should I install windows on the SSD on a seagate SSHD

[XXSSSXXX]

hey there my Ultrabook (acer aspire s3-951) came with a seagate SSHD with 300GB of traditional storage and 20GB of SSD.. i wanned to do a clean install of windows soo i deleted everything on the HDD including the SSD(accidentally)..

after i was done including installing all the drivers my system was as slow as hell then i figured out that it uses the SSD as a cache.. afterwards i googled for hours and found this post that tells me to use ExpressCache which i did.... a few days later the cache starts to gets filled up when it completely fills up it erases everything in the SSD.. at times i get a bluescreen and the system hangs up bcoz of this....

soo i was wondering if it's possible to install just the windows files and the drivers in the SSD and install all other programs on a separate partition of the HDD... i only the OS to be in the SSD not the files from other application or any application data.. all of those will be stored on a separate partition.... this includes crash reports and all of those... hope i was able to make myself clear.. thanks!

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hello mate have you posted this before? as it is almost word for word as a post on another thread unless it is coincidence especially on that model machine.

Anyway I have installed on one of these drives and have had no problems at all just how much RAM have you got in the machine itself.?

 

[XXSSSXXX]

i don't remember if i've posted this earlier.. but the machine came with 4GB of ram..... everything orked fine before i deleted the entire hdd and the ssd.... till now it has flushed and rewritten about 3 times now..... from 12th september 2014

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Sorry XX but your post was like I said almost word fro word as the other thread and the machine the very same.

Now you say you have "flushed and rewritten" everything am I to take that as formatting it and reinstalling the OS to the drive. If so what media did you use for that.

Myself it sounds like the drive is not so good - either through you doing what you have done to it or if you mean reinstalling not doing that in the right way - don't be offended it happens to the best of us - or the device may need replacing.

So can you please give us what you have for and are doing for a reinstall.

It might be an idea too to give us some more system specs
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/180324-system-info-see-your-system-specs.html

 

[XXSSSXXX]

all i did was just delete the ssd and the hdd and reinstall the OS on the ssd.. then installed all the drivers.. then expresscache..... expresscache uses the ssd as a cache then it starts to get filled up..... when it fills up EC deletes everything in the ssd and starts caching it again.....

 

[ICIT2LOL]

I think we might have got our wiresc crossed here mate that looks like you have two drives in that machine in post #1 you mentioned SSHD and I took that ot be one of those hybrid drives when in fact you have a SSD and a 300GB "spinner" hard drive by the looks of it.

Now just to make things a tad clearer can you let us know how large is that SSD and the brand please. Because what I think is happening is that instead of the OS being installed on that SSD and the other drive being kept for data the OS is somehow being put on the spinner and the SSD is listed as the boot drive and therein causing the confusion.

Now if you don't mind can you run Speccy Speccy - Download

and send back a pic of the Summary as in my pic this will let us know the size of the drive/s.
Easy way to do this is this
How to Use the Snipping Tool in Vista

 

[XXSSSXXX]

yeah sure no problem.. and thanks for your efforts...

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Ok mate now we might get somewhere. Now that SSD is very small - largeenough for booting the OS but would be sorely tested if you were to put muchmore on it apart from say the security and a few add on scanners etc likeCCleaner for example in any case it would start throwing messageslike it is nearly full etc

The spinner is also not that large although large enough if you do not storea lot of graphical stuff.

What has me concerned are the temps that there is on the CPU especially - ifthat is at idle it is not good. To try it out run Speccy and see what it showsat idle and then say run a malware scan and see if the temps jumpssignificantly - that is normal but again the 57C would be the top temp for meduring a scan even.
From this ARK | Intel® Core? i5-2467M Processor (3M Cache, up to 2.30 GHz) you can see the max temp before shut down is 100C and if that is the idle temp then when being pushed a bit it might get close to the max.
The temp on the board is for me a tad high too so I think the machine may be in need of a clean up.

So the OS needs installing onto the SSD and the spinner keeping for datastorage. That is why I said earlier perhaps the installation got it wrong withtwo drives hooked up and perhaps the BIOS boot was set to choose the spinner asthe first drive to be detected.

To change that you will need to go into the BIOS and change the boot orderto the SSD first. As a precaution you could even remove the second spinnerdrive if that is possible as I have no experience with that type of machine.

Now to finish up a bit of long winded answer see this ditty of mine

CLEANING LAPTOPS
What you can do is to check the air intake apertureand the "rad" and to do that shine a very bright light into the fanaperture and look through from the outlet grill
1. You will see if there is a lot of dust in the fan intake and fan blades and2. you will see if the "rad" is blocked in any way when you lookthrough from the outside.

