Question about adding SSD boot drive

StuPC

StuPC

StuPC

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London, UK
I've never had twin HDDs in a system before, but I've just shelled out on an OCZ Vertex 30Gb SSD to run Win7 from, plus I've already got a 1Tb Samsung F1 installed.
The OS is going on the OCZ, data on the Samsung.

Can I simply make a new "Program Files" folder on the 1Tb Samsung and install some applications and games on there? Will they still work just fine, even if all the OS files are on the SSD drive?

I'm planning to install most of my bigger, slower apps and maybe some games (L4D2) on the SSD, but not all of them will fit...

Are the Samsung and the OCZ going to play nicely together?
 
Your plan is fine. You install your stuff which isn't speed sensitive on the samsung and the stuff you want to benefit from the SSD speed on the OCZ.
 
All right! Thanks, emailiscrap! I was getting excited about the new drive arriving tomorrow and suddenly had a horrible thought that it might not work as I'd assumed it would (that's happened more than once before...)
 
I empathise with the excitement, I've just ordered an SSD for my laptop today!
I'm not so luck in having capacity for 2 drives so I need to shrink down my space usage a hell of a lot!
 
StuPC said:
All right! Thanks, emailiscrap! I was getting excited about the new drive arriving tomorrow and suddenly had a horrible thought that it might not work as I'd assumed it would (that's happened more than once before...)
Click to expand...

I would order another vertex to go in raid as 30gb and W7 x64 won't leave you much space to play with.
 
StuPc, I m looking to do exactly the same thing as you but thought that win7 64 pro would require more than 30GB. Currently looking at 80/160GB as an SSD boot drive.
Any chance you could post yr first impressions of the SSD and how the capacity situation works out??
Cheers
 
I'm going to do a standard install of home premium 64 bit tomorrow. Depending on how big it is I may then vLite it.
 
I'm only running Win7 32-bit on my system - no plans to upgrade that just yet! :D

Haven't checked exactly how much space that takes up, but I know it's definitely less than 30Gb, so the 30Gb drive is fine for me (well, I would've liked something bigger, but my finances couldn't stretch any further)

I'm happy enough to post how it works out for me - but are you still interested in the 32-bit version?
 
I'm only running Win7 32-bit on my system - no plans to upgrade that just yet!

Haven't checked exactly how much space that takes up, but I know it's definitely less than 30Gb, so the 30Gb drive is fine for me (well, I would've liked something bigger, but my finances couldn't stretch any further)

I'm happy enough to post how it works out for me - but are you still interested in the 32-bit version?
Click to expand...

I'm running windows 7 64 bit but would still be interested to hear yr experiences
 
hitman said:
I'm running windows 7 64 bit but would still be interested to hear yr experiences
Click to expand...

My windows 7 x64 is 12.5 GB's. I've filled up 30GB's after installing all my apps and most of my games (I don't have many). So I've got plenty of free space as I decide to play with more things in the future.
 
aarrghh..... damn Sony locked down BIOS:mad:
W7 is sitting at the expanding windows files section at 0% and I think it's the ATA/AHCI settings but cannot change them in the BIOS.
Does this mean I'm not going to be able to use the SSD?
 
Poor media! I ended up installing Ultimate as I had a disc handy. Install size 15Gb. Ouch!
 
One more question that occurs to me - I don't really want to format my HDD and then reinstall loads of stuff as well as copy all my data back onto it...
So if I just leave it as it is (with Win7 still installed) then it shouldn't be a problem, should it? As long as I set the SSD as the boot disk, obviously!
 
Apps will probably need to be reinstalled because they will no longer be in c:\program files etc as the system expects. All other data such as pics and viseos will be browseable. It would be cleaner to move all content you want to keep elsewhere, reformat and then copy back. If you don't then you'll have lost 10gb or so in a defunct W7 installation that is no longer required.
 
After my Win7 32-bit install I had 19.7Gb left from a 30Gb SSD, so it's about 10Gb.

The connector for the SSD drive was some kind of joint data/power connector, which wouldn't fit in my Dell, so had to borrow the data connector from my HDD, which means I haven't been able to use both disks simultaneously yet. :-(

Very impressed with the speed of the SSD though - not "staggered" but definitely impressed. Startup times are definitely much quicker, but curiously shutdown seems no faster at the moment. Installation of Win7 and any apps is beautiful to behold - click, confirm and it's done! I think Win7 took about 5 minutes to install from scratch! :-D
The only app that doesn't start *instantly* seems to be my customised foobar2000, which is weird since it's quite a small and fast program...
 
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