What to do with my SSD?

[unpopular]

Before I start, let me explain a little background.

One big reason I got an SSD was to install Windows. I don't really care about fast startup (it's nice, but i can make a sammich or something as Windows loads), however, my RAID card has this annoying alarm that goes off if a drive fails. It's REALLY friggin' loud and thus far I haven't figured out how to turn it off from the BIOS (don't ask how I know this, it's stupid). I can turn it off from the software easily, but I need to have Windows running to access that.

So my idea was that I'd install windows on the 240gb SSD I have and use the leftover space for scratch, cache and whatever other high performance disk drive needs I have - which is an equally important motivator to get an SSD.

The problem is when I migrate the full OS over to the SSD, there isn't enough room left for After Effects to safely write it's cache, nevermind cache files from Blender, Maya or Fusion.

My eventual plan is to buy a PCIe SSD, use it for cache files and use the SATA SSD only for the OS. However, I'm a ways off from that.

I figure these are my options:

1) I could move all the files and prgrams, aside from the operating system back onto the HDD using symbolic links. Doing so would make Windows run faster, but all my high-demand software would reside back on the slower hard drive.

2) I could make a symbolic link from the hard drive and move the select software (Adobe CC, Fusion, Blender, Autodesk) to the SSD. But this would make the SSD not bootable Windows would run on the slower SSD, and I'd be stuck with the risk of having that pesky alarm go off for hours while a damaged partition is being rebuilt.

Adobe also advises that it is ideal to place scratch and cache files on a separate HD from the one your OS is on.

3) I could install a rudimentary (non-upgraded) version of windows, along with the RAID card software onto the SSD in case of a hard drive failure, plus then symbolically link copies of my software.

4) I could just leave the drive blank, use it only for cache files until I can afford the PCIe drive.

5) I could contact Dell about how to turn off that pesky alarm from the BIOS (well, I'm going to do this one, I still have an active support contract; there has to be a way).

What would you do? How important is it that Windows resides on the SSD?

 

[Dave442]

Sounds a bit complicated.
I made my foray into SSD with a Mac Book Pro and am running Windows XP on a virtual machine using Parallels (for a few legacy programs I still use). LR and PS on the Mac OS. Basically with the SSD trying to maintain a minimum installation.
As far as the RAID card alarm, I would just pull card and dampen the alarm.

 

[unpopular]

Yes, that would work actually. A piece of electrical tape over the buzzer's pinhole would certainly do the trick.

 

[fjrabon]

I clicked on this thread and thought "duct tape will probably be the solution they came to" and... Yep.

 

[unpopular]

Well. Everything went into inexplicable sharts mode. Reinstalling Windows... this OS is so damn fickle sometimes.

Anyway. Yeah. I poked around the BIOS on the RAID card and found sufficiently buried the alarm setting. I swear that was just a cruel joke to have that thing set by default so that in your most stressful moments, waiting and hoping that a partition can be rebuilt there's this insistent beeping screaming at you (I know, in a server it makes sense).

So that's one thing solved. Still not sure how to manage everything else.