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I installed OS, BF3, and some programs on my SSD (120GB).
On my old HDD I have programs, OS, and documents.

I want to run some games that are loaded on my HDD (Metro 2033 and Mass Effect).
Do I need to reinstall the programs cuz my OS has moved to a SSD?

Also, can I reformat my HDD without affecting my SSD? My HDD has a lot of crap on it and could use
a spring cleaning. (I don't even know why it was so full) I want to free up space and have only some programs
on my HDD and documents(videos pdfs).

Suggestions?

I would format the HDD (Shouldn't do anything to your SSD), 90% of programs installed on it will not run unless they are installed from the active OS. This thread (http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/sean ... -ssds-hdds) might be helpful to you.

Most programs won't run. That's what I thought. I'll move files and reformat the hard drive.
Then reinstall the movies and such.

Is there any problem with installing programs on the HDD while the OS is on the SSD? I don't want to fill up
the SSD too much. I'd like to run some games and save downloaded torrents on my HDD.

tpe2012 wrote:

Most programs won't run. That's what I thought. I'll move files and reformat the hard drive.
Then reinstall the movies and such.

Is there any problem with installing programs on the HDD while the OS is on the SSD? I don't want to fill up
the SSD too much. I'd like to run some games and save downloaded torrents on my HDD.

Just pick the other drive when it asks you where to install.

Be warned Steam will install everything on the drive it's installed to, so it's all or nothing.

I'll make sure to save downloads to HDD.

Wait, I can install Steam and their games onto my HDD, right?

tpe2012 wrote:

I'll make sure to save downloads to HDD.

Wait, I can install Steam and their games onto my HDD, right?

You can pick where Steam installs easily, but every game will install to the same drive as Steam.

There are ways to split it up, but they're kind of hackish and complicated.

BobbinThreadbare wrote:

There are ways to split it up, but they're kind of hackish and complicated.

Not quite, IMO. These don't look very complicated.

SteamMover
SteamTool library mover

Also, our own Airmantharp has written a tutorial on how to use junctions if you prefer to do these things the manual way: click here for the thread

morphine wrote:

BobbinThreadbare wrote:

There are ways to split it up, but they're kind of hackish and complicated.

Not quite, IMO. These don't look very complicated.

SteamMover
SteamTool library mover

Also, our own Airmantharp has written a tutorial on how to use junctions if you prefer to do these things the manual way: click here for the thread

Apparently it's easier than I thought.

So much needless overcomplication... When I got my SSD drive, I simply installed the OS and Steam and Origin on it, same with ALL the games related to them or any other game not related to Steam or Origin (like MMORPG games). So far I haven't ran out of space, and when I will - I will simply uninstall the old games I have no intention on replaying in near future. Uninstalling games usually don't imply uninstalling configs or savegames, which are either stored in "cloud" for Steam/Origin or in "Documents" folder or similar place. The only usage for my (external) HDD drive is for torrents, multimedia content (photos/movies/musis) and for an occasional "backup" image storage.

My SSD is a 120GB and it is already down to 45GB free. So space is important.

According to my HDD. The Steam folder is 7GB and Metro 2033 folder is 7GB. I'll try using SteamMover, as I've heard
that mentioned before. I'll try it out tonight.

I have other games (Need for Speed, Battlefield 2, Batman Arkham City, and Max Payne 3)
I want to keep those on my HDD but they OS has moved to my SSD. I could unplug the SSD and run the OS on my HDD
but I think that could get annoying or troublesome...switching between OS locations. Any comments?

The whole point of an SSD is to have the OS on it so it loads quickly and the system always feels responsive.

BobbinThreadbare wrote:

The whole point of an SSD is to have the OS on it so it loads quickly and the system always feels responsive.

I agree with this. Almost every game loads from the hard drive at about 85% of the speed of my SSD (actually it's more like 95% now that I have a 4-drive RAID 5 array, but we're talking single 1 TB Caviar Black).

The one glaring exception was Spec Ops: The Line, which took over two minutes to load off my hdd, so I moved it to my ssd and it started loading levels in about 20 seconds. Don't know what they did wrong with that game, but they did something abysmal.

BobbinThreadbare wrote:

The whole point of an SSD is to have the OS on it so it loads quickly and the system always feels responsive.

