Speed gain with SSD

[zebigbos]

I installed a new machine (Core_i7, 16GB) using Windows 7 on an SSD as startup disk C:
User profiles are located on 1500 GB normal harddisk D:.

Overall, the speed is much better of course however I am not really impressed with speed gain - during startup for instance.
One userprofile was made, no password, so the machine boots straight into my desktop.

Could this be because the user profile is still on conventional hard drive (D:?
Does Windows 7 need access to the user profile often?
If so, to benefit most of SSD, should I move the user profile back to the SSD C:?
Is there a tool out there to move my user profile back to C: or should I just re-install?

any help appreciated,
Job
Netherlands

 

[tlmck]

I don't know how large the SSD is, but the issue with the user profile folders is that they can get quite large. I do not know exactly how you have yours set up, but this guide should help. http://www.pcworld.com/article/237496/the_best_of_both_worlds_an_ssd_and_a_hdd.html

 

[CaedenV]

yes, move your user profile back to the SSD. Many things are on there that you need.

There are many SSD optimizations to make (search for SSD setup guides on Tom's). Mostly you want to make sure that you are in AHCI mode, and that write caching is disabled, but there are a ton of other things to do which can help.

I think what you intended to do was to move your documents to the traditional HDD, and this is done by rt clicking on your libraries and documents, select properties, and then tell it where you want it to go. Only put bulk stuff like video and audio on the HDD. Regular text documents and pictures (unless you have a ton of them) tend not to make much space, and will run much quicker on the SSD (especially if your HDD spins down and you have to wait for it to warm up when all you wanted to do was open a text file lol).

 

[zebigbos]

Thanks for the help.
The SSD is 128 GB. I was planning to leave some space for the video editing that I do (hence the processor and the big internal RAM).

So I shall move back the user profile to the SSD. Okay.

Any tools that can do that for me or is re-installation the most secure option?

 

[tlmck]

I believe the procedure I posted works in reverse as well.

 

[zebigbos]

Thanks tlmck, however that will not work for me.
I used a registry hack to force the user profile to the D: drive.
Forcing it back will - I think- mess things up severely since W7 will have lost track of all my installed applications.

It looks like a clean install...

 

[tlmck]

Thanks tlmck, however that will not work for me.
I used a registry hack to force the user profile to the D: drive.
Forcing it back will - I think- mess things up severely since W7 will have lost track of all my installed applications.

It looks like a clean install...

Yep. The problem with most hacks is that they are one way affairs with no points of return. Good luck with the clean install.

 

[RetiredChief]

If you backed up your registry, How about restore?
Many disable retore, probably a better option would be to just limit disk space to say large enough to hold only the last three restore points.

 

[zebigbos]

Yesterday evening I did a clean install again. From USB to SSD this goes rather quickly and without problems! Removed the old installation.

And thanks for the tip: I changed in the BIOS the SSD setting from IDE to AHCI. Dunno yet about speed improvements. Will check the rest of this website for further tips.

This time I left the user profiles on the SSD. Only swapped the 'my documents' folder to the hard drive, using the standard simple W7 feature.

The system boots quicker now, however the BIOS is apparently still waiting until the other two harddrives have been spun up and started. Mmmm. Anything possible in the BIOS to change that? I have an MSI Z68A-G45 (G3) motherboard.

Chrome, e-mail, Office, system utils etc will be kept on the SSD. All the rest of the non-essential programs I manually install on the hard drive.

Thanks for your help! (Will check restore options)
Job