SSDs, HDDs and RAMdrives

[BJB]

Bit late joining the SSD club but I finally have one, 120GB, teamed up with a fast 1TB HDD, 8GB RAM and an i5. Win 7 performance is impressive, but thinking about the longer term is there much to be gained by moving the browser caches and Win temp files off of the SSD? Perhaps the paging file too if that's possible? And if so, might it be possible to move them to a RAM drive rather than to the HDD? My usual pattern of use is perfectly happy running in 4GB RAM so would this be an effective way to use the other 4GB? And if any of this is possible are there any pitfalls in going down this road?

My old Win 7 is still running fine so there is no pressure at all to rush the new setup. I'm happy to sit and gather the benefit of your experiences with this sort of thing.

 

[LMiller7]

I wouldn't use a RAMDisk at all. They were useful with DOS and other ancient operating systems but they are of little use in a modern OS. Modern operating systems have a sophisticated caching system that provides most of the benefits of a RAMDisk with fewer problems. A 64 bit OS will use 8 GB RAM, and do a better job than any messing with a RAMDisk. A RAMDisk will improve some specific aspects of performance but overall it will cost you.

Putting the pagefile on a RAMDisk is one of the worst uses of a RAMDisk anyone has ever thought of.

 

[madcratebuilder]

With your equipment you don't need to mess with a ramdrive. Moving W7 files to the HDD does save space on the ssd. There are several tutorials here that walk you thru the process.

 

[BJB]

OK, get the message about the RAMdrive. I've moved all my own stuff to the HDD so don't expect the SSD to even reach 50% used, but what about the browser caches and Win temp files? Is it no longer necessary or even worthwhile to make any effort to reduce unnecessary writes to the SSD?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

OK, get the message about the RAMdrive. I've moved all my own stuff to the HDD so don't expect the SSD to even reach 50% used, but what about the browser caches and Win temp files? Is it no longer necessary or even worthwhile to make any effort to reduce unnecessary writes to the SSD?

I moved my browser caches from SSD to HDD, but have been reliably advised that it was probably pointless given that the "wearing out the SSD with unnecessary writes" thing has been grossly exaggerated, at least for recent generation SSDs and the typical use case. I never moved the cache back to the SSD, but I have no reason to believe that would be inadvisable.

 

[crawfish]

OK, get the message about the RAMdrive. I've moved all my own stuff to the HDD so don't expect the SSD to even reach 50% used, but what about the browser caches and Win temp files? Is it no longer necessary or even worthwhile to make any effort to reduce unnecessary writes to the SSD?

I would not move them. You can monitor your writes with a tool like CrystalDiskInfo, but browser cache isn't going to be a problem, nor are temp files unless you're doing something fairly unusual on a very regular basis.

The only thing I do as standard to reduce writes is to disable Hybrid Sleep on my main PC, which is hooked up to an APC UPS that will wake it from sleep to hibernate in the event of a prolonged outage. I also make sure my WMC Recorded TV drive is a regular hard drive, which one would tend to do for space reasons anyway.

 

[Britton30]

Leave your Page File on the SSD (OS drive) otherwise you'd negate some of the benefits of SSD speed. I also move all Temp files to a HDD along with Users and ProgramData. I run CCleaner a lot more than most people so it only hits the HDD.

I agree too on the RAM disk, it would show good benchmark number but no real world benefit. If you have a Samsung 840EVO or Pro you can enable Rapid Mode, which help a little bit.

 

[BJB]

OK, thanks. I'll probably move them anyway as it can only be helpful in the long run, if only marginally. I've had my medion md 8818 for over 7 years now and only hope this box lasts and performs as well as that one has done.

 

[Britton30]

You seem savvy, but these may give some additional insight.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/18629-user-folders-change-default-location.html#post199850

I have used the following method a few times now:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorial...uring-windows-7-installation.html#post1070714

 

[BJB]

You seem savvy, but these may give some additional insight.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/18629-user-folders-change-default-location.html#post199850

I have used the following method a few times now:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorial...uring-windows-7-installation.html#post1070714

I've always moved my user folders to a separate data partition as this greatly simplifies and speeds up system imaging and restore. However after a recent incident on the Medion in which a corrupt flash drive somehow caused loss of my data partitions, and this in turn caused both Acronis and Reflect to fail to restore a bootable system partition, I'm inclined to leave my user profile on the SSD and simply include my data folders, which are located on the HDD, in the libraries on the SSD.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

a corrupt flash drive somehow caused loss of my data partitions, and this in turn caused both Acronis and Reflect to fail to restore a bootable system partition

That interests me.

Can you provide details on why the loss of a data partition would cause Acronis and Macrium to fail to restore?

I assume the image files were not stored on the lost data partition. Or were they? In which case, I do understand.

 

[BJB]

a corrupt flash drive somehow caused loss of my data partitions, and this in turn caused both Acronis and Reflect to fail to restore a bootable system partition

That interests me.

Can you provide details on why the loss of a data partition would cause Acronis and Macrium to fail to restore?

I assume the image files were not stored on the lost data partition. Or were they? In which case, I do understand.

Only wish I could! For years I always ignored the regular advice on Acronis to image the entire drive rather than just the OS partition but this incident, or shock rather, has me wondering just how safe system only images really are, and it's one of the reasons I decided it was time to get a small SSD system so no partitioning of the OS drive would be necessary. And no, the images were not on the same drive of course.

 

[BJB]

a corrupt flash drive somehow caused loss of my data partitions, and this in turn caused both Acronis and Reflect to fail to restore a bootable system partition

That interests me.

Can you provide details on why the loss of a data partition would cause Acronis and Macrium to fail to restore?

I didn't explain this properly at all so I'll have another go. It seems that in messing around trying to get this flash to format, somehow my HDD partition table got damaged and the extended logical partition holding my data partitions just disappeared. I didn't know that this had happened until I rebooted, when my user profile failed to load after login. I managed to recover the lost partitions with Partition Wizard but it still would not boot to my desktop so I had little option but to restore my last Win 7 system image, first with Acronis and then with Reflect. Both booted OK but failed to load my desktop so I had to assume that somehow the registry links that associate your user profile with with your initial login were no longer valid.

My new machine had arrived meantime so I spent a day or two on that while debating what to do about the Medion. I decided to have one last go at recovery before reinstalling 7 and went back to a two month old Acronis image more in hope than expectation and bingo - it booted straight to my desktop.

So it was that salutary experience that convinced me that moving your user profile to another drive was not on unless you intend including both drives in your images, which I don't want to do, but the Win 7 Libraries offer a simple solution to the problem.

Sorry for misleading you.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
IMO the BEST place for paging and the OS itself IS the SSD - user data doesn't need to be accessed that quickly. Things like Photoshop scratch files do incredibly well on SSD's.

I'd just sling the whole OS on to the SSD and any other data where you see a lot of accesses (but no user data files like music / video).

Another good use for SSD's is to put Virtual Machines on them if you run those too.

Prices are coming right down -- I see the new 1TB drive is getting to something "almost" affordable !!!

In a few years HDD's will probably be obsolete too. !!!

Cheers
jimbo