August 7, 2015 at 09:50Rum and Pepsi Cola. HyperX Fury + WD Green = love?
“Everyone, of course, knows:
Alcohol is terribly harmful,
And the Pepsi-Cola drink is
extremely healthy.
So ...
Rum and Pepsi-Cola. "
© Mike Naumenko
Why am I? To paraphrase a classic of Russian rock: HDD slows down, SSD is expensive, especially now ... There is no happiness in life, except for one option: SSD + HDD. On the example of inexpensive and affordable Kingston HyperX Fury 240 Gb and Western Digital Green 4 Tb, I will consider the option of correctly building and optimizing such a bundle.
Disclaimer. The text is written not so much for those who ate the dog on tuning and optimizing absolutely any system from a desktop computer to an underwater vigorous rocket carrier, but also for those who seek knowledge and find it by coming to geektimes.ru.
Step 1. No matter how funny it sounds - this is the correct connection to the ports on the motherboard
Due to the fact that the boot sector is usually registered on the first physical disk, and when you install the “classic” HDD first, there is a chance that if you want to replace the second disk, you can get an inoperative operating system.
The surest solution would be to connect a solid-state drive to the first port of the motherboard (usually labeled SATA0), and to the SATA1 port or any other following hard drive. For color differentiation, you can take the stickers that come with some motherboards or just different color SATA cables (if any on the farm).
Accordingly, HyperX Fury 240 Gb is connected to the first port, and WD Green 4 Tb to the second.
Step 2. Choosing and installing the OS
Firstly, refrain from transferring a previously installed OS, this is not the best idea when you start a new life on an SSD. The most appropriate solution would be to install from scratch (I allow myself to talk about Microsoft operating systems, since this is the dominant type) of the selected (and acquired) version of WIndows. Of course, it is not necessary to install Windows XP in modern realities, it is better to stop on Windows 8.1 or Windows 10. These OSs are able to work adequately with solid-state drives and large disks (the second disk according to the conditions of our task is 4 terabytes). Well, by the way, do not chase beautiful names - Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 Home will be enough for a home user.
Step 3. Transferring folders to the most frequently written to the hard drive
If you have folders in which a large volume of file recording is constantly going, transfer them to your hard drive. When placing the Lightroom catalog and the folders with photos on WD Green 4 Tb, the overall speed of the program changed slightly. And with a correctly configured cache in Lightroom directly with a hard drive, program communication will be minimized.
Smart people are also advised to transfer directories for temporary files to a classic disk, and I probably agree with them.
To change this setting, you need to run "System Properties", on the "Advanced" tab, select "Environment Variables" and in the window that opens, select a directory and click "Change" and set the correct path where the OS can record not very valuable temporary data.
Step 4. Optimization of OS settings
Here you also need to be very careful and not to make irreparable improvements. Many copies are broken on the Internet on the topic of disabling ReadyBoot, Superfetch services and other things, IMHO, this will not bring a real performance gain.
In my humble opinion, two main tweaks were enough:
1) Disabling the Windows Search service - this will reduce the amount of information written to the SSD disk when building indexes.
2) Disabling Prefetch - this technology was developed to speed up programs by proactively reading from disk, but now SSDs with random reading have no problems, therefore the service itself is almost useless.
And here are the caveats ... Are these settings good when you have a single solid-state drive in your system, and will it be better to work without Prefetch with four-terabyte WD Green? I'm not sure, despite the fact that synthetic tests say that there will be no difference.
Step 5. Enjoyment
Use and enjoy!
Step 5.1 Backup setup
Your happiness will be incomplete if the operating system with all installed programs and documents wants to lie on its side. I recommend (since the second large volume disk) to configure automatic daily / weekly backup of the entire system partition to a dedicated folder on a regular disk, in my case Western Digital Green 4 Tb. This is best done using specialized software, for example, Acronis True Image.
Of course, you can’t get past the actual performance and cost of the devices from which this mess was brewed. SSD HyperX Fury 240 Gb costs - 7670 rubles , and WD Green 4 Tb - 11 730 rubles.
Synthetic performance tests:
HyperX Fury is a glorious representative of SSDs on SandForce SF-2281 controllers, so we do not expect miracles. WD Green 4 Tb - in the field of linear speeds it looks very worthy even against the background of WD Black:
Characteristics on manufacturers' websites:
You ask me what gives such a distribution of power? The answer is obvious - fast operation of the OS, long service of the SSD-drive, reliable storage of your files. All of the above is the best investment today in the file system - and everything will fit and the system will move quite quickly.
Thanks for attention! Stay with Yulmart at GeekTimes!
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