Logos, Windows 10 and SSD

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/815385#Comment_815385

Ideally you should run all of Logos from the SSD. Separating the resources isn't officially supported (though it's possible through symbolic links), and you'll notice a performance penalty if you do move them.

Indexing is always necessary.

I would personally recommend a bigger SSD if you're concerned about space. You're looking at a high spec machine, and it doesn't make sense to me to skimp on fast storage, especially when you could probably buy the PC without an SSD, and then add a much larger SSD afterwards, for probably the same money.

Veli Voipio

I also recommend a larger SSD, I have 512 but 256 should do.

JT (alabama24)

I heard that IF you run the whole Logos from SSD you don't need indexing. True?

Mark answered this (you always need indexing). To add just a little: Indexing is the "magic" that allows you to be able to perform things like library searches. The importance of an SSD isn't that you don't need to index, but that indexing and searching is MUCH faster with an SSD. A "normal" hard drive has a spinning plate. An SSD has no moving parts, and is able to access info much quicker.

I can't speak from direct experience with Logos, but I am an IT professional and can give you some generalities.

Note after rereading my post - As I reread this, I realized that it may simply not apply to you. I suspect that the 1TB+128gb is a hybrid drive. If it is, in fact two separate drives, then you are half way to what I think is the optimum solution.

1. Any program will start faster and access stored information faster if it and the data reside on an SSD. SSD access is what we call 'stupid fast'. That is to say, if anyone suggested something would be that much faster, your reaction would be 'that's stupid'.

2. I doubt this but have no direct experience. The index needs to be built if for no other reason than letting Logos know what is available.

3. There are always surprises with any new OS as well as the many OS patches that come out frequently. I have seen few questions on the forums about Windows 10 and Logos and can only surmise that it works acceptably well. Our rule of thumb has been "If it works with windows 8.1, it should work on windows 10" as they are built on the same kernel (think foundation of a building). (From history, Win95 and Win98 were the same kernel, XP and Win7 were the same kernel, Win8, Win8.1, and Win10 are the same kernel.)

4. I am not trying to be jerk when I answer this even though it may sound that way.... The same as on a hard drive. Anyone with windows 10 will be able to give you guidance on how big their Windows 10 folder is. However, there is more to that question than meets the eye.

The big problem is not Windows. The big problem is all of the other things that get tucked neatly (and often hidden - literally hidden from you) away in your User folder. Then make SURE everything related to iTunes, (or music or photos, or videos) is stored on the HDD. Every time you buy an app, itunes stores it on your computer. Every time you make a backup of a device, it gets stored on your computer. The itunes folder can get huge - especially if you keep copies of podcasts.

I sense that you are trying to make a value judgement of 'how small of an SSD can I get away with?' If so, please don't play that game.

I would heartily recommend a machine with both an SSD and a traditional HDD for cost effectiveness. The SSD can then be smaller and provide you with your needs

Now your choices become - do I put the OS on the SSD and work to move everything 'big' over to the HDD - or - do I make the HDD the primary drive and move selected things to the SSD to get the speed where I want it?

At this point, you are probably thinking "But the OS needs to be on the SSD in order for windows to be fast!" Yes and no.

Intel has a technology called Fast Response that can help with this. http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/smart-response-technology.html. In essence, what this does is monitors your usage and starts keeping a copy of often used files in a special area on the SSD. The longer you use this, the better it gets at predicting what you need for your machine to run faster.

This technology operates at the hardware level and performs smart caching of frequently used files. In fact, it doesn't have to consume an entire SSD. You can either partition the SSD or (if I am reading the following link properly) just use part of the existing SSD as cache space. http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/boards-and-kits/000005501.html

What I would do is to install the OS and mundane things on the HDD. Then I would set aside some of the SSD for the caching - I would say 40GB but 20GB will be a noticeable improvement.

I know this sounds technical and difficult, but I assure you it is better than constantly fighting to keep files off of the SSD once Windows has been installed there. Even if you instruct Windows to move your user files (My Documents, etc.) to another drive, many programs do not respect this and still put things on the C: drive. Currently my machine has 14GB of things in C:\Users after pointing everything to immediately after installing the OS.

One Caveat: If Windows comes installed on the SSD on a Laptop think twice before trying to alter that. Make sure you have a system image you can revert to if things go wrong. Getting the drivers right on a fresh install of a laptop can be nearly impossible. Trust me --- Even with Dell's excellent support it does not go well. Their documentation does not properly emphasize the order in which drivers should be installed nor does it correctly give that order EVEN when you have access to internal documentation via a helpful support rep. (I buy exclusively Dell equipment for the company whose IT I manage because I think they are the best - laptop device drivers have always been an issue.)

I hope this has been helpful without being overwhelming.

