Does anyone have a games only harddrive?

imyourzero said:
Make that three of us. That, as well as the fact that I'm paranoid of losing years' worth of media that I've ripped or collected, is currently why I have 8 2TB hard drives in addition to my SSDs, lol.
Click to expand...

and 3 of them are stored in fireproof boxes, and 2 remain in a bank deposit box?
 
i did have a game only hard drive until 4 days ago when it decided to kick the bucket. still not sure whats wrong with it because the disc still spins and i can hear it attempt to load data but it causes windows to lock up til i disconnect the drive. my guess is the controller on the drive died.

only thing i found out though is that unstalling shit on windows 7 is effing hell. it wont let me uninstall steam to reinstall it on one of my other hard drives because it cant find the uninstaller.
 
I have a 120 GB SSD dedicated just for Steam games. I just filled it up the other day with Fallout NV. But I can easily clear off a few games to make more room. I still have a lot of games on it that I've beaten and prolly wont play again. I have 2x 300 GB Raptors (striped) too, I guess I could start putting games on it too. I use them mostly for media playback.
 
Last edited:
I have a games only hard drive. It is 640GB and it is basically full. I need to upgrade soon I guess.
 
I have three hard drives, one for my OS, one mostly for games, and one for storage. I really need a larger storage drive.
 
I used to, but drives have got to the size that even with my Steam folder over 500gigs, my primary 1TB drive has plenty left over for everything else. I do back it up to an external HD every so often. Downloading that much again would take a while. I have 4 other 1TB drives in a raid 5, but I use that for Pr0n, backups, pr0n, VM's, pr0n, other non pr0n audio visual entertainment. :D
 
Last edited:
5 hdds' for me.
320Gb- OS, 500Gb-Games, 500Gb- Music & Photos, 1Tb- Movies & TV shows, & 320Gb as Back-up image of OS
 
yes, although they are technically on the same drive

hddsc.png
 
evanisthecoastie said:
make love to me.
Click to expand...

Can I watch? :eek:

Haha, crazy.

Anyway, I think you have the right advice around here. SSD for the OS and HDD for the games. Thats how I have mine setup.

Maybe in a year or so when prices drop and capacity goes up even further, would I upgrade and keep both on one SDD. Unless you are rich then I say go big. :D
 
even if games will benefit from it, you’ll usually have to wait for others to load when playing online. even if there was no waiting time I don’t understand why some are so sensitive about extra few seconds! I usually make them useful and light a cigarette or change the TV station or pick my nose :D
 
firas said:
even if games will benefit from it, you’ll usually have to wait for others to load when playing online. even if there was no waiting time I don’t understand why some are so sensitive about extra few seconds! I usually make them useful and light a cigarette or change the TV station or pick my nose :D
Click to expand...

+1 on the cig, or to take a piss. or in my case a few extra seconds to yell at my retarded ass roommate.
 
firas said:
even if games will benefit from it, you’ll usually have to wait for others to load when playing online. even if there was no waiting time I don’t understand why some are so sensitive about extra few seconds! I usually make them useful and light a cigarette or change the TV station or pick my nose :D
Click to expand...

EXACTLY! When I play starcraft II, I sit there, load off an SSD in 5 seconds (It seems to wait for other people at various points). Then I have to wait another 20 for my friend with a macbook to finnish loading...Usually in that time I get bored and my attention switches to my feet or playing with the keyboard lights. It adds 2 minutes to my build time.
 
I just hate deleting things. I guess I am a digital hoarder.
 
Some games will see a big increase. Try the original witcher, which had horrible load times.
 
1 intel SLC 64gb ssd for os, 1 intel 160gb ssd for steam folder, have a 4TB NAS box for everything else.
 
I have a games drive. It is a 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12

It currently has 377GB of games on it, of which my steam folder is 318GB.
 
I have a 120gb OCZ SSD as a OS drive and a 1TB WD 7200 for just games . My Steam folder is a little over 500gb an another 200gb or so in games not from Steam . I also have 4 more 1TB drives for music , movies and miscellaneous stuff .
 
Yes, I have a separate hdd for my games, a 600 gig hdd of which I have 322 gigs free. I need to buy some tb drives! :D
 
1TB Western Digital. One partition for Steam alone :D
Another partition for non-steam games
 
I used to but the problem i ran into is the saves. If games saved in the same directory as install it would make some sense. Otherwise its just a practice for those with OCD that want a "cleaner" computer.

Honestly besides thinking your computer is cleaner what other benefit is there?
 
Disposed said:
Honestly besides thinking your computer is cleaner what other benefit is there?
Click to expand...

Not having to re-install or download all those games when something happens to the OS drive and I have to re-image or format(all my game saves are on a third drive). I can also pull the drive out and hook it up to another computer and most games will work without issue.
 
