My PC is getting on a bit now – it still runs everything I need it to, but storage is getting a bit tight. I have a 120gb SSD for system (which is basically at capacity all the time) and a 1tb drive for storage which fills up, but I can keep on top of.

I’ve been looking at deals for bigger SSDs (45 quid for 480gb seems pretty well priced) to give myself a bit more wiggle room, and ideally move some stuff over to the faster SSD.

So what’s best – keep the 120gb drive for Windows and use the 480gb one for programs, scratch discs etc or clone the system onto the 480gb drive and use the old 120gb one as a scratch drive?

120Gb is too small for a system drive these days (I have exactly that, and with very little additional installation to C: I’m getting pretty tight).
I’d clone across and use the 120Gb as separate volume if I needed the space, else I’d EBay it and probably get near half that 45 back(where is that by the way? I’ll likely go M.2 but that’s big for the price).

Incidentally if you mean ‘scratch disk’ as in TEMP / swap .. not really necessary on SSD unless you’re really min/maxing and even then I’d be surprised if it made any noticeable difference.

Performance-wise it won’t make a fig of difference. If you run two then you’ll have more space of course, but with the added admin overhead of having your system split across two disks. Personally for the sake of 100GB I’d probably just remove the old SSD.

What’ve you got installed that’s taking up so much space? I’ve got a ten year old Windows 10 laptop and the system drive is less that 50GB. I’d be breaking out Treesize Free and analysing that disk, and running Disk Cleanup (as Administrator) to get rid of old Windows rollback images. EDIT – no I haven’t, I can’t read. Still worth trying a cleanup though.

What’s this “scratch drive” you’re talking about, scratch for what?

Scratch disc (might not be called that any more!) for Photoshop mainly, I think the rest of the CC suite use it too. As I understand it’s for when the ram fills up and PS likes to have it on a different drive to the install.

As to space – Windows plus CC mainly (Photoshop, Indesign, Premiere, After Effects) etc all add up pretty quickly. Plus 3ds Max, a few odds and sods and a couple of games and it’s not long before that 120gb starts to look pretty tiny!

480gb for £45 is an eBuyer deal of the day today. I might not go for that exact one (dunno if WD Green are any cop) but there seem to be a few around the £50 mark.

**edit** Yep I’ve done cleanups, I’m basically constantly juggling stuff to keep i to a reasonable size. I don’t use all the software all the time, but it’s pain to have to keep uninstalling / reinstalling.

Ah, Photoshop, of course.

In which case, yes, I’d be tempted to clone the drive (or do a clean install if you’re so inclined), then flatten the old one and use it as dedicated scratch for CC.

That’s what I’m swaying towards. Probably a clean install, can’t do any harm, I’ve had the PC for years. I’d probably then use the old drive for scratch plus current Lightroom catalogue.

Would it not make sense to test the read/write speeds of the two drives and put the scratch disc on the faster one?

I’d hazard that size trumps relative SSD speeds here. It’s still going to be exponentially faster than a conventional spinnydisk.

I think using the smaller disc makes more sense, as that’s all it’ll be doing – the bigger one will have system + programs whereas the smaller one can be pretty much dedicated.

Yeah for an easy life, put system on the drive that has plenty of space, you’re talking tiny margins between SSDs on SATA. Not sure M.2 would be noticeable in any real world way either.

re: size, it’s not just Windows tough, there are a whole host of apps (O365 installable, I’m looking at you) that’ll stick a bunch of gumph on C: whether you ask it too or not. On my simple home desktop, more or less Office and maybe a DAW or two, I’m well over 100Gb, queued patches appears to be a PITA and of course swap space eats a chunk. I’d want 250Gb min for system and a few apps … and I’d be 10s of Gb free but there’s not a half way house worth saving a fiver over. Clearing it down helps but I’m rarely deleting anything that shouldn’t be there.

Yeah O365 is a bugger, I’m getting to the point where actually the web apps do everything I need, so there’s barely any point having it installed.

OneDrive is a git too, even if you have it set to only sync folders on a second drive it still writes a load to the c: drive.

I use Photoshop. When I’m working with big files the SSD crawls to a halt.
I also have a 3TB standalone back up. So when I’m working with big Photoshop files I locate them on the 3TB and all works well.
Rest of the time my 120 SSD is about 75% full and runs nice and sweet.

BTW,

I’ve just done a bit of research on the WD Green SSD. A couple of points of note:

1) It’s really a Sandisk drive in all but name, WD bought out Sandisk a little while ago.

2) It’s not the fastest SSD ever, which I expected from the ‘green’ moniker. WD’s green range prioritises eco settings over raw performance (though SSDs are inherently green). Rumour has it that the controller is a reworked pendrive controller.

3) There’s reports of some drives having shocking performance. This is fixed with a firmware update, so if you do go for the WD drive it’s worth installing the management software and making sure you’re on the latest FW version.

If you have AMD graphics the AMD folder in C:\ is just install files and can be deleted. For some reason the files aren’t deleted autmatically once they are installed leaving you (potentially) with a folder taking up massive amounts of room. I had stuff stretching back to 2015 before I found that out recently.

Also – ta Cougar, re-ran cleanup as admin and got another 3.5 gig.

remember to wait for sale, amazon’s NVMe SSD has been known to get below 100 for 1TB/500GB

You can get a 500gb m2 NVME SSD’s off Ebuyer for less than £100 now.

@Cougar cheers for that, I did a bit more searching and came to the conclusion something a bit better quality might be worth the extra cash. I’ll have a look at that AMD folder too.

Think I need to read up more on different types of SSD, I’m well behind the curve.