I know it's a pretty common thing to use an SSD for a primary drive and then a mechanical HDD for bulk storage for files where you don't need the fast access.

For the folks that do this, how do you manage the space? Do you find yourself moving data between the drives a lot?

I'm building new workstations for my research lab with such a set up and I'm trying to get an idea of what I'm going to tell the students - the users - about how to manage their files. My main worry is that the users are going to fill up the SSDs with files that don't need to live there just because it's the default storage location.

If anyone has advice for best practices, especially for users with limited tech savvy, I'd like to hear them.

6/24/2016 5:16:04 PM

change the shortcuts for documents, downloads, music, etc. to be locations on the storage drive. that'll help a bit

6/24/2016 5:33:37 PM

Why not just buy bigger SSDs? [comparatively speaking] They're cheap as hell now.

[Edited on June 24, 2016 at 5:46 PM. Reason : ]

6/24/2016 5:43:21 PM

what os?

6/25/2016 12:26:36 AM

Win 10 enterprise.

6/25/2016 1:48:16 AM

250gb ssd i have to clean it up once or twice a year. I usually set my torrents to copy shit over to the storage drive.

6/25/2016 5:17:23 AM

Basically all programs and program caches (e.g. photoshop) go on my 512 SSD. Everything else goes on my HDDs.

6/28/2016 6:51:15 PM

win10 (newest builds) has all the storage tiering options of win2012 server. it can optimize this automagically for you if you turn it on

6/28/2016 10:38:06 PM

I assume you mean this: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn567634(v=vs.85).aspx

How is that different than Intel Smart Response Technology that uses an SSD as a cache volume? Is it just that the SSD adds to the total storage volume? How smart is the tiered storage in terms of putting programs on the SSD side?

[Edited on June 28, 2016 at 10:50 PM. Reason : googled it]

6/28/2016 10:46:00 PM

I have no idea how the intel tech works, but the windows tech is basically like a SAN, using the SSD as a cache while also counting it towards the total pool. As blocks get put into memory, they're stored on the SSD. older blocks or blocks with a stale "last accessed" value get evicted as space is needed. it's better than moving whole programs as certain blocks in programs may go seldom used and are able to reside on the magnetic disk.

6/28/2016 11:14:53 PM

I have a 500gig SSD for my OS and applications/games

I bought a cheap 120 gig SSD that I use as my temp drive basically for where all downloaded media ends up and is processed before moving to a storage drive to take wear and tear off any other drives. That way if this one dies its not that big a deal.

Unfortunately I have a 3 TB seagate thats on its last legs think its the board and not the disk itself because it keeps just randomly disappearing then shows up with a restart. Does the same thing in multiple PCs and the SMART application or whatever it is picks it up as a drive going bad in both computers. Got all the info copied off to another drive so when it dies no worries I guess.

6/29/2016 8:49:48 AM

Quote :

"change the shortcuts for documents, downloads, music, etc. to be locations on the storage drive."

This. For me personally I have two SSD's and 3-4 HDD's. I use the 512GB SSD as my OS/system drive, and then the other HDD's as my program drive, storage drive, and photo drive. The smaller SSD (old system drive 256GB that I outgrew) I use as my scratch drive for Photoshop. So all photos are copied to the scratch SSD for edits/tagging and then the photos are dropped into the cloud synced master photo archive which syncs to cloud and an offsite backup.

So yes, stuff moves around on my drives, but its more of a workflow issue, not really a space issue.

6/29/2016 8:58:44 AM