I guess this question is more related to the Opera browser, so i'm asking here in the off topic section. I'm casually using Opera as my secondary browser. I have it installed to a non-C drive, intended to be 'portable'. Yet the browser has placed its cache directory somewhere on drive C.
I've tried to follow a tip from the web, as how to relocate the cache folder to another drive, which didn't work. Now i have made some junction using Opus' Copy MAKELINK=junction command pointing to that other drive, which looks fine so far. But am i now really avoiding any data being written to my SSD?
When i use my cleaning command to purge that cache it seems to work. The files disappear from my new cache location.
My concern is, that my C drive SSD could suffer from all that deleting action in that cache. Maybe i'm too cautious, and modern SSD controllers have a sufficient wear level management?
So basically i'm asking, if having that junction leaves my C drive untouched, so that all writing/deleting is actually happening on that other drive.
It should do, since the junction isn't a folder as such. The destination will be resolved by the filesystem automatically and any data written to the junction target.
FWIW, I also use Opera, and I managed to set it up so it reads/writes all its data in the same folder as the executable (I rarely install any application in "Program Files"). That was more than five years ago, and unfortunately, I don’t remember the exact steps anymore. However, I read about it online at the time, and it involved creating some folders in the executable's directory, as far as I recall.
But at least I can confirm that Opera can be used in a "portable" way.
Seems like they had lots of changes throughout the versions. One solution included editing the launcher.exe path, but in the version i'm using there isn't even such a file. And as for the portability, that wasn't my primary goal. It was more about being able to keep privacy at a maximum level. The standard install keeps scattering too many files and fragments into different places. But then again, i don't want to erase different cookies and passwords every time i quit Opera, which would have been an alternative.
Yeah, i think, this option is still there. Maybe there's also a whitelist for cookies you want to keep. At least my main browser, Firefox, has that. But i have the impression, that the cleanup function still leaves stuff in different places. That's why i made a menu button in Opus to clean up those locations every now and then.
You can use tools like CrystalDiskMark to get the life/wear percentage of SSDs. You’ll probably find they’re all still above 90% and will last much longer than you use them for.
Things like the web browser cache folder won’t break an SSD. There’s no reason to complicate things by moving the folder elsewhere (which would need to be another SSD anyway, or it’d be so slow) unless the main drive is small and low on space.
You meant "Crystal Disk Info", right? o) "Crystal Disk Mark" is the benchmark tool from the same developer I guess, but both are neat tools! o)
I agree, not worth the trouble! o)
You will reduce lifespan of your SSD if you remove and copy multiple Gigabytes of data to it every day, but even then it will last many years. Some browser cache data won't hurt your SSD wear level noticeably, unless you surf the web really hard or you download 30 gigabytes of files every day.
Even a cheap SSD has a TBW spec of 50 (terrabytes to be written until it's lifespan is over), these 50 TBW would allow you to save 30GB of data every day for almost 5 years. Since 50 TBW is very low end, a regular SAMSUNG, Crucial whatever SSD probably has 100 or 150 TBW or even more, so you can save your 30GB for 10 or 15 or 20 years, every day and still be fine, since there is a lot of headroom in this TBW spec as well.
Talking browsers, I have about 2400 browser tabs opened in Vivaldi right now in 6 windows, some workspaces and multiple instances. Vivaldi is a powerful browser! o) It is the better successor to the original Opera v12 browser if you ask me, but you did not. o)
tl;dr: Vivaldi has a "Standalone" mode when installing, so you don't need to fight cache location and worry for files being spread around. Everything goes into 1 folder. I always install Vivaldi(s) in "Standalone" mode, so I can move the browser folder(s) where I want them to be and have multiple of them installed at the same time for different use cases (finance, fun, work and one for processing emails and their links).
Hu!? What web site recommends to relocate browser cache folders? o)
In this case, yes, it's another SSD. But maybe i'll roll back the changes then. Is it enough to remove the junction on the target drive to restore the old state?
Actually it wasn't recommended, but some user asked for it. And as for the amount of data, it's far from being Gigabytes. It's rather a couple of MB, since most files are tiny. I also once used Vivaldi, but i think it has no VPN function bulit in, lieke Opera does. Which, like i said, only use sometimes.
