Quote from: Tangled-Universe on December 16, 2010, 10:55:03 AM
Maybe 64GB is rather small for a SSD main drive.
I'm running win 7 64-bit and have a couple of dozen pieces of software installed and it already uses around 80GB if I'm correct.
Nevertheless, a SSD for your OS is a fantastic choice
As far as drive setups go, by far the safest and easiest configuration is to do something like this (note this is geared towards a Windows environment, more specifically Win7):
C drive - 15 to 20 gb - OS only
D drive - 30 to 50 gb - Installed Programs
E drive to whatever - App data and everything else.
So after you install Win7, find the registry key that deals with default installation location (for Win7 you have to change a few keys as it's more complicated this time). Change the location from "C:\Program Files" to "D:\Program Files" and do the same thing for the 32 bit directory too.
On your E (or whatever you choose) drive, make a directory and call it something like "AppData". The goal of this directory is to make sure that as many programs as you can configure limit their use to the C drive, which is trying to remain a strictly OS only drive. For example, move your Terragen temp directory here, and your Firefox and Thunderbird profiles, etc.
Finally, never save any user created files if you can help it on the C or D drives.
The reason for this setup is quite simple: if for any reason your OS dies or bugs out badly, you don't have to lose everything if you need to format the partition that has the OS. With the user installed programs in a separate location (D), you can be sure about which programs you installed, and which ones are the original OS programs (there will still be a few left over in the original C drive).
To summarise, quite simply, try to never mix these types of data on the same drive:
* OS
* User installed Programs
* User created files and documents
Also, this way if you have an SSD and a HDD, then you can allocate the SSD to the OS and Program Files drives which help speed up your computer, while leaving the HDD to work with everything else. This is a setup that was taught to me by quite a few talented sys admins, and has never failed me to recover as quick as possible when things go wrong.