SSD / Regular HD Data Separation Best Practice?

I have a msata 128gb windows installation and a regular 750gb hd in my laptop. I intend to use the 750gb for data and the msata essentially for windows and program files.

I have looked at a couple of guides for managing such setups. A couple speak about relocating the entire c:\users folder to the regular HD. Most speak of just relocating My Documents/Pictures/Music/Videos. Seems there are some problems associated with moving the whole folder. Additionally, I guess there are some OS-like data files held in the hidden c:\users folder that might be best kept on the SSD.

So is accepted wisdom just to create new folders for Documents/Music/Videos etc - then go to the originals in c:\users, right click, properties, location and select the new folder?

What about moving the "Desktop" folder. Bad habit perhaps, but I tend to clog my desktop up with lots of stuff. Seems like it would be better on the regular HD rather than SSD. Are there any problems with moving "Desktop"?

Is this the right way to go about it? Or is there a better way of doing things that I've not come across?

Thanks!

 

What I've done was to keep the bulk of my files on the HDD (right now it's external, but I plan on getting an Ultrabay sometime in the future). I think it really depends on what files you want fast access to, and which ones you don't mind waiting a few more seconds to. For example, have your documents (and photos?) on the SSD, and have video on the HDD for when you want to play back a movie or whatever.

As for the desktop, it really doesn't matter where it is, though the speed advantage of the SSD is nice. Note that even if your desktop (or any other folder) is in constant flux, SSDs are designed to last for a long, long time. For example, Intel says that their drives will last around five years if you write 20GB daily for all five years. So I wouldn't worry about leaving the Desktop on the SSD.

It's all really just a matter of "what can I fit where?", seeing as a SSD will have a much smaller capacity than a hard drive ($/GB).

 

I simply avoid the Windows predefined folders like Documents and Music. Random programs love to dump configuration files and other non-data crap in there, making it hard to figure out what needs to be backed up and what doesn't. Besides, by creating my own folders, I can have my data anywhere I want - on an external HDD, or on a network share, or even on a Mac or Linux system.

As for the Desktop, what you see is actually an aggregation of at least 2 different folders.

If you really must move the Users folder, there's 2 main ways to do it - one involves fiddling with the registry, the other involves putting a symlink where the Users folder used to be in order to trick Windows into thinking it's still there.

 

I've used Robocopy + symlinks to move the entire users folder on several computers and it works just fine. What you need to do first is enable the hidden Administrator account in Windows and log in as administrator. This ensures documents from your own User account aren't being used.

Then do the following:

Open a command prompt

"robocopy /mir /xj /copyall 'C:\Users\[your name' 'D:\Users\[your name]'"

"rmdir /s 'C:\Users\[your name]'"

"mklink /j 'C:\Users\[your name]' 'D:\Users\[your name]'"

This will copy your entire Users folder, along with permissions, security settings, etc (hence the "copyall" command) to the D: drive and create a NTFS link at the previous location it was at, so Windows and any applications think they're still writing to C:\Users when they are in reality writing to D:\Users. I have done this process at least three times, and each time it has worked perfectly.

If something goes wrong, you haven't moved the administrator account, so you can still log in with that as if nothing has happened and fix things.

I don't notice the speed difference of leaving these files on the HDD, but I freed up ~15gb on the SSD by doing this.

Alternately, you could just create separate Video, Pictures, Documents, and Music folders on the HDD, and manually change your libraries (right-click them in Windows Explorer) to point to these locations only. A few programs I use create very large temp files in the Users folder, though, so I chose to simply move the whole thing. If only there was a way to move the hibernation file...