Partitioning Advice

Hi all,

I am looking at getting a new laptop with a 120Gb primarry SSD and a secondary 1Tb spindle hard drive.

I was wondering if there is any recommended configuration of drives when it comes to partitioning or should I just stick with the OS on the SSD and the games/programs/data on teh Hard Drive with no partitions ?

Thanks

 

I have frequently used programs and OS on the SSD (this consumes less than 40% of the available drive space). Swap, data and less used programs are on the HDD & hibernation is disabled.
Each physical drive has one partition. Real world and Crystal mark performance has not varied in over 2 year of light usage (1TB host writes according to intel toolbox). If I ever have to reload the OS I will leave at least 25% of the SSD as unallocated space as I have learned from the insightful posts by TilleroftheEarth and others here. What brand SSD are you considering?

 

Thanks for the feedback.

If I put all the data on the Hard Drive ege 'My Documents', 'Internet Cache' etc will the 120Gb SSD be big enough for Windows 8, Programs (like Adobe Premiere/Photoshop Elements) and Games ?

 

I do not run 8 yet, but from what I read 15-25 GIG for the OS, a few GB for My documents (with win 7 I am using 2.5 GB on the SSD, but I generally only save to external or secondary HDD). That leaves ~ 60 GB for Adobe and games even if you leave 20 GIG unallocated. Short answer is yes 120 GB will be fine.
Another space "eater" is system recovery, I have it turned off but do constant incremental backups & monthly full images to an external hard drive.

 

Well, you need one partition for your OS. But you basically have the right idea. If you don't have any particular dual boot needs, then a single partition for the entire drive's capacity will work fine.

 

Given that one can never have enough drive space, it'd be way safer to get a 240/256GB primary/boot SSD.

Be aware that most 1TB 2.5" HDD are 12.5mm thick HDD. IOW don't buy a 12.5mm 1TB drive and then make the ugly discovery that your laptop HDD bay can only handle 9.5mm HDD. FWIW there are now maybe 1 (or 2?) 2.5" 1TB HDD that are only 9.5mm thick.

Do your own partitioning using the free gparted boot program.

So 1 NTFS partition on the boot SSD; leave ~25% unallocated space for better long term performance and reliability of the SSD.

And 1 NTFS partition on the HDD; don't leave any unallocated space!

For gparted info see http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...sd-setup-bootup-error-help-3.html#post9075884

and see http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...sd-setup-bootup-error-help-5.html#post9088733

 

If it were me, I would not partition the ssd (apart from the OS partition), when it comes to the HDD it all depends on how you want to use it. The first thing to know about partitions is that the lower the drive index (C < D) the faster that partition will be. Low drive indexes are stored on the outermost levels of the HDD, allowing for faster access and use, higher indexes are therefore slower.

If you play games or do a lot of media editing, I would suggest making a small 100-200GB partition to put your media on. The rest of the space could be used for general storage of video/audio/word doc files, which, will not be effected by slightly slower access speeds.

 

I have a similar setup: 120GB SSD + 500GB hard drive.

Windows and all my programs (except games) are installed on the SSD for fast access.
I mapped My Documents/Pictures/Music/Downloads - essentially all of my data - over to the hard drive. It works seamlessly in Windows.

I recommend not partitioning either drive unless you have a specific need to do so. It just ends up adding complexity.

 

Thanks. How do you find the performance of your games on the Hard Drive eg launch/start times, in-game load times ?

 

Depends on the game (textures,etc.). I personally dont see a big difference

 

I generally segregate my drive in two, one for the OS and programs and a second for Documents and for internet intensive stuff like Steam game folders, because I am always formatting my HDD once every 3 months because of W7 being dumb,

 

Good call. Your data is safer this way.

 

It's certainly slower off the hard drive but once it's loaded, it's loaded. It doesn't matter for multiplayer games because you'll be waiting for everyone else to load the map/level anyway.

I have over 75GB free on my 120GB SSD, so I could just install a game there if I wanted it to load fast.