Dean

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/815393#Comment_815393

While I was writing that, several others posted answers. I wasn't trying to reduce their contributions -- they are correct.

Also, I have looked a little further and it does appear that the machine you are talking about has two drives... that is good.

The real question is now which drive will Dell install the OS?

Good Luck!

Dean

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/815394#Comment_815394

Thank you all for your quick answers!

I would rather buy a bigger SSD, but Dell doesn't offer that configuration. In the past they offered the service to configure your own laptop, but now we have to deal with the systems they offer. This one is the best for my budget.

Yes, it is not a hybrid drive, but two drives

Re Mark: Would it make sense to buy this system and then replace and clone the SSD to a bigger one?

Re Dean: This is the first time I hear someone recommend OS to install on the harddrive. Would you change this recommendation when I install a 256gb SSD?

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/815398#Comment_815398

Re Dean: This is the first time I hear someone recommend OS to install on the harddrive. Would you change this recommendation when I install a 256gb SSD?

That depends on your usage.

Windows tends to slow down if the hard drive becomes more than 75% full. I don't know exactly why, but it is so. It is the first place we look when someone complains about a slow machine and if that threshold has been passed, getting back under it has huge impact on the machine's performance.

So..

How much do you have on your current hard drive?

How much do you expect that to grow during the expected life of the machine in question?

Do you expect your storage habits to change during the life of the machine (primarily video, audio, and pictures)?

If my computing habits are stable and I am not continually adding video, audio, and pictures, I would be happy with a hard drive that was double my current usage... this gives me wiggle room and still not challenge the 'magic' 75% boundary.

Assuming stable habits, I would even say that if your current files fill 60% of the anticipated hard drive, you should be ok.

The problem is that I have been doing this long enough to know that the amount of data someone will keep is often hard to predict. The problems that crop up when your primary drive is too small are sometimes painful and often difficult to remedy.

A little more digging gives me reason to believe that the OS will come on the 1TB drive - see original posters remark dated Dec 2 at 5:19 pm. http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2882366/msata-ssd-boot-primary-dell-7000-7559.html

Choices..

A : run OS on HD - slowest

B : run OS on HD and use caching - lots faster

C : run OS on SSD - fastest

I can't give you exact boot times but I suspect it is this neighborhood:

A : 30 to 40 seconds

B : 10 to 15 seconds

C : 3 to 5 seconds

(‾◡◝)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/815398#Comment_815398

I would rather buy a bigger SSD, but Dell doesn't offer that configuration.

FWIW: Have you considered any other brand besides the Dell? I purchased this which has very similar specs but note the all-SSD configuration. 512 GBs of Samsung NVME PCIe SSD (=extremely fast). All for just a couple of hundred dollars more than the Dell you are considering. It's the first laptop I have ever purchased that can truly keep up with a desktop computer.

John Duffy

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/815386#Comment_815386

I also recommend a larger SSD, I have 512 but 256 should do.

I've used a 256 SSD with all of My Documents, My Music, etc changed to be located on an additional large hard drive. That worked well with Logos and Windows (and most other programs) installed on the SSD. When I needed to upgrade my wife's laptop to an SSD, I installed my 256 in hers and bought a 512 for mine. I now have My Documents moved to the SSD, but the music etc still on the hard drive. Oh, I remember too that before all that, I had a 128GB SSD and had my operating system on that but it wasn't big enough for Logos, so I used a symbolic link to it being located on the hard drive - that worked well for Windows and my other installed programs, but when using Logos it was mostly like not having an SSD again. Definitely recommend a 256 or higher, especially if you've got lots of resources in Logos (or plan on having more soon).

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/815398#Comment_815398

Re Mark: Would it make sense to buy this system and then replace and clone the SSD to a bigger one?

If that's your only option, then yes.

If your SSD is your system drive, you'll find it getting filled up with all kind of stuff (ProgramData, some AppData). Moving this via symbolic links creates more trouble than it's worth (you'll get strange, hard to diagnose problems in the future, mostly related to permissions). I've been there, ended up reinstalling Windows to fix it, and wouldn't go back.

On my main desktop, my Windows folder is 17.8Gb, ProgramData is 13.1Gb, and my Users folder (excluding Logos) is 90Gb (compressed to 52Gb). The point is that 128Gb would not be enough. (My Logos is 78Gb, which excludes video.)

Re Dean: This is the first time I hear someone recommend OS to install on the harddrive. Would you change this recommendation when I install a 256gb SSD?

I disagree with Dean here, as you've obviously got the budget to afford proper SSD. His proposal is fine if you can only afford a very small SSD, but the performance gains of a true SSD set up are worth it, particularly as the price of SSD storage is coming down all the time.

