Setting up a storage drive?

[BKCXb]

Ok, guys I need your help and advice..

I have a 120Gb SSD only windows 7 system.

Recently I have been pulling out old games to play and my SSD is filling up rather rapidly, I only have 11Gb of free space left.

I decided to install an old 69 Gb spinner (HDD) to use as a storage drive, to free up some space on my SSD for more games.

So far I have installed the HHD , formatted it and asigned it as letter E/:, I moved my music folder to it and that freed up 15.9Gb

What else do you guys think I should move over to help save space?

 

[SPS]

The whole users folder, AppData can get quite large

 

[yggdrasil]

Some times moving the user folder over to a second drive can get messy if not done from the start. I would suggest most games (unless you really want the awesome load times) My steam folder is huge (550gb last time I looked) so it goes on my second drive.

Then I would say move my docs and pictures over there. If you have a few large programs like photoshop and well the whole CS5 collection I would install that on your second HDD as well.

But keeping in mind you have said you used a "old HDD" witch would make the risk of it failing and losing all your data a lot higher so putting my documents and pictures on it a little risky.

Also you can move the windows pictures and documents and music default locations to your HDD I would also suggest moving the default Download folder as well. That can get big.

Open My Computer on the left you will see "libraries" right click the default location you want to change eg "Documents" then "Properties" you then will see "Library locations" in that list will be "My Documents" with a tick next to it meaning that it is the default location you can select "Include a folder..." and add your new location and once done right click it and "make default".

You can do this for all the items in "Libraries".

There is 3 or 4 diffident ways to do this I just personally find this the easiest.

 

[SPS]

There's a guide to do it here and overall will be much easier when everything is on your storage drive, this also helps with backups too.

 

[BKCXb]

Thanks guys! It doesn't seem I'm gonna save alot more room , just a couple Kb here and there, My music was the bulk of my files.(16Gb)

I keep this machine pretty lean , not letting it collect alot of junnk over time. I go in every now and then and manually go thru all my Documents folders and delete ones I don't need anymore and move the ones I want to keep to an external USB Drive. Problem Is my external is getting full also. (80Gb of mostly Music, Videos, and pics)

Another problem is I don't back anything up, I just keep the sysem light, with the games I'm playing at the moment, If something gives me too much trouble, I can easily go into NERD RAGE!! and just copy over my docks folder to USB external drive, and do a freash install.

This machine is so old I'm fixin' to build a new one, so I kinda want to sort out the best way so set up my storage for that system, so if your Ideas won't be that good for this system, just a clean Install, I still wanta hear them.

What do you guys think I should Do:

- Buy a new(way faster and larger) external USB drive, and keep going about the way I have been for years($100-$180)

- Use the capabilities of my Gb network and add in a NAS drive (something like a WD MyBookLive $160-$220)

- Get a large WD Black HDD for storage($100-$250)

- Go with 2 large(cheaper $100ea) Drives in Raid 0, for storage (done this for many years as a boot drive before SSDs)

let me know what you guys think, I wanta hear opinions, or Ideas on how you would do it.

 

[jackjack]

this one is a good idea

"Get a large WD Black HDD for storage($100-$250)"

 

[BKCXb]

I have a raptor drive now, but it's old, I think my WD Blue 5400RPM notebook drive is about the same speed, and the capacity of older raptor drives are very small.

It's what we has instead of SSDs 10 years ago.

 

[SPS]

NAS drives are pretty decent for backups TBH

 

[BKCXb]

I went ahead and picked up a WD My Book Live 2Tb today, just couldn't deny the benifits of having one of these units.

I'm gonna swap around my network parts this weekend and add it in.

Anybody got any ideas on what to do with 2Tb of storage or any tips or pitfalls in setting it up?

 

[Rastalovich]

Check the size of your Winsxs folder. That can get quite large.

 

[BKCXb]

6.97GB , whats it for??

 

[Rastalovich]

Backups of system files when they've been updated.

6 odd gig isn't too big tho. It can grow to 13g+