best way to handle my C: Drive

[hoofhearted4]

ok so im going to try and be as thorough as possible.

 

right now, i have a 128gb SSD in my PC. 40gb of it is C: drive and the rest (80gb, of which only 50gb is used so there is 30gb free) is partitioned into my D: drive. i also have a 1tb HDD in there as F: (700gb+ free space) and also a 1tb External HDD as Z: (which im going to use for back ups)

 

atm, my C: drive only has 1gb left of space. it probably wont be long before something comes along that puts files in C: that needs to be there that will take up my remaining 1gb. so what i have is a few options on what i can do and im asking which one would be the best option, or if not listed, what would be the best option.

 

i could reformat my SSD, and repartition it so C: has 60gb and D: has 60gb. and just recover the backup i made the other day on Z:. would this work? would this restore everything i have on C: and D:? would i still have to reinstall the games and such that i have on D:? im not sure what goes on during a Recovery as ive never done one.

 

another option is to reformat C: and not partition it. keep everything on C: but still make custom folders (so nothing is installed into Program Files and whatnot) but if i did this then Recovery of D: wouldnt work right? since there would be no new D: directory (or rather it would probably be the CD drive)

 

what is the best option to do. basically in the end i need more space on C: keeping C: separate allows me to Reinstall it without losing everything else in case of an emergency, so thats why the first option sounds better (reformatting it with more space)

 

 

i try my best to install everything on another Drive (either D: or F:). some programs dont allow you to choose (like i think i said in another thread, such as MSE or Raptr, or CCleaner and brethren) so C: eventually fills up a bit, but i think 60gb would be enough for it (i think 40gb would be a minimum and was being a little ambitious). but are there other good practices i can get into to keep C: as clean (and as small) as possible? does moving the page file keep C: smaller, or rather keep it from growing? or does moving the page file just help with Read/Writes? whatever knowledge you guys can impart unto me would be a great help!!!! im always trying to learn more about the IT field!! :D

[Gremxula]

I seem to remember having a similar problem a few years ago. Using Partition Magic was an easy fix. Just resize your partitions no loss of data.

[hoofhearted4]

yea i had read about it. just wasnt sure if it would solve what i wanted. but hearing that it can, that would definitely be the easiest route! thanks!!

 

 

EDIT: Downloaded Partition Wizard. worked perfectly. issue resolved.

 

 

that said, my other question still stands. what can i do to keep my C: Drive Clean and as small as possible?

Edited December 6, 2012 by hoofhearted4

[FMod]

that said, my other question still stands. what can i do to keep my C: Drive Clean and as small as possible?

Always Custom Install everything into a folder that is not on C:

You can accelerate things selectively by moving them to the SSD using a NTFS junction.

[Dan3345]

that said, my other question still stands. what can i do to keep my C: Drive Clean and as small as possible?

Always Custom Install everything into a folder that is not on C:

You can accelerate things selectively by moving them to the SSD using a NTFS junction.

Or you could use a HDD and send things like user cache and downloads and temporary OS writes to the HDD. Not that it matters too much but it would cut down on superfluous read/writes on the SSD while also saving space.

[FMod]

But the whole point of a SSD is speed. While physically they don't write well, this is cached and concealed by the controller. It doesn't matter if "writes don't matter to me" (like some users say) - tasks execute once they finish what matters to them, and end user assumptions about what they read or write are rarely even in the ballpark.

Once you start moving things off the SSD, you're sacrificing system performance. In the most paranoid case, when Temp, pagefile, user files, etc are all on HDD, the system performs closer to a HDD than a SSD.

 

e.g.:

Firefox 16 and profile on HDD - starts very slowly

Firefox 16 and profile on SSD - starts instantly

Firefox 16 on SSD, profile on HDD - starts slowly

Firefox 16 on HDD, profile on SSD - starts almost instantly

You can test it yourself if you have both. Just copy your user profile to HDD and select it in Firefox /p (must be a "lived-in" profile, not fresh).

 

The funny thing is, all these measures barely even halve the total written per day.

So you get the best bang for your buck by offloading as much frequently rewritten stuff to SSD as you can. If you think of it as an accelerator, that way results in the most t/$, where t is user time saved in device's lifetime.

[hoofhearted4]

yes, i install everything i can onto either D: (still my SSD) or my F: (my HDD)...with exception to a couple of programs i mentioned that dont give the option to be installed elsewhere (Raptr, MSE, CCleaner, and a couple others)