SSD + HDD

[triston220]

I'd do a secure erase (TRIMs the whole drive) on the SSD with gparted, aLinux live CD and then when you've reinstalled Windows disable hibernation (will free up about 5GB on the SSD) and if you have lots of RAM (8 GB+) than disable the pagefile which will free up several more GB.

You can set your Steam folder to the relevant folder on the HDD and it will be able to use the games again (I've done it before). Just make sure you back up your game saves before wiping the SSD. Videos will be fine.

A secure wipe is not needed and will waste some of the drives write cycles.

[N!ck]

A secure wipe is not needed and will waste some of the drives write cycles.

Why not get the drive nice and freshly TRIM'd? The performance benefit is going to be worth the one cycle over each block considering the number they have in them before wearing out.

[triston220]

Why not get the drive nice and freshly TRIM'd? The performance benefit is going to be worth the one cycle over each block considering the number they have in them before wearing out.

Erasing the free space is fine but by does it need to be done securely? One pass should be enough.

[Stephen!]

A secure wipe puts it back 100% to factory default. All the cells are completely empty and performance will be 100% restored. A normal format will not do this.

[N!ck]

Erasing the free space is fine but by does it need to be done securely? One pass should be enough.

See what Stephen said. The secure erase does does not do multiple passes with random data or anything like that.

[triston220]

Right, okay. I thought you meant formatting with several passes.