Customization of Windows 7 applications for SSD

In order to use SSDs effectively for Windows 7, we need to customize the applications as well wherever possible. I use one basic principle of optimization  i.e. to reduce the number of writes on the SSD. To do that we divide data into two categories

(1) Static data -- Things like configuration files or data which is rarely modified and mostly read (accessed). I will leave this or configure this to sit on the SSD.

(2) Dynamic data -- Frequently modified data. For e.g,. a browser's cache and downloads folder is one such application. I will try to transfer such data away from SSD into HDD

Let me show you how I did it for some  applications I have:

Browsers

I have Chrome, Firefox and IE but don't ask me why. Here's what you can do for each:

(i) Chrome -- Follow the instructions in http://www.ghacks.net/2010/10/19/how-to-change-google-chromes-cache-location-and-size/ and restart the browser. Make sure that the chrome ccahe absolute path does not have folder names with spaces (its not happy about spaces and will not work unlike IE and Firefox)

(ii) Firefox -- Follow the instructions in http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/768867 and Click Menu Item Options and in the general tab, give the link of the Downloads folder on HDD. 

(iii) IE -- Navigate Settings --> Internet Options -> Browsing History --> Settings and change the location of temporary internet files to HDD folder. You can also set the cache size here based on IE usage (mine is 100 MB). In addition one needs to move the location of TMP and TEMP from the Windows Folder on SSD to HDD (Start --> Right Click Computer --> Properties --> Advanced System Settings --> Environment variables)

Safari lovers be warned that most users are saying that there is no way to move the cache directory. Perhaps their is little need of safari on Windows with so many other good alternatives available.

Email Clients
Since email is a dynamic data, we can avoid writing it to SSD. So for Outlook/Outlook express, the.pst files should be located on a path in HDD, while for other email clients you can do the movement of local mail database to HDD.

Microsoft Office 2010
Not much do except go to File --> Options --> Save in each installed office application and change  auto recover, documents, server cache, templates and any other such writable data location to the HDD.

Source Insight
Go to Options --> Preferences --> Folders tab and change the location of Main User Data folder to HDD and every other path is relatively adjusted. Nice.

Avast Antivirus
This was something that gave me the most trouble. Avast installation has a "defs" folder which I think stores the antivirus definitions (updated almost daily) based on what timestamps I see for file creation/updation. I wanted to move this to HDD, but whatever I do even administrator account/rights is not allowed to move this. I tried many things, including fiddling with ACL and even manged to get my account converted as a guest, but to no avail. Finally I did a F8 at startup , booted into safe mode and I could use Mklink to move it to HDD. After that boot normally and all definitions are now being downloaded to HDD through the symlinked folder on SSD

Its all manual work and we can do with a tool which can do this for all applications. And though many such tiunings might seem really not worth it, every drops adds to the ocean. If we are aware of this we can do this right after we install any application.

Similarly we can set the directories for every application as applicable. Winzip, Winrar, Visual studio, etc You can check the write rate using the resource manager of Windows 7 task manger. The tools are two only

(a) Change the settings from the program or edit the registry for the program if that gives some options
(b) If their is no configuration item, change the folder to a symbolic link to a folder in HDD


The key point remains identifying where any application writes its static & dynamic data. I think readers will get the idea by now. 

Long Live SSDs !!!

SSDs and what they bring from the table

These days if you go to a reputed computer hardware dealer in S.P.Road, Bangalore and ask either for an enterprise drive (64 MB cache, SATA III, 7200 RPM) or a 10000 RPM Velociraptor, they will almost frown at your request and immediately ask you that why you don't go for an SSD ? 

As their were confusing choices in the HDD area ( I like 3.5" drives from Western Digital, as they haven't died on me, some even after 6 years), there are in SSD. WD itself has Caviar greens, blues and blacks, apart from Velociraptor and Enterprise.In SSDs there are tons of choices from OCZ, Corsair, Crucial, Intel, Samsung, etc. To begin with let me make some recommendation of WD HDDs

(1) Caviar Green -- Very good drive for NAS, where you network connection and processor will be the bottleneck and not the transfer speeds of the drive. They run cooler and make less noise

(2) Caviar Blue -- Your regular Computer user.

(3) Caviar Black -- Power user who needs a fast drive for reads, not so much for writes and does not care too much about reliability

(4) RE4 enterprise -- RAID, most reliable and for servers or users who do a lot of disk writes (uploading/downloading torrents for eg.). I recommend this sa workstation drive too, though WD does not list it that way.

(5) Velociraptor -- At the low capacity end (250 GB) I do not recommend it, as its pricey, does not offer enough storage and you should seriously look at SSD as your boot drive + applications and mate with one of the above 4 for data. the SSD wil be much much faster as a boot drive.

Coming back to the core topic, lets see what per common choices that will influence a buyer's decision

(1) Cost -> One metric is cost per GB. Even with falling SSD prices and inflated HDD prices due to flooding in Thailand's HDD manufacturing units, SSD do not fare well in this metric compared to HDD. Except of-course the 250 GB 10000 RPM raptor drives. If some one has an idea of using a raptor as a boot drive, drop that idea right away and look at SSD for that and supplement it with an additional HDD for data. In simple words, SSD make no sense for storage.

(2) Performance --> SSDs are miles ahead of HDDs (even the WD velociraptor) in performance (read/write). They have bigger caches ( I have 1 GB cache in my OCZ Vertex 4 compared to 64 MB in WD RE4). My windows & ultimate installation with tons of Apps and un-optimized services at start-up boots in 15-20 seconds flat after BIOS loads the MBR (would give it a minute in HDD). Apps start in a zap (like office, photoshop, Corel, etc) 

(2) Noise -> SSDs are flash based and have no mechanical parts. Therefore they are silent while even the best HDDS are fairly audible., the blacks, enterprises and raptors being much more louder.

(4) Durability -> A not so important concern for desktops, but the crown will go to SSDs. We don't throw Desktops around, do we ?

(5) Reliability -> This is where things get tricky. SSDs have a technology limitation, that the number of writes on any sector (if we compare it with an HDD terminology) is limited. In simple words we can say that the same area on SSD can be written only a finite number of times (it is almost infinite in case of HDDs). Manufacturers are very picky about this and DO NOT mention this *finite* number in their product specifications and instead talk about performance only. So in general SSDs can seem to be less reliable than HDDS are not suitable for applications, features which constantly have a very high number of writes during their usage lifetime. And that's why we do not recommend SSDs to be used for data. I will cover this point in detail in a subsequent post as to how to manage this to extend SSD reliability and get the performance and reduced noise benefits.

(6) Power Consumption -> SSDs win here too by a wide margin, however their cost per GB limits limits their usage in Media Players and NAS. I would have recommended this for car audio, but pen-drives are cheaper and have lesser footprint for this applications 

So for now, the best combination is 

(a) SSD for OS + Applications --> The OS and application have to be tuned to work best on SSDs

(b) HDD for data --> Your multimedia files, Development projects, Email databases, browser caches, torrent data and temporary files, etc ...

I will shortly post in detail on how to do this for Windows 7 and linux later.