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#1
USB3 drive for swap, registry and temp files ?
I use an SSD for the Windows system files on my machine, and it works wonderfully; as is the case, I notice it most when going to use a HDD based system. In the same vein, I'm taking advantage of a fast (250Mb/55Mb) USB3 drive for some things. The Windows and User TEMP/TMP files are on the USB stick (that makes a big difference, especially for things like WinRAR), and the browser cache files.
I've also put the swap file on it. That seems to work fine - there's no reason it shouldn't - and am thinking of the next step, moving the registry on to USB drive. My thinking for these last two is this: both the swap file and registry files are huge files that are written to very frequently. If an SSD has a minimum writable storage unit, it'll end up doing a lot more writing/freeing than the odd update here and there.
This is then a tradeoff; I'm using relatively cheap USB storage for things that are written often - temp files - and also for critical files - swap and registry. If I start getting errors on the USB stick it's no great bother to replace it, whereas replacing the SSD would be a lot of work.
I don't know how to move the registry though, that is my question in this post. And it isn't easily dispensed with either, so I'd need frequent backups, I realise. Losing the swap file is unimportant, same for temp and cache files.
I'm also wondering if anyone has comments on this? Is it a good idea, or as useful as Win98 memory optimisers? I've never seen these ideas discussed anywhere, which I find a bit odd as they seem genuinely useful, and in some cases like WinRAR can be proved with a stopwatch to be of use.