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    Acer S3-391 >> Windows 8.1 installed directly to iSSD

    Discussion in 'Acer' started by Bloodflame, Sep 2, 2013.

  1. Bloodflame

    Bloodflame Newbie

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    Hello, this is my first post here. :hi2:

    Just wanted to chime in to say I have successfully installed Windows 8.1 RTM on my Acer Aspire S3-391. Rather than do it the traditional way, I decided I'd try a fresh install on the 20GB iSSD to get the most performance out of the system. Everything went perfectly as a full UEFI installation with secure boot enabled, and activation was a breeze with the BIOS-embedded Windows 8 key. (I made a note of my key before formatting from Windows 8). I've been running this setup for about 2-3 days now, and it's been working great!

    After doing some SSD health/space tweaks (disabling hibernation, moving the pagefile to another drive, setting environment variables for temp files to go on the other drive, etc.) the basic installation with drivers uses up about 11GB. This doesn't really leave much space for other stuff, so I have a partition on the 500GB drive set up for installing programs (with the exception of Chrome ;))

    I figured rather than just using the SSD for caching, it would feel faster running Windows directly on the SSD. From cold boot to usable desktop takes about 15 seconds, and the system feels quite snappy overall. Definitely feel the benefits of the SSD here, and it makes it feel like a whole new laptop.

    But this makes me wonder... The iSSD soldered on the S3's motherboard was only meant for caching - not what I'm doing here. Even though I took the necessary excessive-write precautions, I still feel like this might not be a safe way to run Windows. What is the risk involved here? I'm worried that one day, I might try to boot up and the SSD will just be dead. Am I worrying too much, or is this a legitimate concern? To be honest, I won't lose any important files if that happens. I keep all those on the 500GB drive + I make regular backups to an external drive. But the fact remains, the iSSD is being used for a lot more than it was designed for. I do intend to replace the 500GB HDD with a Samsung 840 series SSD eventually.

    So in the meantime, is my current setup safe to use, or should I just go back to a "normal" installation using the iSSD for cache?

    Bonus: a screenshot of Windows 8.1 and my drive setup :thumbsup: http://i.imgur.com/4NEIpju.png
     
    Bloodflame, Sep 2, 2013
    #1