500 Gig SS Drive
RAMWolff
Posts: 10,343
Hi,
Need one of the guru's to help me out here. I have my new computer that I'm prepping. Was told that a SS Drive was a good thing... boot faster, programs start faster and all that. I got a 500 gig one but upon looking at my current set up I have almost a terrabyte of info on my C drive. I know moving the Documents folder, music and all that will lessen the size but it's still over the drives limitation. So I need some advice about what I HAVE to install to the C drive and what I can install to one of the regular SATA drives. I'm kinda bummed but at the same time the 1 terrabyte SS Drive is about $400 and that's a bit over my budget.
Thanks so much
Richard
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I have an 850 SSD for my C:. I install my apps on it and redirect all my data to a bigger SATA drive(s). Biggest thing I did was to redirect all my Daz stuff to a 3TB HDD. With Sata drive prices dropping because SSD is becoming the norm, you can get bigger sizes for reasonable prices. Granted, I have a lot of 'bloat' software, like AdobeCC stuff, but if you just have average programs, OS, Office, Daz, stuff like that, a 500Gb SSD should do just fine. I was running everything on a 160GB SSD for a while. Installing Daz onto a secondary drive made it too slow for my liking, but it can be done, even though that kind of defeats the purpose of having a fast-boot SSD in the first place.
My solid state drive is only 256 GB. UGH. I have everything installed on a partitioned Terabyte hard drive. Only the barest essentials are on the 256 GB drive. It is frustrating, but the machine came that way. Too many partitions too. I probably should've formatted that. I have adobe products on one partiion and studio on its' own partition- which it is rapidly exceeding.
My new computer has a 512SSD. I discovered that was way too small for all my 3D content so, like Stryder87, I moved it all to the SATA drive. Perhaps when costs come down, I'll add a second SSD for 3D content. I am really loving how fast the new computer is ready to work, with the OS and applications on the SSD. (Now it feels like this computer takes "forever" to load everything and get down to business. But I like having a fast computer dedicated to 3D, too.)
So I can have programs installed to another drive? But not all programs gives you the option to install elsewhere. I know Windows 10 Pro will fit, no problem and I already have my Content folders living on another drive but what shot up the Gigs was the User Data, which I thought had to be on the C drive. I hate baby sitting installations, redirecting this and moving that....
Unfortunately, if your data is on a slow drive, using that data will be slow.
I'm certainly not an expert but here are some things most people dont think about.
Putting the OS on an SSD will speed up boot up. Why do you need that? Do you spend most of your time booting the computer? Personally, I keep mine running as close to 24/7 as possible. If you're worried about power consumption, use Sleep mode.
Putting the Apps on the SSD will speed app loading. Again, why do you need that? admittedly, modern apps don't load all at once so this MAY make more sense than the OS, but I don't know how much this would affect DS.
So, what do you spend most of your time loading from a disk? Data. Put your data on your fastest drive. If you have too much data, put the stuff you use most on the SSD and put the rest on HDD.
I purchased this one in October, 2016.
SanDisk Ultra II 960GB SATA III 2.5-Inch 7mm Height Solid State Drive (SSD) with Read Up To 550MB/s. It is about $250 now, I purchased it around $208. Far less than the $400 you mentioned.
I will never go back to HDDs for my boot drive. The speed is amazing compared to those.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00M8ABHVQ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
What needs to be on the boot drive? Windows. The Windows Registry. Selected minimal data in User Data. (More on that later).
What should be on your SSD? The Windows swap file; DAZ Studio temp directories (but get them out of User Data - see the preferences menu)(Also, set up a different temp for the beta if you run it). Your PostgreS database if you use smart content. Any applications you start up and shut down frequently (several times per hour, not per day).
Now - User Data. I've never been a fan of this kludge, and MS keeps making it worse. I do all my project management by allocating a base directory for each project and stuffing ALL information pertaining to the project in it - text, images, video . . . There are documented techniques for puting the User Data on a different drive with a link on the C: drive; not a big fan of that, either. For example, if you use DIM, it wants to build a User Data directory to keep track of installation manifests - and it reads these every time it starts, so they should be on the SSD. But 'My Library' and 'My Install Library' (or whatever DIM starts with) should NOT go here. I let the Studio install process build its little directory here and keep it in the Directory Manager list, but everything else goes on spinning disk.
