Does installing several games affect O.S. speed?

[bigdavethehorn]

As above, excuse my simple mind, but does it? I mean will Windows slow down horribly if I was to install Half Life 2, Battlefield 2 and other games that I can't think of atm.

[djnes]

Nothing will be running in the background or all the time, so it isn't going to hurt performance. Steam will be loaded with HL2, but that can be disabled from running at startup. Just run a good defragger once they are installed, and you'll be fine.

[bigdavethehorn]

So, could I fill my HDD with games etc and not be affected by lack of space providing it was defragged?

[Phoenix86]

In general, not at all. Though if the games load bootup stuff, or systray icons, then perhaps a little, but not much.

[Phoenix86]

So, could I fill my HDD with games etc and not be affected by lack of space providing it was defragged?
You don't want to complete fill up the HDD, as HDD performace suffers with a full drive. Also, your ability to defrag, in most cases, is limited with less contigous free space.However, if it were 80% loaded with games, it wouldn't matter.

[bigdavethehorn]

Cheers for the replies, it's something that I've always been a little paranoid about. I think I'll start using some of that space!

[djnes]

There's a percentage of free space needed for the drive to operate at optimum performance, but it's somewhat low, like 30 or 25% free.