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SSD drive nearly full
I recently purchased a new Dell Vostro 3560, with a 1TB SERIAL ATA hard drive and a 32GB SSDR MSATA FULL CARD.
The 32 GB card is defined as the C drive, on which the operating system (win7) is installed, as well as Office. I took care to install any new program on the D drive, which is still quite empty, but noticed that some programs have created folders on the C drive as well (in the program files folders). The C drive is now nearly full.
Is there any way to change the partition between C and D, and allocate more memory space to C? Or should I remove windows completely and re-install everything on D? What is the right way to use the SSDR card?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated :)
Philip_Yip
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May 9th, 2013 01:00
I assume you installed Windows 7 manually. You shouldn't install Windows 7 on a 32 GB drive its just too small.
The 32 GB mSATA drive is designed to be a Cache drive. i.e. Windows should be installed on the main drive. See Dell Setup Guide for Intel Responsiveness Technologies.
Firstly you need to check the BIOS settings - "System must have BIOS set to RAID on mode (in some system BIOS menus, this mode may be called Smart Response mode or Rapid Start mode). Note: ATA and AHCI modes are not supported".
The SSD Cache drive should not listed as an optional drive when installing Windows and pretty much be invisible. Then "System must have Intel® Rapid Storage driver and application installed in the OS." See page 6-8 of the pdf document above for instructions. You will need to install and configure this application within Windows to begin caching.
Note you may be able to change the 32 GB mSATA drive for a 128 GB-512 GB one and then it would make sense to install Windows on the mSATA drive. I have not seen any users successfully report they have done this yet although there are a few threads mentioning it:
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/t/19488271.aspx
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/p/19475336/20225714.aspx
Use this pdf document alongside my Windows Reinstallation Guide for best results: http://philipyip.wordpress.com/dell-community-forums/
Cattree
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May 9th, 2013 01:00
Thank you very much Philip for your help and detailed suggestions! I'll follow your advice in correcting the matter.
Have a great day,
Cattree
Philip_Yip
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May 9th, 2013 23:00
Glad to help, let me know how it goes.
Cattree
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May 14th, 2013 07:00
Hi Philip,
Thank you for the help! Happy to report my SSD is now nearly empty, as I understand it should have been. The system takes longer to boot, but I suppose that is to be expected.
The only pesky thing is that the fan is much noisier now - it seems to be working nearly all the time, even during small tasks like internet browsing. Every once in a while it quiets down for a minute or so and then picks it back up again... Do you have any idea why this might be happening, or how to change it? The temperature in the room hasn't changed, and neither have the working conditions.
Thank you for the help,
Cattree
Philip_Yip
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May 21st, 2013 11:00
The conventional HDD should generate a lot more heat than the SSD and so it is expected as the HDD is more active the system should be warmer. It will also be slower as a Cache drive than if everything's directly on the SSD. The fan should be more active to compensate for the temperature. I don't know how loud it should be exactly though. You can assess your systems temperatures using Piriform Speccy (free version): http://www.piriform.com/speccy
A high capacity SSD would be the best but it is quite pricy and I'm not sure how big a mSATA drive this system supports because Crucial doesn't mention any mSATA drives it. http://www.crucial.com/upgrade/Dell-memory/Vostro+Notebooks/Vostro+3560-upgrades.html