# Installing Win8 Pro on 20gb SSD



## radi0head (Feb 19, 2004)

Hi, just bought a second hand acer aspire s3 that comes with a 20gb ssd and 500gb hdd. 

It came with Win7 on the 500gb, but I have installed a separate copy of Win8 on the 20gb ssd for faster booting (what the drive was designed for). 

My questions are this: 
1. a) How do I setup windows 8 so that just the core files are on the ssd, but any metro apps, acer programs, or otherwise loads on the 500gb drive? 
b) How do I know what files are needed for booting so I can maintain fast boot/wake times? 
c) Will this mean I will essentially have 4 program files? (x86/x64 for each drive?) 

2. a) The SSD has a 4gb "hibernation partition" which supposedly enables LONG hibernate times. If it was created for Win7, how do I know if it is working for windows 8, and is there any major loss if I just get rid of it? 
b) Can I remove this partition which is on the same drive as my Win8 OS without needed to wipe the whole drive? 

3. a) Are the drivers and other software on the 15gb recovery partition (on the hdd) backwards compatible with windows 8?
b) Should I bother holding on to them if I can just get new drivers online? 

I know it's loads of questions, but know this is the best place to start my journey to figuring this all out. 
thanks!

EDIT: So I just did some research and see how the hibernation drive matches the ram size and I assume just makes a copy when the computer sleeps, from which it uses to boot up what you had running before hand.
How do I know if this is working?
And does it even make sense to have windows on the ssd? Should I bother? thanks


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## Triple6 (Dec 26, 2002)

20GB isn't really enough for a Windows 7 installation, not after you do updates and install a few programs - not all programs can be easily told to install to another drive. 16GB is the minimum for 32-bit, and 20GB is the minimum for 64-bit, realistically you need to be around 30GB and thats if you install pretty much every program onto a secondary drive. Don't forget you need free space to temp files, system restore, and TRIM and/or GC for the SSD itself.

The 20GB SSD is the secondary drive, it's meant for caching in this model, see the following: http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/laptops/1289647/acer-aspire-s3





You should use Windows 8 drivers for Windows 8, if there are no Windows 8 drivers then you can try falling back on the Windows 7 drivers as in most cases they should work.

If you re-direct your Program Files directory you don't necessarily have to have both directories, you can have one both versions but your main drive will/should have both for the system to function correctly.


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