Switching OS to from C drive to mSATA?

I have Acronis 2014 Premium.

I'd like to swap my OS from the C drive to my mSATA to increase performance by having the fastest drive as a scratch disc for video editing.

I know the mSATA is SATA II, but the faster scratch disc is more important than a faster OS boot drive.

I guess I could just clone the entire drive? On the other hand, this might be a good opportunity to do some general housekeeping. Would it be preferable to separate and partition the OS?

Sorry, I meant to put this in the software/OS section.

 

You could clone the HDD to the mSATA, though personally I don't know how cloning software will handle that if the mSATA has a smaller capacity than the HDD.

Personally, I always do a clean install of the OS and programs whenever I move things between drives. Like you said, it's a great time to perform some cleanup and generally, a clean install doesn't run into problems while there's a (small) chance a clone job might.

You could have a separate partition for your OS and the rest of your drive. On a SSD this isn't important though since partitions don't really exist in the context of a SSD.

 

Thread moved.

Anyways, software like Acronis will clone just fine to smaller drive as long as the used space on the larger drive is equal or lower than the total capacity of the smaller drive. If your current OS install is fine and you don't feel like reinstalling everything, then clone away.

 

My OS and programs total 308GB! My current mSATA is only 250 (the limit when I got it) so I guess I need a larger one now -- I had always planned to upgrade once SSDs went down in price so I guess now is the time.

I was going move the OS and my most frequently used programs to my present mSATA, and put the less frequently used leftovers on one of the other drives. But now that I think about it, one drive can now handle all that.

Anyway, when I think about it, I may get even better performance by leaving the two main drives uncluttered and free solely for editing.

Only other thing is the storage drive which could be more beefy now that 4k is being used more often. I'd really be interested in this new 2TB Seagate, but just don't know if it can keep up? The reading indicate its not far from my present 7200 rpm HGST, but I just don't want any lagging, stuttering videos once I hit play.

Anyway, since we're this close to Black Friday I think I'll just wait the few weeks and see if any sale pop up. Thanks for the advice all.

 

If you want to save some money, you could still keep the 250GB mSATA and just decide which programs you don't use often enough to justify space on the mSATA.

For the 2TB drive, I assume that you're talking about the Samsung/Seagate laptop drive ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...1000&cm_re=samsung_m9t-_-22-178-627-_-Product. From one of the reviews of it (by a "Robert H."), it seems like it's fairly typical in the performance department:

 

It would be good to know which system your asking this on?

That is the best just keeping a O/S on a separate drive and all your data on another drive is the smart move to do. But on laptop unless it has two drive bays or combination this will be hard to do as compared to Desktop.

Was this on the Dell Precision M6700??

I see they have 2tb laptop drives but unless your laptop has the msata option then you need to have a laptop with two drive bays to have the O/S on one and the data/files created on they other to prevent data loose. Should the main drive go bad.

 

Yep, in sig.

For video editing a minimum of 3 drive is suggested for optimal performance. With a 4th drive, operating as a backup/storage disc.

 

Actually, I had planned to upgrade that drive (all of them actually) from day one as larger storage would come to market. So far I've only gotten to the C drive.

Great. It certainly looks competent enough on paper. Its just that 7200 is the minimum recommended on the system optimization setup.