I have reviewed several programs to link and move folders, applications and games from a Solid State Drive to another drive to free up space. This includes Steam Mover and the portable program Junction from Sysinternals.

SSD Boost Manager offers a similar functionality on first glance. Windows users can configure directories that they want to move and create symbolic links for so that everything works as if the folder would still be in its original location on the drive.

But instead of just doing that, it offers to swap the folder back to its original location on demand. That’s for instance very handy for gamers who do not want to uninstall games, but need storage space on their SSD for a new program. They can use SSD Boost Manager to move the folder and create a symbolic link to free up the space, install and play the other game, uninstall that game and move the old game back to its original location (or instead of uninstalling move and create a symbolic link for that second game as well).

Most users should switch the interface language from French to English by clicking on the flag button in the app.

A click on the Add button opens the configuration menu.

Here you can define a name and the directories of the Solid State Drive and the other folder you want to use. It is optionally possible to create a profile for each subdirectory of the selected folder, which can be handy if you have a games folder on your drive with multiple games installed.

The default action that is selected is to move the data from the SSD to the HDD. This can be switched easily to restore the HDD data back to the SSD.

The idea to swap apps and games back and forth could be interesting for users who do not want to uninstall the applications or games when they run out of space. The English version of the interface could use some tooltips and explanations on how to use the program properly. Another problem that non-French speaking users can run into is the French installation of the game.

Interested users can download SSD Boost Manager from the project homepage, which is also only available in French. The program itself is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating system.

The common trend among these gadgets is they are all new and still in experimental stage. I know it can be tempting to jump in line at your local Best Buy when an iPhone 3GS is released, or refreshing that page every few seconds until you can preorder Windows 7 from Amazon. But there are some risks involved and that is why its not always the safest thing to do to adopt a new technology or device early.

The first problem is price. There is no need to discuss the $500 and $600 premiums people were paying on iPhones when they first came out, only to have their devices outdated a few months later by the 3G. But what was most bitter to the early adopters was the fact that the device went subsidized.

I could also mention SSD which (although a nice technology) has been held back by its exorbitant price. I’m still trying to figure out how a 256GB SSD costs as much as a notebook computer? The protection offered by an SSD is good, I won’t deny that, but still it doesn’t justify the price unless you’re housing the President’s birth certificate.

Even software isn’t immune. I can’t count the amount of people who preordered Windows Vista, and after a week with the software wish they had stuck with XP. Don’t get me wrong, I have never had any problems with Vista but many of the people who upgraded failed to read the system requirements and got pissed when their computers began to crash. Yes we’re hearing a similar tune with Windows 7 and OSX Snow Leopard. So far the former is carrying more of the buzz and everyone is talking about how it fixes all the problems that were found in Vista.

I’m not saying Windows 7 isn’t promising (I am using it to write this post), but Vista has finally stabilized so for those who had serious problems with Vista at first, might want to think twice before taking a chance with Windows 7 on their main system.

Need we talk about the gadgets? I have heard countless stories of peoples iPhone 3GS combusting in their pockets, Palm Pre screens flying off when they open it or their Blackberry Storms “SurePress” screens becoming unsure.

Yes I admit I’m guilty of buying a Pre a week after it was released, but only because I needed it for my job (I write for a Palm Pre blog), and yes I have reserved myself a copy of Windows 7, but only because I have been testing out the beta for the past 4 months now and I have dual boot so I’m safe.

I’m not saying you should never adopt early, but if there is anything that the “ring of death” on the Xbox 360, crappy Wiimotes and not to mention PS3 overheating problems have taught us, you might want to think twice before actually getting inline at your local gadget store.

So as I’ve said before, unless you are prepared for problems, wait a few months, otherwise you might find yourself sitting in the waiting room with a crouch on fire, enough said!

With more and more Solid State Drives hitting the streets it is important to understand the differences. Defragmentation describes the process of physically organizing the contents of a hard drive or partition so that the data sectors of each file will be stored close together to reduce load and seek times.

Solid State Drives can access any location on the drive in the same time. This is one of the main advantages over hard drives. This also means that there is no need to defragment a Solid State Drive ever. These drives have actually been designed to write data evenly in all sectors of the drive which the industry is calling wear leveling. Each sector of a Solid State Drive has a limited number of writes before it cannot be overwritten anymore. (this is a theoretical limit which cannot be reached in work environments)

If you did defragment your Solid State Disk you can rest assured that you did not harm it in any way. It is just that this process is not needed and that defragmentation causes lots of write processes which means that the drive will reach its write limits sooner.

No need for defragmentation is therefor another advantage of Solid State Drives.

The situation seems to be changing slowly with 64 Gigabyte SSD drives available in larger quantities and better prices. One SSD drive that I was looking forward to was the OCZ Core Series SSD drive with 64 Gigabyte capacity and the guys at Hot Hardware managed to get their hands on one of those drives and compared it to the ultra fast WD VelociRaptor hard disk.

While the OCZ Core Series SSD drive lacks behind in write speeds (tops 87 MB/s compared to 129 MB/s for the VelociRaptor) it managed to win the read speed benchmark (140 MB/s compared to 123 MB/s) and of course in random access times.

Far more impressive than those computed values are values from real applications, and those tests make a difference.

How about a Windows Vista startup of 51 MB/s compared to 15.6 MB/s for the conventional hard drive ? Similar results are available for gaming (77 MB/s vs. 12.5 MB/s), application loading (21 MB/s vs. 3.7 MB/s) and Windows Defender (66 MB/s vs. 19.8 MB/s). The SSD drive managed to beat the hard drive in every test which has to be attributed largely to the low random access time.

This convinced me and I just ordered a OCZ Core Series SSD drive with 64 Gigabyte capacity for 200 Euros. Once I have that will do some tests with various operating systems and benchmarks.