FWIW, my only set up is:

System drive: 500Gb Samsung 850 EVO SSD (includes Logos). I've used about 300Gb.
Programs drive: 2TB Segate ST2000DM001. I've only used 264Gb of this drive.
Data drive: 4TB Western Digital Green. I've used 2TB.
Paging drive: 64Gb Crucial M4 SSD. I use this for the paging file and my TEMP folder. I don't need this drive, but I bought it when SSDs were much more expensive and I had a smaller primary SSD that was full. In the past I've also used it in the way that Dean is suggesting you do, but I didn't find the performance gains were worthwhile, compared to my current set up.
Backup drive: 5TB Toshiba MD04ABA500V. I've used over 4TB of this drive.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/815506#Comment_815506

I am about to buy a new laptop and considering a Dell Inspiron 15, 7000 series, 6th generation i7-6700HQ (6M cache), 16gb memory, 1tb harddisk + 128gb SSD, Windows 10.

BTW, it looks like this device uses a mSata card to provide the SSD. It also looks as though they put the OS on the hard drive.

That would rule out this laptop for me unless either:

I swapped the main HDD for an SSD which would cost $200-$300 for a 960GB SSD.
I purchased a 500GB mSATA for $150, and partitioned that drive to give 64-128Gb to cache the HDD (as Dean described above), and used the rest for paging/temp and Logos.

Lee

Hi Michel

I don't know if you are good working with system's changing HDD & SSD. not all note books are made the same and some are harder to work with.

After looking at the above spec that you are thinking about. Maybe looking at the Dell XPS 15

6th Generation Intel Skylake Core i7-6700HQ Quad Core (6M Cache, up to 3.5 GHz)
NVIDIA® GeForce GTX 960M with 2GB GDDR5
8GB (2x4GB) 2133Mhz DDR4 Memory
256GB PCIe Solid State Drive
Windows 10 Home

This would give a built-in GPU using GDDR5 memory & faster DDR4 ram , as well as the 256GB PCIe SSD. It is a little more cost than the Dell Inspiron 15. But no upgrade would be needed.

8 months ago i was going through the same upgrade choices, but after 4 months of looking at reviews and spec and thinking a lot. I chose for the first time to get a Mac, I could not be happier; I do wish the PCIe SSD was 512GB but you can not always have everything.

Dave Thawley

Regarding Drive space - as an alternative suggestion I use Dropbox. It costs $7 per month but I seem to have far more than I will ever use (nearly a TB at the moment). I keep my music and other big resources on this and just download them when I am going to use it. It means I have run with a 156GB SSD on my laptop and had lots of spare

Also I run a desktop with a terabyte hard drive and have put in a 128GB SSD just for logos. I boot on the normal hard drive but run logos off the SSD and its fast :-)

Dave Thawley

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/815506#Comment_815506

Hi Michel

I don't know if you are good working with system's changing HDD & SSD. not all note books are made the same and some are harder to work with.

After looking at the above spec that you are thinking about. Maybe looking at the Dell XPS 15

6th Generation Intel Skylake Core i7-6700HQ Quad Core (6M Cache, up to 3.5 GHz)

NVIDIA® GeForce GTX 960M with 2GB GDDR5

8GB (2x4GB) 2133Mhz DDR4 Memory

256GB PCIe Solid State Drive

Windows 10 Home

This would give a built-in GPU using GDDR5 memory & faster DDR4 ram , as well as the 256GB PCIe SSD. It is a little more cost than the Dell Inspiron 15. But no upgrade would be needed.

8 months ago i was going through the same upgrade choices, but after 4 months of looking at reviews and spec and thinking a lot. I chose for the first time to get a Mac, I could not be happier; I do wish the PCIe SSD was 512GB but you can not always have everything.

My experience is that to clone a laptop drive you need to get the cloning software onto a CD (the 3 different ones I have all have this option but you may need to download a windows add on (for free) so you can access the touchpad from booting up on the optical drive. The cloning software should describe this (I use acryonis but now but they are all much the same) . You need to put the destination of the clone (i.e. the SSD) into the laptop and put the original disk from the laptop into a caddy. boot off the optical disk you burned from the cloning software and then the transfer will be quite straightforward. It can take an hour if everything goes well or a day if things go wrong but it means you will be able to run a lightning fast laptop :-)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/815492#Comment_815492

BTW, it looks like this device uses a mSata card to provide the SSD. It also looks as though they put the OS on the hard drive.

That would rule out this laptop for me unless either:

I swapped the main HDD for an SSD which would cost $200-$300 for a 960GB SSD.

I purchased a 500GB mSATA for $150, and partitioned that drive to give 64-128Gb to cache the HDD (as Dean described above), and used the rest for paging/temp and Logos.

