compressing win7 primary drive SSD

[flenser]

Hello,

I'm using an 80GB intel mSATA drive as the boot drive in my laptop, and I'm chronically short of drive space. I have already moved most of my documents, data, media library to the laptop's 320GB HD but I still don't have much wiggle room on the SSD.

So, what are the drawbacks (other than performance loss) to letting windows compress the entire primary partition on the SSD? I don't mind some mild performance loss since the leap going from a regular HD to the SSD was so huge and the laptop has pretty quick specs otherwise (i7 cpu, 6GB ram), but I don't know if there are any other issues concerning compressing a win7 primary boot SSD drive.

Thanks in advance...

 

[odditory]

you're introducing unnecessary complexity and compromising data recoverability since deleted folder/folder/lost partition scanners don't work on compressed volumes.


remember "KISS" (keep it simple, stupid). instead get a disk usage analyzer and figure out what can be deleted and where extra room can be made.

 

[toast0]

The ntfs compression isn't actually that great at compressing things, and a lot of your data may already be compressed, but it probably doesn't hurt to try.

 

[cactus]

I use NTFS compression for my 256GB M4 with out problem. I dont keep anything on it besides programs though, all storage is on another computer and backed up. Depending on how you use your laptop, look at turning off hibernation and swap, that will free up >= 12GB.

 

[extide]

As NTFS compresses by blocks, you are adding potentially another read-modify-write cycle on top of whatever the SSD is doing, potentially increasing the write amplification as well as slowing down performance. I wouldn't do it as a quest to increase performance, but if you need the space it wouldn't be too bad. If the compression was a bit more intelligent, then it could infact be used to increase speed (like how sandforce works)

I would suggest getting a larger SSD, they are cheap now

 

[flenser]

Yea, hibernation is already turned off. Swap has already been moved to the 320GB conventional drive. I would be doing it to help with capacity problems, not for speed. I'm happy with the speed of the storage subsystem as it is. The computer feels more responsive than with a conventional drive and boot times are fine (approx 30 sec).

 

[flenser]

Increasing write amplification isn't good, but will the drive maintain itself ok so performance doesn't crash out? It's one of the intel mSATA drives and I'm trying to keep a good chunk of the drive (10GB or so out of 80GB) unused...

 

[extide]

Increasing write amplification isn't good, but will the drive maintain itself ok so performance doesn't crash out? It's one of the intel mSATA drives and I'm trying to keep a good chunk of the drive (10GB or so out of 80GB) unused...

It will maintain itself fine, yeah. I would suggest looking into a bigger mSata drive, they are kinda expensive though.

 

[flenser]

Yea. Pricing and choice for mSATA drives are horrible. There are a ton of drives 60GB or smaller to use on the newer motherboards but not very much at the larger capacities and pretty much nothing from the cutting-edge manufacturers.

My laptop uses a 7mm main drive so even there my options are limited since SSD makers are stupidly hanging on to the old 9.5mm height standard. You can easily fit a 7mm drive into a 9.5mm space with a couple of shims, but a 9.5mm drive can't ever possibly fit into a 7mm chassis. Stupid design and marketing decision.