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I bought an Acer S3-391-6406 Ultrabook that's still being shipped to my house and I want to know the best way to optimize Windows 8 for it.

Every laptop I own, I like to immediately wipe Windows with a fresh install. I've never owned a laptop with a hybrid hard drive setup before. Will I be able to install Windows 8 64-bit on a 20GB SSD?

I understand that the 20GB SSD purpose is to cache files while using Windows, but I heard people talk about how they installed Windows directly to the small storage SSD.

Also, I heard people talking about how a USB installation will corrupt the SSD while trying to install Windows 8. I only own USB's and my Ultrabook doesn't have a CD drive.

Intel Core i3-2367M (1.40GHz)
4GB Memory
320GB Hard Drive / 20GB SSD
Intel HD Graphics 3000
Windows 8 64-bit
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  • Why would installing Windows by a USB device corrupt the installation?
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jan 18, 2014 at 5:19
  • I think it has something to do with the format of USB's not being UEFI certified, however I would think that the BIOS just wouldn't boot the USB if it wasn't UEFI certified. Plus, there's a few options in the BIOS to disable UEFI security.
    – Mark Matlock
    Commented Jan 18, 2014 at 5:25
  • I have never had a problem booting from a USB to install Windows in UEFI mode. You just have to make the device UEFI but thats thec ase for any media
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jan 18, 2014 at 14:12

1 Answer 1

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Barely. Windows 8.1 64-bit needs precisely 20 GB of space to install. You'll need to mount other volumes onto the C: volume in order for this to work well.

For those concerned about the performance and longevity of the SSD, it's important to note that because this is a caching SSD, it is configured to withstand heavy usage. Hence, the reason for the 20 GB (18.63 GiB1) capacity is aggressive over-provisioning—the drive actually has 32 GiB (34.36 GB) of physical NAND, and this leftover space is used to maintain the performance and longevity of the SSD. For an explanation of why over-provisioning is needed, see the Wikipedia article on write amplification.

1Storage devices are typically specified with sizes based on decimal units, where 1 KB = 1000 B, 1 MB = 1000 MB, 1 GB = 1000 MB, and so on. However, operating systems report space using binary units, where 1 KiB = 1024 B, 1 MiB = 1024 KiB, 1 GiB = 1024 MiB, and so on. SSDs physically have NAND chips whose capacities are measured in GiB and not GB, but they are nonetheless sold with capacities marked in GB; the otherwise unused space resulting from this difference is typically exploited by SSDs for over-provisioning. For more information, see this Wikipedia article.

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  • Barely meaning I can install the base operating system on it and then redirect all program installation directories and user files on the main HDD. Am I understanding you correct? The information you shared about SSDs was interesting and insightful. Thanks for sharing!
    – Mark Matlock
    Commented Jan 18, 2014 at 5:44
  • As far as I know, yes. I haven't tried installing Windows 8 myself, though, so why not try running the Windows 8 installer and see?
    – bwDraco
    Commented Jan 18, 2014 at 5:47
  • The command is mklink /j Link Target
    – cybernard
    Commented Jan 18, 2014 at 6:06
  • @cybernard: That command creates a junction point, not a mount point. To assign drive letters or mount volumes onto an NTFS filesystem, use the Disk Management utility. More information: support.microsoft.com/kb/307889 (note that this applies equally to Windows 8)
    – bwDraco
    Commented Jan 21, 2014 at 18:45

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