Help needed with SW import and hard drive question

[Speedster]

Hi all;

Putting this in General Discussion, as it's a two part question that may be related to available space on my primary C drive.  Sure hoping some of you may have some suggestions.

Ever since KS 4.1 I've had a very hard time importing large (>100 MB and >200 parts/assemblies) SolidWorks subs and top assemblies into KS.  Crashes KS regardless of method of import or whether beta is checked or not.  Smaller files import just fine.  If I use the SolidWorks importer it crashes SolidWorks.  My workaround has been to convert to an OBJ in SimLab, which then opens fine, but the Scene Tree looks like G-code!

Bruno @ Luxion did some tests, and the one really large assembly that crashed on mine imported OK (but slow) on his machine, resulting in a 1.6 GB .bip.  His box is similar to mine.  My box is running Win7x64, 16 GB RAM, 8 cores, with 1.75 TB of disc storage.

However, my primary C-drive is down to about 12-15 GB available, which is less than the 32 or so recommended, based I guess on cores x 2.  Nothing at all but apps on it, with most resources, like Modo, HDR-LightStudio, and two versions of SolidWorks,  on my E-drive and repointed.  So there's really not much I can peel away.

We pretty much agree that paging may be the culprit.  So I want to increase my C-drive capacity.

So here's the question- Can I add a large >500 GB SSD drive and clone the C-drive?  I've asked many, and done a lot of net searching, and found basically two answers.  Yes, you can.  And No, you can't.  I don't want to have to reinstall all the apps, especially now that Adobe has crapped on us with their cloud business model.  And many would be very difficult to reinstall and re-license.

So, can I clone a drive in such a manner that it works with the existing drive, mirrors it, I guess you would call it, and give me more headroom?

Any help, clues or direction would be greatly appreciated!!!

Bill G

[DriesV]

Hi Bill,

I actually performed such an operation (migrating from HDD to SSD) on one of my machines a month or so ago.
I bought a Samsung 840 Pro SSD. Samsung has a 'Data Migration' tool available that basically provides a 1-click solution for cloning your existing HDD data to a new SSD.
For me the process was flawless and my SSD worked right away. As long as you just swap the HDD with the SSD (read as: plug it into the same bus/connector in your computer) you should be fine.
In the event that something DOES go wrong (e.g. your SSD is not bootable...) you still have your old HDD fully intact.

There are maybe a few things to check, even after you have successfully performed the migration.
*For SSD drives auto-defragmentation should be disabled at all times!
*Any other pro-SSD tweaks can usually be performed through SSD vendor spcific tools (in case of Samsung there's a 'SSD Magician' tool to perform OS optimizations).

For the cloning part I also bought a USB 3.0 2.5" SATA enclosure, because the Samsung cloning tool requires the SSD to be connected to the computer through USB.

I would go for it!
Your system will feel much more responsive and snappier.

Dries

[Speedster]

Thanks as always, Dries!  I figured you must have done something that made your animation possible!  I'll share this with the company that built my boxes, as they will be doing it.
Bill G

[keaneray]

Hi Bill,

I'm in the same dilemma as you. My SW'13 assemblies over time have become more detailed with 200-300 parts. With only 15GB free on my local C: drive things are starting to slow up. Some .bip I was saved in the past are close to 4GB. At the moment I'm struggling to import a large SW asm file via the latest plugin. After an hour ticking over I give up. Importing directly into KS isn't any better as 75% of the assembly is missing.

Current PC Specs: