File Junctions to an SSD

[Bones2525]

I just bought a 120 GB SSD. My computer only has a SATA II controller, and here's the SSD I bought: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820171545

So, I was thinking I would just mklink a lot of Steam games to it. The ones I play the most (e.g. Skyrim, Medal of Honor, etc.) Would it be just as fast as if I had it on the SSD? If I made a junction from the HDD to the SSD, so it would linked to the SSD, would it be like it was just on the SSD, not slowed down by the fact that it was only linked to the SSD? Also, would I get any performance boost outside of boot/shut down if I put the OS on the SSD? Thanks.

 

[kajabla]

The OS will run a little more snappily, yes.
I'm not sure about the junction. Just put the OS on the SSD and then install Steam there.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

Install Windows and any programs and games on the SSD. Use a mechanical HD for all storage....music, videos, pictures ect. I have Windows 7 Ultimate x64, Office 2007 and all my programs including 10 or 12 games on my 120GB OCZ Vertex 2 and I have about 35GB of free space. The SSD is the single best thing I have ever added to my computer that increased overall system performance.

 

[kajabla]

I'd say the same if I hadn't got hold of a Daskeyboard. This thing is incredible.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

I'd say the same if I hadn't got hold of a Daskeyboard. This thing is incredible.

That does look pretty sweet. I would be hard pressed to give up my G15 though. I am too used to all the macros and built in features.

 

[kajabla]

True that. A little extra work with Autohotkey does wonders, though. Ctrl-F1 isn't all that different from G1. I've put in an eject button, the Mac sleep command, and mouse-button iTunes control

 

[Bones2525]

Herp. On topic please. It would be nice to get a solid answer about the junction. Also, my C: drive is at 500GB full out of 1TB right now, that's why I just wanted to put some games on it. Also, is there any really efficient and easy way to move over the OS to the new drive?

 

[r0ck3tm@n]

You can use mklink to make a directory junction to your SSD and whatever you put on your SDD will be read from and written to your SSD so yes it would do what you want.

However you are confusing people. They are all trying to tell you that you have it backwards.

What I want to tell you is to copy all your programs over to a storage drive (HDD) and leave just the OS on your OS drive (C:\ drive.) Use Mklink to make that work. Would be easier to just backup your game saves and uninstall all your games but either way.

As an example, I keep my OS partition tight because I want to reduce latency, something called short stroking that works with disc drives. I recently moved my Skyrim game saves directory to my storage partition and used Mklink to make it look like nothing had changed. Works great. Must be a hard link, as you probably know already. You do that for all your non OS files.

When your OS partition or drive is down to, what, below 100GB's anyway, make a drive image. I use Ghost, don't know how you want to do that but a drive image is the way to go as I understand it. Install your SSD, update it's firmware, move drives around, whatever, then install your OS image onto your SSD. Remember, for Windows 7 (and Vista?) you must keep that 100MB system partition and make that the bootable partition, that 100MB partition works with your OS drive. I spent many hours learning that... You can move your OS from drive to drive all day and boot up every time just as if nothing had happened. Only way to play with RAID arrays.

So there you go. As long as you re-install the OS image correctly, the OS will boot up as your C:\ drive and all those programs on your storage HDD(s) will be linked up again. Want the program to go faster? Remove the directory junction (hard link) and copy the directory back. Too much work, really. But you knew that already.

 

[Bones2525]

Thanks man, that was a lot of helpful info. So you're saying that I should make a temporary storage partition, get my C:\ drive as small as possible, install the SSD, update firmware and such, then create an image of the C:\ drive, and write it to the SSD. Then reinstall all the games with their backed up save files to the SSD. Remove the partition so I then have a storage drive and a boot/game SSD. Right...?