Personal computing discussed

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Flatland_Spider
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Re: 2.5" and 3.5" HDDs

Sat Apr 21, 2012 8:54 am

It's quick enough that I don't notice it. Previously, I would look away or fiddle with something, but I can't do that anymore. I'm still surprised by how quick it is.
 
AMD Damo
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Re: 2.5" and 3.5" HDDs

Thu Apr 26, 2012 7:07 am

Parts arrived today, I put the computer together, Jesus this thing is fast to load everything.

Just a query though, I've got a secondary 1TB HDD in here, I just want my main programs on the SSD and the OS, how do I move the m documents etc to the other drive, same thing with the downloads folder?
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riviera74
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Re: 2.5" and 3.5" HDDs

Thu Apr 26, 2012 8:17 am

AMD Damo wrote:
Parts arrived today, I put the computer together, Jesus this thing is fast to load everything.

Just a query though, I've got a secondary 1TB HDD in here, I just want my main programs on the SSD and the OS, how do I move the m documents etc to the other drive, same thing with the downloads folder?


Cut and Paste into the 1TB HDD. I have done that in order to move files to my 2TB HDD.
Omen by HP Desktop: Core i5-7400, 8GB RAM, GeForce GTX 1050, 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD
 
Jim552
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Re: 2.5" and 3.5" HDDs

Thu Apr 26, 2012 8:32 am

I think what you are asking is "How to change the default location of where user files are stored?"

I think that this will do what you want...
(There are other ways to do this as well, but I think this is the simplest.)

1 - Go into the folder for the user in question. (i.e. "C:\Users\Jim"...)
2 - Right click on the folder and select "Properties'.
3 - In the "Properties Dialog" you will notice there is a tab for "Location". In that tab you can "change were files for this folder are stored".

Do this for any of the "User Folders" that you want to make sure you free up space on the your SSD.

It does have to be done for each folder separately, by user, but this should avoid any problems if your Data Drive Goes down.

Personally, I would make sure to have an alternate "Administrator Account" that is kept solely on your SSD, (Drive "C:"), in case your Data Drive goes down.
 
UberGerbil
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Re: 2.5" and 3.5" HDDs

Thu Apr 26, 2012 5:55 pm

Jim552 wrote:
1 - Go into the folder for the user in question. (i.e. "C:\Users\Jim"...)
Note that this is available right off the start menu -- the top item in the right column (your username) takes you there.
Do this for any of the "User Folders" that you want to make sure you free up space on the your SSD.
The obvious are the media ones (videos, pictures, music) but for some users Downloads can bulk up as well. Beyond that, there are a couple of other sneaky space hogs that probably don't need to be on your SSD. The most significant is your browser cache aka "Temporary Internet Files" (Control Panel, Internet Properties, Browsing History settings). Also, if you use a local mail client, the storage folders for that can eat up some space (on the other hand, searching your email is much more pleasant when it lives on your SSD, as some Outlook users will tell you).
Personally, I would make sure to have an alternate "Administrator Account" that is kept solely on your SSD, (Drive "C:"), in case your Data Drive goes down.
That's an interesting point I hadn't considered. On my personal system I'm kind of cheating since I have a second SSD I'm using for documents and settings, and keeping all the bulky media on shared storage, but if I'm called on to set up another HD+SSD system I may do that. Though come to think of it I'd probably end up that way by default, since I always create an admin account for initial setup, and then a normal user account for daily use -- and I'd probably never go back and tweak the admin account since it never gets used for anything but admin tasks, so all of its directories would still point to C:

More tweaking
System Restore points can also get to be huge space hogs. You can turn off System Restore altogether, but I prefer to just periodically delete all but the most recent restore point manually (as described here), just in case I ever get a bad driver, bad patch pushed from Windows Update, etc.

Also lurking on your system drive will be two large files that are (by default) hidden: the pagefile and the hiberfile. I strongly resist the suggestion to do without a pagefile altogether, but if you have plenty of RAM and have never had your total working set get close to exceeding it, you can certainly reduce its size on disk. You can also spread it across additional drives, but if you actually need it you'll want a good chunk of it on the fastest storage you have, so putting say 1GB on the SSD and another 3GB or so on your HD might be the best option.

The hiberfile is useful if you actually hibernate your machine; this makes a lot of sense for laptops, where Windows may use "hybrid sleep." However, it may not be something you use on a desktop, where sleep will take a modern system into a pretty low-power state, and an SSD system drive makes boots much less painful anyway. If you don't plan on using hibernate and would rather have the space back (by default, the size of hiberfil.sys is equal to ¾ your system RAM, which is quite a lot in these days of 16GB+ machines) you can remove it using powercfg from an administrative command prompt:
powercfg-h off
 
AMD Damo
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Re: 2.5" and 3.5" HDDs

Sun Apr 29, 2012 12:03 am

Thanks guys, I've got all my stuff now on the secondary drive, SSD it just going to be for Windows and some other programs which get used regularily.
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