Hard drive question, again...

[Gdog96]

First can I just say that everyone will have to bear with me because this is a little hard to explain.

In my pc, I have a 30gig SSD for the boot drive, and a 2tb hard drive for mass storage. Problem is, my SSD is nearly full, and it wont let me take anything else out of it and put it in the hard drive because it says that it is open even though its not. So basically, is there any way that I can 'combine' the two drives within windows so that the PC thinks that it is one drive (so it would be 2.03tb).

I don't want raid, seeing as I don't really fully understand it and if I used it, it would take away any benefit of having and SSD boot drive because it would perform as fast as the slowest drive...correct?

Sorry if you can't understand it, please ask if you can't, its hard to put into words but I could really sue some help as this has been bothering me for a while.

Thanks

 

[wfooshee]

No.

But 30 GB is IMHO not enough space to use for a boot drive in a modern Windows system. You might free some space on it specifying that only the large disk carries a paging file.

It also depends on what you're trying to move. Many of those files are open as part of the operating system's internal workings, even though you've not specifically opened them in an application.

 

[Pako]

Yes.

If you have the right environment it is possible to combine the two drives using the SSD for the front end cache of the larger drive. This gives you all the speed of a SSD but the cost savings of a much larger platter disk drive, but it does not give you combined storage space.

You can read about setting it up here.

 

[nick09]

You can read about setting it up here.

That's only if he has a second generation Intel i3, i5, or i7 CPU. I would not know if the third generation Intel i3, i5, or i7 CPU would support this.

 

[Pako]

That's only if he has a second generation Intel i3, i5, or i7 CPU. I would not know if the third generation Intel i3, i5, or i7 CPU would support this.

If you have the right environment it is possible.....

Yep.

One thing I didn't think about, you can setup a RAID0 for a 60gb drive. What I don't know is if you can Raid0 from a logical partition off of the 2TB so you don't waste 1,970gb on the other drive. Hummm.... Even if it could be done, I wouldn't advise it.

Probably the best scenario if your environment doesn't support it is to save your funds and invest in a 80 or 120gb SSD for a new system drive. They are getting cheaper, especially the 330 Intel series.

 

[Grayfox]

I would not bother putting any SSD in RAID.

Most if not all onboard raid controllers do not support trim that SSDs use.

 

[wfooshee]

Even if his system supports the cache technology, it would mean a reinstall of Windows and all of his applications. I don't think he'd have to format the big disk to do that, but his existing profile would be toast if he didn't use the migration wizard to save it from the SSD.
And you can't RAID a partition, only entire drives, and it would make no sense to mix SSD and platters in a RAID, because you'd lose the SSD perforomance. RAID system is the slowest and smallest of the drives in the array.

 

[ShaZZa]

Probably the best scenario if your environment doesn't support it is to save your funds and invest in a 80 or 120gb SSD for a new system drive. They are getting cheaper, especially the 330 Intel series.

To be honest, (in my opinion, especially to the original poster) a 120gb SSD is still not big enough. Had a 120 OCZ SSD as my boot drive an it filled in about 6 months (not installing random programs on it). I have since upgraded to an OCZ RevoHybrid. Does exactally what you're talking about by using SSD+HDD. If I was you I'd go for a 240gb (at least) SSD for boot drive.

 

[Pako]

I agree. The system drive does fill up quick, even if you remember to install programs on a different drive. File management becomes a little tricky. You can change the default path for your documents folders, etc which helps, but the system seems to just eat up terabytes at a time. You can run a smaller system drive, but you really have to manage your files well. With proper setup and habits, you can maintain a fairly small system drive but it does take some effort.

 

[Grayfox]

This is made worse if you play games.

The winsxs folder installs files needed even if that file exists for another game, it installs its own one.

So in essence you have 2 or more of the same file.

This is why many people hack their winsxs folder.

Mine is currently 9.59GiB and has 54,484 Files with in 13,847 Folders.

It is found in C:\Windows

 

[Gdog96]

Thanks for your replies guys I appreciate it. To be honest I might just buy a nice big SSD, format the HDD, and do a fresh windows install, as I still have my copy of windows 7. I will just re-downlaod all my applications and save my vids and stuff..bit of a pain but yeah.

 

[Pako]

Thanks for your replies guys I appreciate it. To be honest I might just buy a nice big SSD, format the HDD, and do a fresh windows install, as I still have my copy of windows 7

That sounds like a good plan. Never hurts to do a clean install once in a while. I have my eye on an Intel 250GB 510 Series supporting Sata3 at:

6Gb/s 500 MB/s / 315 MB/s
3Gb/s 265 MB/s / 240 MB/s

Hopefully in the next month or so I can acquire one for my system and a second one for my wife's system. She is in a very similar situation. 60gb SSD for the system with a 500g and 1TB for storage. I just did a clean install yesterday on her 60gb and she only has 18GB of free space with a few more programs to go. I would suggest 120GB minimum.

I have a 80gb SSD for my system drive and it is filling up fast. For programs, I want the performance of SSD so they get installed there with all my raw storage files on other drives. With that, 80GB still isn't enough.

Good luck!

 

[Gdog96]

That sounds like a good plan. Never hurts to do a clean install once in a while. I have my eye on an Intel 250GB 510 Series supporting Sata3 at:

6Gb/s 500 MB/s / 315 MB/s
3Gb/s 265 MB/s / 240 MB/s

Hopefully in the next month or so I can acquire one for my system and a second one for my wife's system. She is in a very similar situation. 60gb SSD for the system with a 500g and 1TB for storage. I just did a clean install yesterday on her 60gb and she only has 18GB of free space with a few more programs to go. I would suggest 120GB minimum.

I have a 80gb SSD for my system drive and it is filling up fast. For programs, I want the performance of SSD so they get installed there with all my raw storage files on other drives. With that, 80GB still isn't enough.

Good luck!

Thanks, hope all goes well for you too