separate hard drive for games

[polonyc2]

I'm thinking about buying a G.Skill Falcon 256GB SSD...not enough space for all my stuff so I was wondering if it was OK to install a separate Western Digital 640GB hard drive only for my games...would not having my games on the same drive as my main OS cause any problems or registry issues?...what about when installing patches etc?

is this ideal for performance or is it best to keep my games on my main OS drive (soon to be SSD)?

 

[maverikv]

why would you spend hundreds of dollars on a lightning fast hard drive and then put your apps on a 7200rpm secondary drive?

 

[Megalomaniac]

why would you spend hundreds of dollars on a lightning fast hard drive and then put your apps on a 7200rpm secondary drive?

what he said.
put the other stuff (movies, music etc)on the slow drive, but keep the games and OS on the fast one. If you want, you can redirect your "My Documents" folder to the slow drive.
Some games save and load to the "My Documents folder"

 

[ibdoomed2]

I'm thinking about buying a G.Skill Falcon 256MB SSD...not enough space for all my stuff so I was wondering if it was OK to install a separate Western Digital 640GB hard drive only for my games...would not having my games on the same drive as my main OS cause any problems or registry issues?...what about when installing patches etc?

is this ideal for performance or is it best to keep my games on my main OS drive (soon to be SSD)?

What's the falcon for? 256mb is very little data. I'm going to assume you mean GB in which 256gb is a lot. The biggest games I can think of are still 10gb or less so that would be ~20 games + OS. You're not really playing 20 games on daily basis are you?

 

[axan]

What's the falcon for? 256mb is very little data. I'm going to assume you mean GB in which 256gb is a lot. The biggest games I can think of are still 10gb or less so that would be ~20 games + OS. You're not really playing 20 games on daily basis are you?

Ya he meant 256gb, he's probably like me, I have ~40+ games installed on my system and some like WoW take 20+ gb so ya the 256GB is not enough, that said do what other suggested keep stuff like media files etc on 2nd drive but os, apps + games you currently playing on the SSD.

You can always move games currently not in used to the 2nd drive and if you want to play it again move it back.

 

[ibdoomed2]

Ya he meant 256gb, he's probably like me, I have ~40+ games installed on my system and some like WoW take 20+ gb so ya the 256GB is not enough, that said do what other suggested keep stuff like media files etc on 2nd drive but os, apps + games you currently playing on the SSD.

You can always move games currently not in used to the 2nd drive and if you want to play it again move it back.

You're wow is 20gb? Mine is 9gb. That can't be all add-on's can it? Archived updates maybe?

 

[axan]

could be I haven't cleaned it in a while, but there is a lot of games that need 10GB+

 

[polonyc2]

Ya he meant 256gb, he's probably like me, I have ~40+ games installed on my system and some like WoW take 20+ gb so ya the 256GB is not enough, that said do what other suggested keep stuff like media files etc on 2nd drive but os, apps + games you currently playing on the SSD.

You can always move games currently not in used to the 2nd drive and if you want to play it again move it back.

good advice...and yeah I meant 256GB...I have a lot of games installed which take up a lot of space...Steam + games along with all my standalone games take up a huge chunk of hard drive space for me...and these are just games that have been released within the last 2 years or so...not even counting 'older' games that I might want to re-install

I always thought that SSD's don't really improve in-game performance so that's why I was thinking about moving them to a separate drive...I know load times will be reduced but overall game play will be the same on an SSD compared to a mechanical hard drive

 

[DougLite]

If you make a folder C:\Program Files\Games or C:\Program Files (x86)\Games on a 64-bit machine, then mount your mechanical hard drive's partition to that directory using this tutorial:

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/...on-volume-or-drive-as-folder-path-in-windows/

You won't even have to fool with a second drive letter, you'll just have to remember to change the game install path to C:\Program Files\Games\Game Name during the installation. I used this trick on a buddy's laptop that had a full first hard drive. He had plenty of room on his second physical drive, but many of his games wanted to be installed on C: