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I have all of my components for a new build but before I start I have been thinking about maybe getting an SSD to use as my boot drive. I have a very large collection of music, 200 plus Gb worth. I keep it in " My Music " on my old computer. Obviousely there wont be room for it all if I install Windows on the SSD as its just over 200 Gb. Do I put my music on my regular HDD and if so, how do I connect it to " My Music " which will be on my SSD so it will show up and play on the media player? Just a little confused on how this all works. My HDD is a Seagate FireCuda 2 TB. This is a hybrid HDD. Thanks

Dougie

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Reverend Jim
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I have set up a dozen or so systems for friends/family, several with SSD/HDD combos. Regardless, I always use the same configuration. I create a C partition and a D partition. For SSD/HDD, the C partition is the entire SSD and the D drive is the HDD.

Once I have Windows installed I create folders on the D drive named

  • Music
  • Pictures
  • Videos
  • Downloads
  • Documents

Then I open Explorer. For each of the current My Pictures, My Music, etc, I right click and select Properties then go to the Location tab. Click on Move, then select one of the newly created folders on D. You will be asked if you want to move all files in the original folder to the new folder. Click Yes.

If you have a very large SSD you may even want to create C and D partitions on the SSD, then an E partition on the HDD. My C partition (Windows 10) is 120 gig and with all the apps I have installed I have about 52 gig free. My wife's computer has C/D on the SSD and everything else on E. I use FastStone for viewing pictures and I have it configured to save the thumbnail database on D. This greatly reduces the FastStone startup time when you have a lot of pictures.

My younger son just got a gaming system built with an SSD/HDD combo. Several of his games run under Steam. The Steam engine is installed on C but the actual games (which can be very large) he installs on D.

I also install Macrium Reflect Free and use it to take an image of C (image file gets stored on D). With all my user data folders on D I can safely restore the image to C in the event of a serious problem without fear of losing my files. Any time I install something which may be iffy I take a new full image first so that I can completely undo the installation if I don't like the results.

I can't stress strongly enough that you should maintain a backup of your D partition files. There are many good free programs like SyncBack, or even Robocopy, for backing up your files.

Edited by Reverend Jim
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