Now to clean you can blow the dust out using compressed air but first make sure you insert something into the fan blades before youdo - to stop the fan from spinning as spinning the fan with air will cause it to spin at much higher revsthan it was designed for and can wreck the bearing.
The rad you can use those chenille wire play things to very gently clean therad from outside the machine and again blow the dust out. It is fiddly buteffective.

In the pic I have put an example of how the cooling works in a laptop the principle s the same whatever brand you have you will see the "rad" and the intake of the fan that you can see shining the bright light into that grill opening under the machine.

 

[XXSSSXXX]

i only get one drive in the BIOS... and the label on the HDD says 320GB.. therefore it's a hybrid drive.. i still wonder was the s3 model designed to have cache or something else....

it would be really nice if i could get the cache working like its supposed to....

 

[XXSSSXXX]

okay i ran cfdisk command on ubuntu live after removing the hdd... and this is when i get..

when there is no HDD



and the BIOS shows this:



and when the HDD is put back on:

BIOS:



ubuntu terminal:



the reason for the temp being 60 degrees is because there is no intake vent...







and the HDD info:

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Yep the Momentus is a hybrid mate but why it is not clean installing is a mystery to me. Need a little more time now to have a scratch around and see what I / we can find.

 

[XXSSSXXX]

took you long enough to reply back... i did a bit of digging around and found that the SSD is on the motherboard not in the HDD..... becoz if it was i shouldn't see it in device manager...

 

[ICIT2LOL]

took you long enough to reply back... i did a bit of digging around and found that the SSD is on the motherboard not in the HDD..... becoz if it was i shouldn't see it in device manager...

Hmm sorry mate but have to sleep being on night duty so much and I do have other day to day living things to do like taking the partner to the dentist and going to the doc myself.
So I think it best if someone else takes up the cudgel eh?

 

[XXSSSXXX]

i did post the same question on acer community but i still haven't had a reply...

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

First, the drive you pictured is NOT and SSHD (Solid State Hard Drive aka Hybrid Drive). If it was, it would say SSHD on the label.

Second, if it was an SSHD, the SSD portion wouldn't show up in My Computer and you wouldn't be able to access it. It's only 8GB and is only used to cache the HDD portion.

The 18GB SSD you found is probably an mSATA installed on the MOBO and most likely is intended to cache the HDD since 18GB is too small for the OS unless the computer originally had Linux installed.

 

[XXSSSXXX]

First, the drive you pictured is NOT and SSHD (Solid State Hard Drive aka Hybrid Drive). If it was, it would say SSHD on the label.

Second, if it was an SSHD, the SSD portion wouldn't show up in My Computer and you wouldn't be able to access it. It's only 8GB and is only used to cache the HDD portion.

The 18GB SSD you found is probably an mSATA installed on the MOBO and most likely is intended to cache the HDD since 18GB is too small for the OS unless the computer originally had Linux installed.

i know it's used for cache but when i install expresscache from here it works fime.. it starts caching.. the ssd starts to fill up.. then ir fills up completely... and when that happens it erases everything in the SSD and starts rewriting.... and i get a bluescreen and at times the system just hangs up.... i've asked a lot of places on how to get around this but i didn't find the response that worked.... i've been searching an answer to that for days...

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Frankly, I've never had anything from Acer that was worth the match to set off the powder to blow it away.

 

[XXSSSXXX]

Frankly, I've never had anything from Acer that was worth the match to set off the powder to blow it away.

the third time i turned it on after i brought i got a blue screen..... anyways what machine did you get....

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I had a custom built desktop (I didn't build it) that was built on an Acer platform (case, mobo, PSU, etc). It was constantly breaking down on me. The thing ate parts for breakfast (and other meals).

The Acer keyboard was lackluster and a poor choice for this machine because it was USB (even though the computer had two PS/2 ports) and there were only four USB ports on the rear (even odder, there were four USB ports up front and an unused header on the MOBO). I quickly replaced it with the seven year old PS/2 keyboard that came with my old Gateway computer to free up a rear USB port and used it for two years.

The mouse was a joke. Also USB, it not only ate a scare rear USB port, the plastic top was so flimsy, just the weight of my palm on top would unexpectedly cause it to right and left click on its own. I quickly replaced with the seven year old PS/2 one from my old Gateway and used also it for two years.

I had two Acer netbooks. the first one black screened a month out of the 12 month warranty. It's replacement lasted only a few months. I was so disgusted with Acer by then, I removed the HDD and destroyed the POS rather than fool around with the warranty, then replaced it with an ASUS netbook (a much better machine).

After my experiences with Acer, you couldn't give me anything from them.

 

[XXSSSXXX]

is there anything you know that can help me with my issue with expresscache..?