I haven't had a chance to look at it yet, but I plan to study it. I've never installed an OS before.

Thank you for your reply Indianacarnie. I am assuming that SSD have the same size discrepancy that HDDs have, so that an advertised 32 GB SSD will only give me 29.822 GB of storage space. Ninety percent of that is only 26.840 GB. Microsoft says you need 20 GB for Windows 7. So that gives me very little extra space.

I wonder if Toshiba installed their crapware on the HDD or the SDD?

I am also wondering if I can/should install only 64-Bit programs to the SSD? Does it matter? On my current computer the 32-bit programs are automatically installed in the (x86) folder. I wonder if all the folders will be already set up on both drives?

Should I install MSE on the SSD? Any issue there?

Sorry if any of these are stupid questions. I am still pretty confused about having to separate drives and how it all works together.

Thanks again for the help!

Thank you Gregrocker. I looked at your awesome Clean Install tutorial a little while ago. It is very well done.

You may also have to turn off a RAID setting in BIOS and Intel Rapid Storage technology in some cases.

I have come across these terms before, but I'm not really familiar with them. I also read a bit about small SSDs being used as a cache, but to tell you the truth, it is mostly over my head.

I am getting a little nervous and starting to wonder whether I should just follow your easier: Clean Up Factory Bloatware instead of doing a clean install.

I am curious to see how the computer is set up, and whether Toshiba installed the OS on the 32 gb SSD. I believe that was how it was described in a video review I watched a few days ago, but I'm not certain.

Darn, I wish the SSD that is just a little bit larger. A quick boot time will be nice, but I'm not sure how much of a speed increase I will get if most of my programs are on the HDD.

I don't play any games so that's not an issue. I thought it would be nice to have my browser and media player on the SSD. If I could have Thunderbird on the SSD too, that would be nice, but I would have to have all of the data stored on the HDD. Same with Firefox.

How would I go about making sure that the programs I install on the SSD don't store any big data files on the SSD? Does it depend on whether or not I can tweak each program? Change the destination path for the programs folders? A more global Windows setting I can change? Am I making any sense?

LittleJay said:

When you get the new computer, why don't you post a screen shot of your disk management and we can take a look at it, if you like and advise you further.

I will definitely do that.

whs said:

That's a good idea because it is not clear whether the OS is really installed on the SSD or whether the SSD is only used as a buffer. A 6GB RAM system with full size pagefile and full size hiberfile would barely fit on 32GBs. But when 'tuned', it will fit easily.

Then 32GB would be plenty for the OS and all programs (no big games though) if done correctly. I have 6 systems with 6 SSDs and they all run around 25GB for the OS, All my programs and the pagefile of 2GBs.

Moving the pagefile is not a good idea. With 6GB of RAM, it will probably hardly be used. I always reduce the pagefile to 2GB. And I also delete the hiberfile completely.

ad3) You cannot move the restore points to another device or partition. That is only possible with the Windows server editions. You can, however, reduce the shadowstorage to nil (which is 300MB).

That is all very good to know. It seems I will only be able to use up to 26 GB total, so the fact that you are able to run the OS, all your programs and a 2 GB pagefile gives me a lot of hope.

Thank you for your help! :)