Windows 7 and it's location...

Converge

Converge

Converge

Soldato
Joined
26 Jan 2005
Posts
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Hi all,

I'm looking to buy a new system some time soon, as i've had enugh of my old systems shenanigans, and it's been a long time coming really.

I was looking to buy a SSD for Windows and some game installs typically.

My question is...

When you install windows, and it creates the Windows folder, program files folder, user folders etc etc

Can you actually place everything (program files (x86), desktop folders) but the Windows folder on to a normal 1TB hard drive?

Or do they all need to be located on the same drive?

It's just that all my programs etc will start to mount up and SSD's have limited space and i don't want to fill it totally for performance reasons.

This may be a daft question, so feel free to slap me with a kipper. :o
 
No, no, no, no, NO!

When you spend £200+ on an SSD, you bloody use it!

My Intel SSD is only 80GB and I install everything to it. What's the point of having all that speed if you put all your applications on a standard mechanical HDD? It is utterly stupid.

Install as much as you can to it. If you are sensible and remove stuff you do not use you wont fill your SSD. Some applications you can install elsewhere, especially if you rarely use them, but other than that - use what you paid for! :D

You're not also one of those weird people who pay £hundreds for RAM and complain when Windows is using it, are you? :confused::p

I will say it is definitely worth moving your personal documents elsewhere - or at least anything like music and video and takes up a huge amount of space, since these don't really benefit from an SSD during playback. On my own system all my media is on my server and I never have issues.
 
Yes of course i'm going to use it!

I'm just saying for a 80gb SSD, i don't want to fill it up to the brim, as that DOES effect their performance.

That's why i want to know if i can pick and choose a lot more in what i put on to that drive by shifting for example, 'half' the stuff windows plonks on the drive to another.

So, can you install the program files/users/desktop folders elsewhere or not?
 
Not easily.

You can move stuff like Documents, Pictures and other personal folder elsewhere through Windows itself [it will even move your files to the new location if there are any]. Which is a sensible thing to do on any system, not just those with an SSD.

As for Program Files etc, I really wouldn't try. Some stuff is basically hard-wired into Windows and it would be an epic pain fiddling with it. If you insist on wasting your SSD just create a folder on your 1TB drive and choose to install there during the application's setup.
 
Cheers, well that answered my question.

As soon as i saw the word 'pain', my lazy side kicked in and decided against it.

You can't really say im wasting it when you don't know how much **** i have on my current PC! :p

Cheers for the responses matey :)
 
Just make sure that, given the choice, you never install anything in Program Files. Apart from the unneccessary usage of your whizzy boot drive, Win7's Prog Files directories have pretty strict security, so if you're a tinkerer like me, you'll get lots of problems trying to change files in there.
 
Oh don't be silly!

If you have an application you will be screwing around with then by all means install it elsewhere, but for the rest you wont need to.

@ Converge:

Now is the time to get rid of some of that crap! I was worried when I get my SSD that I would fill it too quickly, but the fact is with all my media elsewhere, I don't actually have that much stuff - at least in terms of GBs.

I have my full MS Office suite, Photoshop, a bunch of video and music players, Steam with DoW II and FO3 installed and at least one VM all on my SSD. I still have room to spare too :D

The trick is to get rid of stuff you no longer use. Most of my VMs are on a secondary disk, but one in particular I like to run very fast so lives on the SSD. Steam games I uninstall when I am bored. [DoW II and FO3 getting the chop soon I think - haven't played either for weeks!]
 
I have another question!

Where's best to locate the paging file? And if window's manages it, won't it take up a lot of the space if it's on the SSD? Or is it best to place it on another HD?

Cheers :)
 
SiriusB said:
As for Program Files etc, I really wouldn't try. Some stuff is basically hard-wired into Windows and it would be an epic pain fiddling with it. If you insist on wasting your SSD just create a folder on your 1TB drive and choose to install there during the application's setup.
Click to expand...
However you can choose to install programmes onto your other hard drive during the install, which could be useful for those little things you hardly use or don't mind waiting to load
 
The best place is the SSD - since you want maximum write/read speeds for your Pagefile.

Let Windows manage it. If you have silly amounts of RAM, then it may be worth making it a little smaller.
 
I'll have 6gb of DDR3, so i'm guessing it should be a pretty miniscule paging file. I've read so many different opinions on pagefiles over the years, it just leaves me in a confused heap!
 
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