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I have just bought my new Lenovo Ideapad Y580 which has a 32 GB SSD (drive C:) and a 750 GB Hard disk (drive D:). Windows 7 came installed on the SSD (drive C:) of course. I started making installation on MS Office and some other programs and very soon the space on drive C: finished. Then I de-installed some programs and carefully re-installed them on drive D: to save space on the SSD. But however careful I am, some programs do not ask me where to be installed and are being installed on drive C. I am afraid that quite soon the SSD space will be occupied again.

Is there a simple solution on that? All the threads I have read are mentioning manipulation of the register in order to move default path of 'Program Files' on D: but this seems to me for advanced users and also brings risks. Since the SSD technology is becoming more widespread, I suppose there must be a standard solution for that.

For the moment this small SSD brings me more worries than advantages. If it was a disk partition, I would format all, re-install Windows 7 and at the same time make a bigger partition for C: device but this is not the case.

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  • How much RAM does your PC have? Windows 7 caches your system up to the total quantity of your RAM (so 8gb system file if you have 8gb of RAM) for hibernation. Lookup how to disable hyberfil.sys, which should free you up some space.
    – Oliver G
    Jul 4, 2012 at 17:00

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Such small SSD are usually not designed for an installation of Windows. They are designed to be used as "Smart Response SSD Caching".

Therefore th common approach would be to install our system on the HDD and then enable the SSD as cache via the Intel tools. There is a detailed guide how to enable SSD caching.

On the other hand it is even with a 32GB SSD possible to use it as a system disk. Large directories can be moved to the HDD by creating a soft link at the old location on the SSD. That can be done via the command-line utility "mklink". Afterwards Windows and the programs thinks they are accessing a file on the C drive but the soft-link redirects it to the HDD.

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  • If the folder is always used by the OS when running (such as the User folder) you can use this tutorial lifehacker.com/5467758/move-the-users-directory-in-windows-7
    – Martheen
    Jul 4, 2012 at 12:30
  • Guys, thank you for your replies. The option to use the SSD as cache. I followed the link in the detailed guide and there are steps which are not clear for me:
    – LDI
    Jul 5, 2012 at 12:58
  • @Robert, I followed the link in the detailed guide and there are steps which are not clear for me: - connect both drives to the Intel-powered SATA ports in your system - what does that mean?; then fire it up - what does it mean? enter the system BIOS, and configure the SATA controller to RAID mode - how to enter the system BIOS and how to configure the SATA controller to RAID mode? The rest I can understand and I will manage with the Intel RST driver.
    – LDI
    Jul 5, 2012 at 13:06

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