I've got my 32-bit and 64-bit DIM install directories on my D: drive, and whenever possible I install other applications to these directories - I leave Program Files and Program Files(x86) pretty much for MS and any applications that insist on going there.
I have more on the SSD than I should, but I'm only using 180 GB of the 512 GB currently.
you have to look, because most programs insist on installing on C, but usually you can install on other drives, you just really have to hunt for the option to do so.
Well, I gave in. I went over to EBay where I have PayPal Credit and found the Samsung, that's gotten rave reviews on both Amazon and EBay, for $100.00 less. It's a full Terrabyte so that's that! lol My new computer just hit the $2,000.00 mark. Oh well. Thanks for the info folks.
Oh, one other question. This is a major niggle I have for Windows. When I get the new computer set up and then start transferring files from my F drive, that will have my backup of my DS content along with most other important files, I've noticed in the past that it's all transferred with Read Only rather than Read / Write. Is there a trick or setting I can set up before I start transferring files over to keep it all Read / Write? I can do that by hand but as much stuff that's in My Documents and My LIbrary I'm looking at hours of the system applying that setting. So annoying.
Install your OS and whatever primary apps you use most often on your SSD. 500GB is still a fair size so anything you use a lot, I'd put on there. The rest of your apps and docs, etc. can go on your other drive. I do this all the time. Now, as to where you should install DAZ Studio... you can install the software on the SSD and put the content folder on your other drive. For me, I have a rather large SSD, so I have a dedicated partition for my content folder. My scenes are on a regular hard drive though because those can grow quite large.
When you install DS, you have 2 installation paths - program and content. I leave the program files on my SSD and install content to one of my HDDs (velociraptor 10,000 rpms). I've been doing this since DS 3, and with every new version, DS shows my preferred paths on install. Very easy!
I have moved as much as I can off of my SSD. On Win 7 64 bit, I have 152 GB used.
While it's nice to have programs on the SSD, current SATA HDs are fast enough that I haven't seen much penalty with program installation being off the C: drive. There are realtively few programs that don't allow different installation location.
Studio program files and content are on separate "non C" drives.
Well I got the 1 Tb drive in the mail this AM. So I got it installed. I have to say.... what normally takes about 2 or more hours to load up a new installation of Windows but it was installed within about 35 minutes. Now of course I'm busy trying to get things set up. Programs. Programs and more Programs.
Pretty happy so far.
Richard
Well SSDs have went down since the original thread post. You can now buy a 2 TB SSD for $500. I think I'll wait to summer & built a new PC.
Yea, I imagine by the time I'm ready to invest in a new rig 2 or 3 years from now SSD's will be totally affordable.
Use Richcopy. There is an option to remove the read-only attribute on the fly in advanced mode, as well as a load of usefull options
Get it here https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2009.04.utilityspotlight.aspx
There is a little guide at Symantec https://www.symantec.com/connect/articles/readyhow-replicate-file-shares-using-microsoft-richcopy
Thanks so much. So is this program similar to Beyond Compare when syncs or mirrors two different directories? I did download it and did look it over and seems so.... BUT if it includes this handy tool to leave Read / Write permissions alone I'll gladly install it on the new machine and see what happens. Thanks again!
Not exactly. Beyond compare has file copy functions but also usefull file comparison tools.
Richcopy is rather mainly a very advanced copy tool which you can use with command line to do some copy/backup with filtered criteria. It is very usefull when you have lots of files and different scenario is needed for each type of file. In your case it should be very quick to use despite it could seem complex at first glance
1°/ Switch to Advanced mode
2°/ Select source and destination
3°/ Click option=>Files Attribute, Error Handling=> Check the 'read-only' in 'File Attribute to remove'
4°/ Press start to process the copy
In the handy features, you can save the copy options for later use. That way you can create many copy profiles for different type of copy/backups. You can Pause the copy. You can have a log of all the copy operation for later verification. You also have a 'verify' option that will check if the files are correctly written.
After thinking a bit and if I understood you correctely, your problem is about the read-only attribute that is copied from your backup. Your backup software may have set the attribute 'Read-only' and eventually also the 'Archive' attribute. And when you recover them, you also copy the attribute of the backup file. One other way would be to do a copy without the attribute. You could uncheck 'files attributes' in the 'information to be copied' to get that. Copied files would then get the attributes from the properties of your target directory
Thanks so much Takeo!