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    Saving precious space on your SSD

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by adchesney, Jun 16, 2011.

  1. adchesney

    adchesney Notebook Enthusiast

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    Dear Folks,

    Having installed my Crucial M4 128Gb disk – I was wondering how to keep the use to a minimum.

    I have directed my user account, my documents, email, etc to D: (which is a std HDD).

    Are there any other tips/tricks: For example deleting temporary setup files, and resizing the recycle bin, etc.

    I would appreciate any tips as at a cost of about £1.5 per Gb it is expensive to waste space!

    Maybe this could be a STICKY

    Regards

    ANDREW
     
    adchesney, Jun 16, 2011
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  2. ramgen

    ramgen -- Morgan Stanley --

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    Do you use the hibernate option? If not, disabling it will remove the hiberfil.sys file which will save you several gigs.


    --
     
    ramgen, Jun 16, 2011
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  3. kilou

    kilou Notebook Consultant

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    Since you seem to have 8Gb RAM, maybe the pagefile can go too...
     
    kilou, Jun 16, 2011
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  4. HTWingNut

    HTWingNut Potato

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    This SHOULD be a sticky as it's been discussed numerous times before:

    1) If you don't use hibernate then disable the hibernate file. Open an elevated command prompt (cmd.exe - right click - run as administrator). Once there type:

    powercfg -h off

    In order to see if it was turned off or existed in the first place, go into Windows Explorer, Press Alt to bring up file menu, Select Tools, Folder Options, View Tab, deselect 'hide protected operating system files'. Ok out of there and on your C: drive you should see or not see hiberfil.sys. I would recommend doing this first to see if it exists, then see if it's gone after you do the powercfg command. You may have to reboot, but in most cases not.

    2) Pagefile, maybe not turn off, but reduce it. Over 4GB RAM, Windows assigns the same size pagefile as your RAM. I just change mine to vary between 256MB and 2048MB so if it needs it, it can use it, but if not it's only using 256MB.

    3) If you use Firefox then change it to use RAM as its cache.

    Type about:config into the Location Bar

    Set these preferences to these values....

    browser.cache.disk.enable to False
    browser.cache.memory.enable to True

    4) System Restore. I don't advise turning it off, but reducing it to 1% of your drive size. There are ways of making it smaller but for ease of doing it, you can find it by going to Control Panel, System and Security, System, and on the left pane you will see 'System Protection'. Click it and click on your C: drive (SSD), click configure, and then move the slider all the way to the left (1%). Even if you have a 60GB drive, 600MB is more than enough for a dozen or so restore points, which is overkill too. If you want to reduce it even more then read here (for Vista but applies to 7 as well): http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/reduce-system-restores-disk-usage-in-vista/

    5) Keep a clean system, run ccleaner and glary utilities. Or at a minimum run disk cleanup that comes with Windows.

    That's about all I can think of at the moment.
     
    HTWingNut, Jun 16, 2011
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  5. kilou

    kilou Notebook Consultant

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    Not sure about that. I thought disk cleanup utilities were not recommended with SSD... Probably depends what you do with them I guess.
     
    kilou, Jun 16, 2011
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  6. chimpanzee

    chimpanzee Notebook Virtuoso

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    I would like to stress one more time that modern day SSD is no different than HDD. So there is no 'do and do not'. The only thing that make sense to pay attention to is partition alignment which again should be handled automatically by modern day OS(like W7).
     
    chimpanzee, Jun 16, 2011
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  7. MidnightSun

    MidnightSun Emodicon

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    If you're simply using them to delete junk files (ie: left over system temporary files, Internet cached files, cookies, etc), then I see no harm whether or not you have an SSD. Disk defragmenting and reorganization/optimization, on the other hand, is not recommended.
     
    MidnightSun, Jun 16, 2011
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  8. Phil

    Phil Retired

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    Phil, Jun 16, 2011
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  9. HTWingNut

    HTWingNut Potato

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    Right. Never defrag an SSD. But the clean up utilities are fine, and good, because it cleans out all the temp files, temp cache files, etc that can consumes a considerable amount of space over time.
     
    HTWingNut, Jun 16, 2011
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  10. afhstingray

    afhstingray Notebook Prophet

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    how do you disable defragging? i thought win7 does it automatically in the background?
     
    afhstingray, Jun 17, 2011
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  11. HTWingNut

    HTWingNut Potato

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    type "defrag" in start menu search, open 'Disk Defragmenter' (not defrag) and click on configure schedule, then select disks. Your SSD won't show up there. Win 7 removes at as a drive to be defragged. You can still manually do it, but we all here highly advise against it!
     
    HTWingNut, Jun 17, 2011
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  12. CC268

    CC268 Notebook Evangelist

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    I have about 99 GB of my 128 GB left on my SSD after clean install does that sound right?? I also have like 99MB partition created??? Do you install things like adobe flash player and adobe reader, java, etc, on the SSD?
     
    CC268, Jun 17, 2011
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  13. HTWingNut

    HTWingNut Potato

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    I install ALL APPS on the SSD, unless for some reason they are ungodly huge. Pretty much anything that installs to the Program Files directory stays on the SSD (except games & virtual machines).
     
