Windows 10: New Win10 laptop w PCIe SSD + HDD, where should the Cache Drive be?

Hi,
I just bought a new laptop with 256GB NVMe PCIe SSD + 1TB HDD and 16 GB of DDR 4 RAM.
It's running Win 10 Home 64Bit.

I am wondering where should have the cache drive or virtual memory?
and how big should it be?

If it have it on SSD it will be faster but - it will be written continuously which may shorten its life as unlike HDD SSD has limited write cycles.

This is my first time with both SSD and Win10 and I am sorry if the question is stupid.
Thanks in advance for your help.

:)

 

Windows 10 upgrade and clean install in new SSD

I can't seem to find the answer I'm looking for in similar threads.

I have a laptop with a Windows 8.1 installed in a HDD. I have not yet upgraded to Win10 but I have reserved already.

I want to do a clean install of Win10 on a new SSD I'm buying and I'm worried that if I upgrade to Win10 on my current drive then do a clean install on the SSD, because of the hardware change (HDD to SSD) the Win10 product key will become invalid.

What should I do?

- Upgrade to Win 10 on my current HDD then swap the SSD and do a clean install

- Clone my current hard drive do the SSD then do the upgrade

Note: The OS (Win7) installation came with the laptop

Note 2: I don't need to keep my files

 

Boot Win10 as external Hard Drive

Hi, I've bought a new SSD for replacing my old HDD. In the Old HDD I've Debian and Win10 with dual boot.

In the new SSD I don't want to install Win10, I want to use it via USB; speed isn't an issue to me. I wont be using so much...

When I plug the old HDD via USB, as an external drive, I can boot from it, but Windows fails to start with "INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE" or something of sort. Debian boots Ok. If I install the HDD in the laptop instead of the SSD it boots Ok.

Is there a way of me making my old HDD to start Windows 10 as and external hard drive?

 

Keep pagefile on ssd - modern ssds will not crap out for many years on write cycles.

Besides with 16GB and new memory comprssion algorithms you should rarely need to pagefile anyway.

 

You can just lower PF size to 1GB, it's enough even for 8GB of RAM. Don't worry about too much writing on SSD they can take it even better than HDDs. It's not true that new SSD have smaller write cycles, that thinking has been dragging around from first ones. Theoretical limit is there but it's such that in normal use it will not come into play for many years.

 

Thank you Cereberus and CountMike for the replies.

Till now I always made two separate cache drives - 1 for windows and one for other Programs that lets you select cache drive/scratch disk. It kept my system fast as cache files didn't mess up C drive - leading to less fragmentation.

So from now I don't need to keep a separate cache drive somewhere other than system drive (C)?

Thanks again.

 

I agree with Cereberus and CountMike. There is no need to put cache files on any drive other than the SSD. Also, SSDs don't have fragmentation problems because there is no read/write head to be moving around.

 

No need with SSD. The reason we used to put PF and virtual memory on another disk is to be able to read and write on C: and it would not have to do it simultaneously on the same disk and that used to speed things up a bit.
SSDs can read and right thru 4 channels at least and HDDs on one only.

 

Hybrid drives combine the best of two into one unit. It uses the NVRAM for storing data while waiting for either the CPU or Hard Drive to catch up with the cached data.

Do not change how Windows has it set up. The manufacturer should have a utility installed that handles the Hybrid.