SSD primary, SATA secondary drives, where to install AH?

[Krusty]

If you have a SATA (Revo x2 ~100gb) and a secondary (1 TB SATA) drive set up with the Revo being primary boot....


Where do you install programs? Where do you install AH?

This will be on Win 7 64-bit. Do you install on the Revo drive knowing that the load balancing will keep it from dying all that sooner with the excess use? Or do you put it on the slower drive assuming it will load/swap more?

What about AH specifically? I'd assume with the memory textures being the bulk of the loading into memory, you want those to be on the fastest drive.

Do you bank on speed and install on the Revo? Or do you bank on longevity and install on the SATA?

Also, I could very well install select programs (games mostly, I'm thinking) on the Revo and all non-performance-dependant software on the secondary drive.

Thoughts on how to set this up?

[icor1031]

SSD are much more reliable that in the distant past. I wouldn't be concerned about killing it.

If you didn't already get it, don't get REVO drives. The price vs performance compared to Agility 2 (or the Agility / vertex 3 coming out) is not favorable. Run them in RAID 0, that's what I have.

Install AH on the SSD.
Install what you can on the SSD, basically. The programs you use most, especially if they're small.

Do not bank on either having longevity, in that: HDDs fail, SSDs fail. ALWAYS MAKE BACKUPS.

[Krusty]

I've had 10-year-old HDDs that never failed. I do try to back up things but for the most part it hasn't been an issue unless I need to reformat myself (rather than catastrophic failure).

The Revo x2 drives are already RAID drives on a PCI express x4 board. they have very good reviews and are about 50% faster than the standard Revo drives.

I've already put the order in so it's a done deal. I recall all the issues with earlier SSDs, with Vista, with the lack of trim function, etc... I realize it has been advancing based on little things I picked up, but exactly how far it went is where I am ignorant.


Is trim automatic now (assuming Win7 64bit)? Do I have to do special maintenance?

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I've had 10-year-old HDDs that never failed. I do try to back up things but for the most part it hasn't been an issue unless I need to reformat myself (rather than catastrophic failure).

The Revo x2 drives are already RAID drives on a PCI express x4 board. they have very good reviews and are about 50% faster than the standard Revo drives.

I've already put the order in so it's a done deal. I recall all the issues with earlier SSDs, with Vista, with the lack of trim function, etc... I realize it has been advancing based on little things I picked up, but exactly how far it went is where I am ignorant.


Is trim automatic now (assuming Win7 64bit)? Do I have to do special maintenance?

Win7 will automatically adjust drive settings when it detects an SSD. It stops the automatic defrags and such. If you're concerned about drive wear you can move your swap files to the regular drive, that's about it. But doing so will have a slight penalty in performance when your box hits the hd cache. Even though superfetch will cache as much as it can to your ram some stuff is always written on disk too.

[Krusty]

Well I'll be disabling superfetch from what I've read.

Will Win7 allow you to put the swap on a secondary drive? I mean really let you? I know that with WinXP you can set no swap on the primary, you can specify your secondary swap, but it will still use the primary anyways.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Well I'll be disabling superfetch from what I've read.

Will Win7 allow you to put the swap on a secondary drive? I mean really let you? I know that with WinXP you can set no swap on the primary, you can specify your secondary swap, but it will still use the primary anyways.

Disabling superfetch in 7 x64 is like hiring Ben Johnson to do your mail runs and chopping off his legs. Forget the horror stories of Vista, superfetch in 7 will help you with games. You'll see greatly decreased load times switching map to map etc.

XP didn't let you completely disable the main swap but you could make it real small and force the use of secondary cache. Of course thats only feasible if youre truly out of space. In 7 you can just tick swap totally off, reboot and you're running with ram only. But usually that will lead into problems eventually. Some programs will start to complain to you about lack of virtual memory etc.

Windows 7 is actually pretty good straight out of the box, you have more chances to shoot yourself in the leg trying to tweak it than anything else really.

[mipoikel]

I have OS and all programs installed to SSD. Other disks are for data.

[Infidelz]

I use the SSD for win 7 and all of the controllers, sound and video drivers. It was my understanding that the game loads into memory. Am I mistaken? Its a simple matter to load onto the SSD.

Infidelz

[gyrene81]

Disabling superfetch in 7 x64 is like hiring Ben Johnson to do your mail runs and chopping off his legs. Forget the horror stories of Vista, superfetch in 7 will help you with games. You'll see greatly decreased load times switching map to map etc.

XP didn't let you completely disable the main swap but you could make it real small and force the use of secondary cache. Of course thats only feasible if youre truly out of space. In 7 you can just tick swap totally off, reboot and you're running with ram only. But usually that will lead into problems eventually. Some programs will start to complain to you about lack of virtual memory etc.

Windows 7 is actually pretty good straight out of the box, you have more chances to shoot yourself in the leg trying to tweak it than anything else really.

i take it you have actually experimented with all this over a period of time on different systems? or is this the parrot version...

[MrRiplEy[H]]

i take it you have actually experimented with all this over a period of time on different systems? or is this the parrot version...

I could also ask you to provide benchmark proof that your apps work and load faster with superfetch disabled because your opinnion is against the common opinnion with serious hobbyist tweakers and MS professionals.

Your tweaking needs seem to relate to the quite unusual way of using a work laptop with a limited amount of ram also for gaming. Ask yourself what good are those tweaks when you have double the ram available and AH2 as a 32-bit app can probably utilize 2gigs of it at maximum.

[gyrene81]

ripley, never assume anything based on what you think...my work laptop is not used for gaming, especially ah...

i probably asked you this before but...do you have any first hand professional experience with any of the advice you dispense? if 4gb of ram is "limited" in your view...you should not be giving any advice.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

ripley, never assume anything based on what you think...my work laptop is not used for gaming, especially ah...

i probably asked you this before but...do you have any first hand professional experience with any of the advice you dispense? if 4gb of ram is "limited" in your view...you should not be giving any advice.

Yes I have first hand professional experience and why would you introduce your enterprise laptop in the tweak discussion if it not were for running out of resources? What other motivation would you have for disabling superfetch except to free resources?

[Krusty]

I personally don't like the idea of prefetch. I understand the logic, but I don't like the waste in resources time and effort to have it try to preload things into memory I may never use. For limited use PCs I can see it, maybe...

However I don't want to bog down my PC by creating data lists of what I run and constantly updating those lists and adding them to memory. I'll be running an SSD off a decent system with multiple cores and a fast clock with good ram.

It'll load plenty fast enough.


P.S. I also disabled Windows Search 4.0. Just not my cup o' tea.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I personally don't like the idea of prefetch. I understand the logic, but I don't like the waste in resources time and effort to have it try to preload things into memory I may never use. For limited use PCs I can see it, maybe.

Its your choice but sf does not bog your computer down, its a ram cache. It will do quite the opposite lol. Its like believing someone say turbos are lagging your engine down because they cause exhaust resistance

[Krusty]

Well I won't rule out its use. I will probably start with it off until I get a bit more RAM onboard. Limited by a budget right now. I'd like to have 16-24GB in this baby eventually.




(I know, I know... NOBODY will need that, but I want! I want!)