- Oct 5, 2002
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I was having many issues with out-of-memory errors and slow performance, a lot of it due to having to temporarily move my OS drive from the SSD array it was on to a 5400RPM drive for now and having to keep the swap file small.
SSDs have gone down in price, so I got a cheap small 128GB SSD that I am using just for temporary files for now, it has helped significantly. I figured that it would be useful even once I am back on a SSD to use this SSD for all my temporary data, but I wanted to know just how far I can go with that.
I know that for applications that themselves use a temporary folder, I will need to set that on a per-app basis, that's fine, I was talking purely about os-level temporary files/folders.
I already put the swap file there, that's easy to do. I have hibernation disabled for now since being a desktop I don't really need it, but I do know how to put it on the SSD if I need to. And I read this guide on moving the two standard temp folders:
https://www.howtogeek.com/285710/how-to-move-windows-temporary-folders-to-another-drive/
I still have four additional questions however:
1. Is there any actual user-saved data stored in these temp folders? I know that most of the user data is stored in the AppData folders, but I also know that apparently browsers make heavy use of these temp folders. Do they only put cached data and other such-non important information in there? Or would they also store bookmarks, or login cookies, etc in there? Information that would actually impact me if I were to lose it?
2. Are any of these necessary for Windows to start up properly or not lose anything between restarts? The issue is that I might also have to experiment with different operating system installs by swapping said drive, and I would like to re-use that SSD for temp data for all of them simply by wiping it since leaving temp data from another windows install/version could cause issues. I know that the swap file is not important between reboots, the hibernation file is but I have that disabled anyway, but I have no idea about the temp folders. Can those be deleted between reboots without issue? Also, would I still need to have the folders on the drive, but just empty, or will Windows simply re-create the temp folder that it has been set to if it does not exist?
3. Would I need to move the contents of the existing temp files to the other drive when I change the temp folder environment path?
4. And finally, are there any other OS-level temporary files/folders one can advise I can set to that spare drive?
SSDs have gone down in price, so I got a cheap small 128GB SSD that I am using just for temporary files for now, it has helped significantly. I figured that it would be useful even once I am back on a SSD to use this SSD for all my temporary data, but I wanted to know just how far I can go with that.
I know that for applications that themselves use a temporary folder, I will need to set that on a per-app basis, that's fine, I was talking purely about os-level temporary files/folders.
I already put the swap file there, that's easy to do. I have hibernation disabled for now since being a desktop I don't really need it, but I do know how to put it on the SSD if I need to. And I read this guide on moving the two standard temp folders:
https://www.howtogeek.com/285710/how-to-move-windows-temporary-folders-to-another-drive/
I still have four additional questions however:
1. Is there any actual user-saved data stored in these temp folders? I know that most of the user data is stored in the AppData folders, but I also know that apparently browsers make heavy use of these temp folders. Do they only put cached data and other such-non important information in there? Or would they also store bookmarks, or login cookies, etc in there? Information that would actually impact me if I were to lose it?
2. Are any of these necessary for Windows to start up properly or not lose anything between restarts? The issue is that I might also have to experiment with different operating system installs by swapping said drive, and I would like to re-use that SSD for temp data for all of them simply by wiping it since leaving temp data from another windows install/version could cause issues. I know that the swap file is not important between reboots, the hibernation file is but I have that disabled anyway, but I have no idea about the temp folders. Can those be deleted between reboots without issue? Also, would I still need to have the folders on the drive, but just empty, or will Windows simply re-create the temp folder that it has been set to if it does not exist?
3. Would I need to move the contents of the existing temp files to the other drive when I change the temp folder environment path?
4. And finally, are there any other OS-level temporary files/folders one can advise I can set to that spare drive?
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