 <\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\nThe new machine has a Intel Core i5 @ 3.4 Ghz. In the words of Captain James T. Kirk, “Is that a lot?” <\/p>\n The fun thing here is the memory, which is 16GB. Yesterday I was watching a movie on Netflix, while at the same time I had about a dozen tabs open in Chrome. I also had Minecraft running in the background, along with Paint Shop Pro 8. Then I realized that I had Dishonored still running in the background. I’d alt-tabbed away that morning and forgot about it. I switched back to Dishonored and the game popped right up, ready to go. It’s like the thing runs on magic.<\/p>\n SSD<\/h3>\nThis is my first time using a solid state drive. It’s amazing. The only problem with using a solid state drive is that Windows is stupid and dumb and annoying and makes it difficult to use it properly.<\/p>\n Solid state drives are basically memory being used as storage media. This makes it incredibly fast – orders of magnitude faster than the fastest hard drives. For this to work, the memory has to be non-volatile. Unlike the memory in your computer, this memory needs to remember its state when the power is off, or else turning off your computer would wipe your hard drive. A downside of this non-volatile memory is that it… wears out? Somehow? Once you flip the bits too many times, they can’t be flipped anymore and that spot of the drive goes dark. This means the drive should be used for your operating system, drivers, and applications, which are usually installed once and rarely changed. It should not<\/em> be used for data that changes often. <\/p>\nThe point is that you should keep large, slow-loading, rarely changed stuff on the SSD, but small, fast-loading, often-changed things should be placed on a regular hard drive. In Linux this is as simple as mounting your \/home directory on another drive. On Windows…<\/p>\n You’ll want to move \/Documents and Settings\/<\/tt> or \/users\/<\/tt>, or whatever Microsoft is calling the user’s data ghetto this time around. I found a guide that will show you how to boot into DOS (using the installation DVD) and move the \/users\/<\/tt> directory to another drive. The problem is that if you do anything that causes Windows to re-letter your drives, then you run the risk of killing your entire Windows install<\/strong>. For example, if you add a partition, remove an unrelated drive, or (this applies to me) have a USB drive that happened to be unplugged at boot time, then all the drive letters might<\/strong> get bumped around and suddenly Windows can’t find \/users\/<\/tt> so it won’t boot. It’s not even smart enough to drop you into DOS where you can fix the problem yourself. No, you have to go get the installation disk again and repeat the whole process. And I hope you remember all the steps without needing to Google it because you computer won’t boot and if you goof it up you might kill the directory forever. Oops! <\/p>\nSure, it’s dangerous, inconvenient, and unstable, but Microsoft was nice enough to leave it undocumented so you wouldn’t trouble yourself with it. <\/p>\n I tried this system of keeping the \/users\/<\/tt> directory on another drive and simply linking it in the file structure. It worked fine until, working in Linux, I changed around a few of my Linux partitions. I didn’t touch any drives that Windows could use or even see, but apparently even this slight change to the partition table was enough to entice Windows to play another round of drive-letter bingo, which caused it to kill itself. <\/p>\n Sigh.<\/em><\/p>\nAfter re-installing, I decided I didn’t want a time-bomb like this lurking under the hood. I’ve left \/users\/<\/tt> on the SSD and I’m mitigating the damage by worrying about it occasionally. I did find a simple trick to force Minecraft to use a custom directory. That’s a critical one, since Minecraft generates HUGE files that are changed very often, perhaps every time you break or build a block. That’s exactly the sort of thing you want to keep away from your SSD.<\/p>\n Even if you do manage to move \/users\/<\/tt> without ruining things, you’re still stuck with the thrice-cursed Windows Registry on the SSD. The registry is probably the most-altered blob of data on the entire machine. You know how programs remember little details like windows position, size, and maximized state? Little tidbits like that are stuffed into the registry, alongside crucial driver data, serial numbers, personal information, saved passwords, recently used files, and all those other little details that software remembers without being asked. Every time you save, load, click, drag, move, or copy, you’re probably generating many tiny little write operations to the registry. <\/p>\n I’ve looked around for how you could move the registry, and most sites advise you “DON’T TOUCH IT! DON’T LOOK AT IT. RUN AWAY!” So that’s nice. I’m just going to assume that if this was a serious danger to the lifespan of the device, someone would have invented a workaround by now. <\/p>\n |
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