Mark, are you saying that you would only take a SSD rather than a HDD + SSD?
My understanding is that the vulnerability of SSD is in writing to it. So, if you would use your (only) SSD for also writing processes (like your documents, photo's, video's, etc.), then the SSD will become worse and worse.

That's why I would prefer a combination of HDD + SSD. How does that make sense to you?

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/815506#Comment_815506

Hi Michel

I don't know if you are good working with system's changing HDD & SSD. not all note books are made the same and some are harder to work with.

After looking at the above spec that you are thinking about. Maybe looking at the Dell XPS 15

Thanks, Lee, for considering my options! I have looked at the XPS, but:

- only 8gb memory (instead of 16gb with the Inspiron)
- only 256 SSD, which is by far not enough for what I need
... and that for $300 more ...[:(]

The other thing, as I said in my previous post is that I so far would rather prefer a combi of HDD + SSD, unless you guys can convince me of the unnecessity of that combi...

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/815543#Comment_815543

Regarding Drive space - as an alternative suggestion I use Dropbox.

Dropbox is not going to work with us, missionaries working in the middle of nowhere, paying for every single bit from the cloud.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/815550#Comment_815550

Mark, are you saying that you would only take a SSD rather than a HDD + SSD?

No. I currently have both SSD and HDDs in my primary computer. But I am saying I wouldn't take a device with only 128Gb SSD, and I wouldn't spend $1,300 on a machine that didn't have an SSD as the primary drive.

My understanding is that the vulnerability of SSD is in writing to it. So, if you would use your (only) SSD for also writing processes (like your documents, photo's, video's, etc.), then the SSD will become worse and worse.

Modern SSDs are far more reliable than HDDs! There are dozens of articles on SSD reliability, but here are three to start:

If you Google, make sure you read something no more than 12 months old, as SSDs are much better than they were 3-5 years ago.

For what it's worth, my Samsung 850 EVO has, as standard, a 5-year warranty (or 150TB write, whichever comes first). In four months, it's done 10TB of writes, so I'll get the full five years warranty. Try getting a 5-year warranty with a consumer HDD...

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/815562#Comment_815562

Mark is right...the original concerns about SSDs and wearing out due to writing too often are not nearly as, well, concerning as they used to be.

I would not, however, recommend having the windows 'swap' file (virtual memory) on an SSD.

Out of curiosity, have you considered a Surface Pro?

JAL

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/815552#Comment_815552

missionaries working in the middle of nowhere

You are in Papua New Guinea, correct?

What computers have you been using there to date; type, make, model, specs?

Under what environmental conditions will you be primarily operating your laptop? This can be important to deciding what device to purchase.

Will you primarily be indoors with air conditioning? (If true then ignore this post [;)])

What is the most likely ambient temperature? Humidity? Dust/Dirt?

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/815613#Comment_815613

Yes, but we mainly reside in the highlands (1700m), which is not too hot. Only in rainy season the humidity can be very high.

I have been using a Dell Inspiron 17, Studio 1749 since 2010, last two years in PNG. Specs: i7 M620, 8gb RAM, 500gb HDD. A few times I had problems with one or two keys that were stuck, solving it with an Air Duster.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/815576#Comment_815576

Out of curiosity, have you considered a Surface Pro?

No, because it's far above my budget!

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/815562#Comment_815562

If you Google, make sure you read something no more than 12 months old, as SSDs are much better than they were 3-5 years ago.
For what it's worth, my Samsung 850 EVO has, as standard, a 5-year warranty (or 150TB write, whichever comes first). In four months, it's done 10TB of writes, so I'll get the full five years warranty. Try getting a 5-year warranty with a consumer HDD...

Thanks, Mark, my first research on SSD is from last year. I see that the Samsung 850 EVO is pretty well received and well priced as well.

I think I've collected enough input to make up my mind. For now my choice would be Dell Inspiron 15, 7000 series; i7 6700HQ, 128gb SSD + 1TB HDD, 16gb RAM, then replace the 128gb by a Samsung 850 EVO 250gb SSD and use the 128gb for another laptop. I would (re) install / clone Windows 10 on the SSD if it is installed on the HDD and go along with the result.

First I'll leave it for a few days and then decide.

Thanks all for your considerations!

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/815641#Comment_815641

By now I have the system mentioned above.

Does anyone have experience with relocating the Users folder from the SSD to the HDD? I did it using sysprep, but ended up with a mess (taskbar, start menu, etc. not working, not able to create properly working user accounts, etc.). So I did a fresh reinstall of the original settings, facing again the question: will I move the Users folder to HDD or will I not?

How would you answer? And why?

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/818119#Comment_818119

Does anyone have experience with relocating the Users folder from the SSD to the HDD?

If you mean moving only the Windows C:\Users folder why did you use sysprep?