Disposed said:
Honestly besides thinking your computer is cleaner what other benefit is there?
Click to expand...
My Steam folder itself is over 500GB in size. If I tried to keep other stuff on the same drive as my games, it would get filled up pretty quickly. Plus, the drive I use for games is also faster than the one I use for data, so by keeping all my games on the faster drive, my load times end up being a bit better.
 
SicKlown42012 said:
Not having to re-install or download all those games when something happens to the OS drive and I have to re-image or format(all my game saves are on a third drive). I can also pull the drive out and hook it up to another computer and most games will work without issue.
Click to expand...

I take it you have not actually tried what you are claiming. Most games will have to be reinstalled anyway because of missing registry entries etc.

Zero82z said:
My Steam folder itself is over 500GB in size. If I tried to keep other stuff on the same drive as my games, it would get filled up pretty quickly. Plus, the drive I use for games is also faster than the one I use for data, so by keeping all my games on the faster drive, my load times end up being a bit better.
Click to expand...

This scenario makes some sense but 500GB of steam games makes none. Having to have a game installed just because you own it is pretty much just as OCD as having to keep you computer "clean".
 
Disposed said:
This scenario makes some sense but 500GB of steam games makes none. Having to have a game installed just because you own it is pretty much just as OCD as having to keep you computer "clean".
Click to expand...
Disk space is cheap, and having all my games downloaded saves me the time and hassle of having to download a game again if I want to play it. I could back them up on a different drive, but it would still use up the same amount of space, so there's no real benefit to doing that.
 
I have my favorite games on a ssd and the games I play occasionally on a 1 tb drive.
 
Zero82z said:
Disk space is cheap, and having all my games downloaded saves me the time and hassle of having to download a game again if I want to play it. I could back them up on a different drive, but it would still use up the same amount of space, so there's no real benefit to doing that.
Click to expand...

Like i said i get the massive steam collection. I cant speak for you but i have steam games i KNOW i will never play again i dont see the sense in keeping them on a HDD no matter how cheap it is. Maybe you will play all yours again but i highly doubt that.
 
Disposed said:
I take it you have not actually tried what you are claiming. Most games will have to be reinstalled anyway because of missing registry entries etc.
Click to expand...

Any game within Steam will work without issue. As for games outside Steam, I've only had problems with Quake 4, Enemy Territory, and Ninja Blade. The others I've tried worked even without their registry entries. Granted I've only tested only a very small fraction of the number of games out there, but don't be so quick to dismiss other people's claims without doing some legwork of your own.
 
SicKlown42012 said:
Any game within Steam will work without issue. As for games outside Steam, I've only had problems with Quake 4, Enemy Territory, and Ninja Blade. The others I've tried worked even without their registry entries. Granted I've only tested only a very small fraction of the number of games out there, but don't be so quick to dismiss other people's claims without doing some legwork of your own.
Click to expand...

Installing games to a non OS drive is usually a waste of time, some work but from what I've seen, many do not. Those which work might not always function properly and often you'll lose save games and settings anyway if you also don't move your "my documents" folder off the C drive also.
 
SicKlown42012 said:
Any game within Steam will work without issue. As for games outside Steam, I've only had problems with Quake 4, Enemy Territory, and Ninja Blade. The others I've tried worked even without their registry entries. Granted I've only tested only a very small fraction of the number of games out there, but don't be so quick to dismiss other people's claims without doing some legwork of your own.
Click to expand...

I have done more than enough legwork. I used to think the same and had a games drive too until i had my OS disk fail. All the MMOs worked, all steam games worked, but about 1/3 where missing registry entries or other such issues that caused me to have to reinstall them.

The other issue like i and others have said even with a games drive if the OS gets borked you lose the most important part anyway because saves are almost never stored in the install folder.

All im saying is theres no real world performance gains to be had (Barring the obvious SSD vs HDD differences) and even the argument that it saves you from reinstalling etc. is a halftruth.

Sure you could put your games on an SSD while your system runs on an HDD but thats pretty silly.
 
Only real reason that I have a games hdd is the fact that my OS is on an 80 gig ssd and I would run out of space REAL quick. It's just different strokes for different folks is all.
I don't have every Steam game downloaded but I do have quite a few. Granted, I haven't played a lot of them for some time now, but I sometimes get an "itch" to play a game. If I would have to download it again, I most likely would lose the "itch" to play that game by the time it's done! lol
Just my .02. :)
 
So is general, steam games keep all data in the steam folder? IMO that's how it fricken should be these days with how big games are getting. I just had to do a reformat last night, and it takes me maybe 2 hours to get everything back up and running, minus the games. It takes about 12 hours of dling/installing/updating to get all of my games back up and running...and I dont even have that many.

That would be just one more big reason to get my games from steam. Is windows registry just faster to load data from? I guess it's probably kept in memory at all times, but still, I can wait the extra fraction of a second to load a couple .cfg/.ini files that are stored inside the game folder. I don't get why that isn't much more common. I back up My Documents, so I can deal with saved games/settings being stored there, though I'd still prefer they keep it in the install folder.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top