    HTWingNut, Jun 17, 2011
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  14. CC268

    CC268 Notebook Evangelist

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    I'm confused as to why windows takes 28gb though? I'm gonna clear the pagefile and do all the things said on this thread...can I delete any of the folders or anything that windows has on my laptop?
     
    CC268, Jun 17, 2011
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  15. Abidderman

    Abidderman Notebook Deity

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    I am at 26 gb used space, with Office, some proprietary work programs, other programs I use. I disabled hibernate, lowered my pagefile, and like you also have a second drive. I put my data, TMP and temp folders on there, so it keeps the used space thin. There are a lot of things you can do, but not all tweaks work for you. No matter what you do to save space, remember, make sure you always have a consistent schedule for backing up you drive. If you are religious about this, there are more things you can do.
     
    Abidderman, Jun 17, 2011
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  16. CC268

    CC268 Notebook Evangelist

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    alright cool, how do i transfer my data and such onto the other hard drive? Also what program do you use to backup your drive and what do you back yours up on?
     
    CC268, Jun 18, 2011
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  17. HTWingNut

    HTWingNut Potato

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    For data in your "libraries" folders (like Documents, Video, Music, Downloads, etc), Open up two Windows Explorer Windows (Win + E is quickest), *right* click and drag your folders you want to move, drag and drop to the new location in the other window, and select "move".

    You can use the built in Windows backup feature to backup your drive. It's free and effective.
     
    HTWingNut, Jun 18, 2011
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  18. LoneWolf15

    LoneWolf15 The Chairman

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    I also redirect my TEMP file directories and my web browser caches to my D: drive.

    TEMP directory locations can be changed via the "Environment Variables" settings under "Advanced System Settings" in Windows 7. I just use D:\TEMP.

    Browser cache location changes vary by browser. With Internet Explorer, just use Tools->Internet Options. I specify D:\, because Windows automatically creates a sub-folder called "Temporary Internet Files" in whatever location you specify.

    With Firefox, it needs to be done from about:config. Google for this; there are articles out there. You can also use about:config to relocate where your Firefox user profile is; this requires a second command, which I have also done.

    I have my swap file located on D:\ as well. Note that all of these are arbitrary. A swap file on my SSD might be faster, but the main reason I've located what I have is these options are likely to have frequent writes, and it's possible that by moving those folders, I can extend the life of my SSD. I use my SSD mainly for booting and storing frequently-used applications. Lesser-used or less important apps (like the occasional game) get installed to the D:\ drive to save space, and because I don't need the speed in launching/using them.
     
    LoneWolf15, Jun 18, 2011
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  19. CC268

    CC268 Notebook Evangelist

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    So should I use chrome or firefox if I want to save space?
     
    CC268, Jun 18, 2011
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  20. LoneWolf15

    LoneWolf15 The Chairman

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    You can use any one of the three, or another browser if you prefer. All let you specify the location of the cache directory, and the macimum size of the cache.
     
    LoneWolf15, Jun 18, 2011
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  21. CC268

    CC268 Notebook Evangelist

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    I cant figure out how to do that on chrome??
     
    CC268, Jun 18, 2011
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  22. CC268

    CC268 Notebook Evangelist

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    Looking for a way to direct cache and size on chrome and can I do it to the RAM or something? BTW I am down to about 12GB used with Windows Installed and CC Cleaner, Glary, Chrome...not too bad. Cut down my page file, shut off hibernation, and lowered restore points, still looking for any little thing to do
     
    CC268, Jun 19, 2011
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  23. Phil

    Phil Retired

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    Phil, Jun 20, 2011
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  24. CC268

    CC268 Notebook Evangelist

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    How do I change the cache of Google chrome so it doesnt go on my SSD and instead uses RAM like firefox? (I think thats how it is) or at least how to change cache and what not
     
    CC268, Jun 21, 2011
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  25. Phil

    Phil Retired

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    I don't think Chrome has that option.
     
    Phil, Jun 21, 2011
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  26. CC268

    CC268 Notebook Evangelist

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    Ok, thanks I am trying out Firefox 5, seems slower, but its nice and I changed it so caching is on RAM. One question phil, how do I delete the junk that Chrome caches onto my SSD?
     
    CC268, Jun 21, 2011
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  27. LoneWolf15

    LoneWolf15 The Chairman

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    LoneWolf15, Jun 21, 2011
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  28. Phil

    Phil Retired

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    I've seen that before but I don't think it's what I want.

    Yes it's possible to change the cache to another directory or even a special RAM disk.

    But what I want is to set Chrome's cache to memory without a RAM disk. I don't see that option there.
     
    Phil, Jun 22, 2011
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  29. CC268

    CC268 Notebook Evangelist

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    Oh well not a big deal, Im not switching to firefox, its noticeably slower than chrome, chrome is instantaneous for me
     
    CC268, Jun 23, 2011
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  30. Phil

    Phil Retired

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    Same here, I'm sticking with Chrome. I don't care enough about the extra writes.
     
    Phil, Jun 23, 2011
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