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[Thief^]

Close it?

More seriously, I don't know, but you have some information you can google search with now.

[Reelya]

"Mofilla" or "Mozilla"? Mozilla is Firefox and Thunderbird, if you run either of those then that's your culprit.

It's Mozilla - sorry for the typo.

And how can I reduce the amount of data written to the disk by Firefox?

Remove unnecessary drivers and devices. Delete unused programs. Disable start-up programs that you don't use all the time. Close programs when not in use. Also, run CCleaner.exe regularly to clear out junk files / browser cache. If you delete your browser history and browser cache frequently, that's less stuff that FireFox is constantly checking. The more active software and stuff your PC is looking through, the more RAM used and the more hard-disk usage.

For the browser, don't have multiple tabs opened at once, and close other programs completely before using the browser. And/or, add more RAM to your laptop. I'm guessing the problem is actually that your software load is exceeding RAM capacity, causing the computer to offload data to the drive, which also slows things down.

[aenri]

Use Firefox Portable version , AFAIK it removes (or significantly reduces) use of cache.

[wierd]

Failing that, one can always use something like imdisk to create a small ramdisk onto which you have firefox directed to create and use its cache folders.

One could also set the windows TEMP and TMP environment variables to point there (since the drives can be created at boot time) and further reduce wear on an SSD.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=356046

[Reelya]

Though you should check whether RAM is being maxxed out in the task manager. If there is little RAM left and a lot of virtual (paging) memory used, then the ram drive idea is not the optimal one, since that will just make memory paging worse, since you will need to make the ramdrive bigger than what is actually needed (since it will need to be sized to the maximum possible usage), then there will end up being unused space in the RAM drive, and even more stuff off-loaded to virtual memory on the physical drive.

So it's critical to determine whether it's a memory paging issue or a browser cache issue. The ramdrive idea is only good if you have a lot of memory that never gets used, i.e. you have at least 8GB. if you have less than 4 GB of RAM i think excessive paging would be the more likely culprit.

[Aklyon]

Its sounding like you guys are suggesting more RAM.

[Reelya]

http://www.cnet.com/products/hp-elitebook-6930p-14-1-core-2-duo-p8700-windows-7-pro-xp-pro-downgrade-2-gb-ram-250-gb-hdd-series/specs/

Well the thing only has 2GB of RAM according to these specs I looked up. These days, 2GB is really pushing things. That laptop can support up to 8GB RAM by upgrading. But that would have to be weighed against just getting a new laptop, which are pretty cheap these days. On ebay, the cheapest 8GB for DDR2 / laptop are about $160. So not really much less than buying a whole new entry-level laptop. Hence, it's not economically viable to upgrade the RAM in an old laptop like that, so software-level tweaking will be better.

It's probably the paging memory problem. Too much software loaded and/or too many tabs at once. Use CTRL-ALT-DEL and task manager to view which processes use the most memory, then try and close a few. You can also use CCleaner.exe to disable optional things from loading at boot time. This can declutter things. It's also possible to remove FireFox add-ons and see if any of those take up a lot of memory.

Another option in the long run is to try running Lubuntu or another minimal Linux install on old laptops. That can extend their useful life since custom Linux builds can be much more efficient than Windows. But it will have more of a learning curve as you get used to how linux does stuff with the file system.

[wierd]

Maybe-- But linux opens many doors on this front.

Out of the box, you get tmpfs support, (INSTANT ramdisk baby-- ONLY the size you need too! Grows and shrinks automagically! Can be configured in /etc/fstab!) You get zram support if you feel the need to enable it, you get real symbolic links and other fun with mount points that you can exploit (see the tmpfs statement with fstab, but you can do SOOO MUCH with this, including having your SSD be on /, and your /home directory be on some other medium that is more write tolerant, /var on tmpfs,  etc) More control over how swap is used, etc.

 On windows, allocating a teeny tiny ramdrive (200ish mb) and turning on NTFS compression on it before setting firefox and whatever other temp files the system wants loose on it, is about all you can do to keep windows from attacking your ssd relentlessly.

[Azerty]

"Mofilla" or "Mozilla"? Mozilla is Firefox and Thunderbird, if you run either of those then that's your culprit.

It's Mozilla - sorry for the typo.

And how can I reduce the amount of data written to the disk by Firefox?

Remove unnecessary drivers and devices. Delete unused programs. Disable start-up programs that you don't use all the time. Close programs when not in use. Also, run CCleaner.exe regularly to clear out junk files / browser cache. If you delete your browser history and browser cache frequently, that's less stuff that FireFox is constantly checking. The more active software and stuff your PC is looking through, the more RAM used and the more hard-disk usage.

For the browser, don't have multiple tabs opened at once, and close other programs completely before using the browser. And/or, add more RAM to your laptop. I'm guessing the problem is actually that your software load is exceeding RAM capacity, causing the computer to offload data to the drive, which also slows things down.

The amount of used RAM during a normal session don't go above 1,5 Go and is more around 1 Go.

[SquatchHammer]

Hey guys!! I was wondering about Hard-drive partitions and how to move available open space between the two. It's a 2 tb drive that I had installed when my last one was about to crap out and the business had installed it with the computer thinking it is two seperate storage areas. I dont know why that was the case but I am running out room on one side of the partition and need to either move items to the bigger drive ( I really rather not) or try to "move" the partition to allow the first to have more storage. I am running a Win 7 professional.

[Rose]

Right click on my computer and click manage. Then find disk management.

That should give you a list of all partitions in your computer, and let you resize  them.

[Thief^]

Disk management doesn't allow you to resize a partition so the free space is before it (needed if you want to make the first partition bigger), and it doesn't allow you to move them around either. You need a 3rd-party partition management tool...

[SquatchHammer]

Disk management doesn't allow you to resize a partition so the free space is before it (needed if you want to make the first partition bigger), and it doesn't allow you to move them around either. You need a 3rd-party partition management tool...

First off, is it legal. Second, why the ...? Is it because there's no 3rd-party tool you could reconmend?

[Aklyon]

Why would it not be legal? its not exactly doing anything that would be, its just adjusting partitions.

[wierd]

Oldschool tools are often the best here.

There's a tool called partition magic. It is NOT free. It IS VERY OLD.  It works. It has a nice little GUI that lets you easily resize partitions.

The alternative, is to use the command line tool called diskpart, (It's a standard feature of windows) and tell it to shrink and grow partitions. This is a big PITA.

Only follow the section dealing with the resize command!! The first parts deal with formatting!!

Caveats:  Allocated space for a partition must be contiguous. Shrunk space comes off at the END of the partition. You need to shrink a partiation that is right next to the partition you want to grow for this to work. If you have more than 2 partitions, this can get tricky.