Should I reset my computer with the HDD as my main hard drive?

[downthehollow]

My Previous Plan: I have my main hard drive as my SSD with the intention of having only my operating system on it.

My problem: There have been programs that force their way onto my SSD (otherwise i can't get pathing correct or programs just don't install correctly. No not torrented programs. Real programs that I couldn't install for some reason.) and certain cache files are annoying to remove from my SSD. This leads to my hard drive filing up way too quickly

My Plan Now: I want to reset my computer and designate my HDD (1TB. compared to my 128 SSD) as the main hard drive.

My Question: Is this worth it or should I spend a good deal of time just moving the cache files, changing download locations, and (what else?).

Extra Question: If I want to upgrade my SSD one day Resetting my computer to set it to the new SSD is simple correct? Or do I need to find my windows disc again? Not sure how resets really work or if that's what I want to accomplish.

thanks for taking the time to answer my questions =)

 

[USAFRet]

1. A 128GB SSD can serve very well as the main OS drive. Up until recently, that was mine
2. What applications don't allow installing on a different drive? In my system, that would be an application that does not get installed.
3. Almost certainly your problem is too much other gunk. Downloads, Doc/music/video.
See this -
Win 7 & 8: http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-1834397/ssd-redirecting-static-files.html
Win 8.1 & 10: http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2024314/windows-redirecting-folders-drives.html
4. Disable Hibernation
5. Reduce your pagefile size.


WinDirStat can help visualize where your space is going.

 

[downthehollow]

The main problem is android studios. For some reason when i installed the jdk and the main program in the HDD it just would not work and give me errors. Mainly whitespace errors but then I fixed it through google. It still wouldn't work. Only installing it to my main drive would fix the problem.

I keep all documents and downloads in my HDD. I keep videos (for work) in an external hard drive. But my SSD keeps filing up. (turned out to be cache files but i hear that rewriting over an SSD will degrade the SSD speed faster)

It is disabled.

Reduce pagefile size?

 

[USAFRet]

(turned out to be cache files but i hear that rewriting over an SSD will degrade the SSD speed faster)

That is mostly a non-issue with current drives.

Pagefile settings. I have mine set to 1GB min/max, simply to save drive space.
You probably have it set as default, which could be several GB.

 

[Rabmac]

Here are some things I done on my PC to save space and reduce number of writes on my SSD.

1. I moved my documents from SSD to HDD, now all my data goes to HDD but I can access all the folders the exact same way.
2. I disabled and deleted all my system restores. (I have an image of my SSD after a fresh install and once I set it up the way I wanted) This one is optional. You will be surprised at how much space this gets you.
3. I disabled page file on SSD and moved it to HDD.
4. I went to C:\Windows\Software Distribution and deleted the download folder. Basically when Windows updates it saves all the files even though they are not needed. The only thing I would point out is that only do this after you have installed new updates and rebooted your PC at least once to check everything is working after the updates.
5. Run disk cleanup and delete everything including the system files.
6. Run CC cleaner to remove unnecessary data.
7. You can also disable hibernation, although I did not do this.
8. Install all large sized games on HDD when possible (these are the only programs that go on my HDD).

Hope these tips help and I would like to add that you should keep your SSD as the drive for your OS and programs and put everything else on your HDD.