UX32VD Expand iSSD Expresscache Partition

I recently purchased a UX32VD. It came with Windows 8, 6GB RAM, a 24GB iSSD and 500 GB HDD. I plan to keep the HDD until 500 GB SSDs come down in price as 128 or 256 is not enough storage for my needs.

The iSSD comes partitioned as 6GB and 16GB. Expresscache is using the larger partition and I assume the 6GB is for hibernation. I do not use hibernation and was wondering if I could remove the 6GB partition and expand the expresscache to be larger.

Has anyone deleted the 6GB partition to make the full iSSD for Expresscache?

 

There should be no problem eliminating the hibernation partition. Expresscache will take advantage of the extra space, although I do not think you'll see any improvement in performance. ExpressCache was specifically designed to take advantage of smaller cache sizes.

 

You can safely remove the 6 GB partition, but as RWillis pointed out, you most likely won't see any difference in performance, despite ExpressCache making use of the extra space. Then again, if you don't use hibernation, there's little to no need for the partition allocated for it.

 

It is too early to tell about performance but it was very simple. I just needed to use diskpart to get rid of the OEM partition and Expresscache partition. Then went into ECCMD did a partition and format command, and I had a 22 GB Expresscache drive. I have not done enough testing to see if there is a downside but at first glance everything appears fine.

Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk HD

 

You could install an OS on that little guy to get really zippy performance, but Windows 8 recommends anywhere from 16 GB to 20 GB for 32 bit or 64 bit versions, respectively, so it's not very practical on such a small drive. Something like Windows XP or mini Windows, or even a Linux distro would fit with more room to spare.

 

The larger Expresscache drive is working well. All functions check out and after several reboots and program load cycles it is running just under 20GB used. The only noticeable difference is improved consistency - more data loaded into cache means less requests to the HDD. I might be able to get a slight improvement in battery life - it appears to drop down to a ~7W idle a bit quicker once everything is loaded.

I don't see a need to move the OS to the iSSD. Expresscache is an acceptable compromise until large SSDs are priced reasonably. The cache drive accelerates more than the OS. Moving just the OS to the iSSD will speed boot but I don't ever reboot - sleep is a much better choice. I run Ubuntu on most computers but Linux support of NVidia Optimus GPU switching sucks.



Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk HD

 

That's good to hear.

Have you tried - or looked into - the Bumblebee project?

 

Yes, awhile ago on my Asus 1215N with NVidia ION2. It was not ready for prime-time. Poor power management, no PPA and command line activation if I recall. It could be better now. I ended up going with Windows 8 on a Samsung 830 and 4GB DDR3 - I have been impressed with the performance of the little netbook after those changes.

I had read some discussion about NVidia hybrid support in Ubuntu 13.04 but I'm not sure where it currently stands.

Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk HD