Not really, no. For example, I never turn off my PC (only when some software requires a reboot, like a new video card drivers), so "loading of OS" is not critical (although still somewhat influential) part for me. I do, however, have lots of games, where such things as "initial loading" and "level change/map change loading" are important to me, and the primary reason I got the SSD. My current Steam folder, even with most junk (like old BF games ) uninstalled, is currently around 140GB, all of which are on SSD. Of course, if one rarely uses some games but still wants to keep them installed for some strange reason (for nostalgia purpose or whatever), then perhaps it is better to keep them off SSD drive and move to regular HDD...

tpe2012 wrote:

I have other games (Need for Speed, Battlefield 2, Batman Arkham City, and Max Payne 3)
I want to keep those on my HDD but they OS has moved to my SSD. I could unplug the SSD and run the OS on my HDD
but I think that could get annoying or troublesome...switching between OS locations. Any comments?

Just re-install these games to whatever location you want to, then copy the savegames for these games from an old HDD to an appropriate place, problem solved...

Thanks for the plug Morphine .

Jason181 wrote:

BobbinThreadbare wrote:

The whole point of an SSD is to have the OS on it so it loads quickly and the system always feels responsive.

I agree with this. Almost every game loads from the hard drive at about 85% of the speed of my SSD (actually it's more like 95% now that I have a 4-drive RAID 5 array, but we're talking single 1 TB Caviar Black).

The one glaring exception was Spec Ops: The Line, which took over two minutes to load off my hdd, so I moved it to my ssd and it started loading levels in about 20 seconds. Don't know what they did wrong with that game, but they did something abysmal.

This is largely true- the only game I'm running off an SSD right now is BF3 with it's exceedingly long level load times. It still takes forever to start. Otherwise, the difference between an SSD and HDD for games can largely be measured in seconds, and that's with using a 2TB WD Green. Heck, even my slow-as-molasses 640GB Toshiba 5400RPM drive connected through USB3 was fast enough for most Steam games with it's abysmal ~50-60MB/s sequential read rates.

I find that the best solution beyond buying an SSD big enough to fit everything a particular system will use. The more common second solution is to install the OS and apps to the SSD, move major user directories such as pictures, music, movies, downloads, maybe documents to an HDD, install/move all games to an HDD, and then selectively move things you use most often that also need a speedup from the HDD to the SSD, linking them back to their original locations with symbolic links. The last solution is to use a caching SSD with an HDD, which works great for laptops that have only one 2.5" bay but also have an mSATA slot; this is also the second best solution for individuals not wanting or able to use the symbolic links but also do not want to buy an SSD suitable for a single system drive.

Airmantharp wrote:

was fast enough for most Steam games with it's abysmal ~50-60MB/s sequential read rates.

I'd have to disagree with that. The numerical difference between HDD and SSD "level loading times" might be small, but the "subjective difference" is what really counts, and when I used HDD I was "annoyed" by various degree by just about every game I have on Steam when it came to initial loading/level loading/map loading, especially when playing games for a long periods of time. The only game that still annoys me in this regard is BF3, which doesn't seem to "care" much about how many RAM you have or how fast is the SSD, and still does this dumb thing where, on a highly populated server, it detects a free spot, starts to sloooooowly load multiplayer map, during which the "free slot" gets taken by someone else and the game then instantly "unloads" the multiplayer map and drops me back to queue... I still have BF3 installed on SSD, though - there's still plenty of space and I was too lazy to re-install it to HDD.

JohnC wrote:

Airmantharp wrote:

was fast enough for most Steam games with it's abysmal ~50-60MB/s sequential read rates.

I'd have to disagree with that. The numerical difference between HDD and SSD "level loading times" might be small, but the "subjective difference" is what really counts, and when I used HDD I was "annoyed" by various degree by just about every game I have on Steam when it came to initial loading/level loading/map loading, especially when playing games for a long periods of time. The only game that still annoys me in this regard is BF3, which doesn't seem to "care" much about how many RAM you have or how fast is the SSD, and still does this dumb thing where, on a highly populated server, it detects a free spot, starts to sloooooowly load multiplayer map, during which the "free slot" gets taken by someone else and the game then instantly "unloads" the multiplayer map and drops me back to queue... I still have BF3 installed on SSD, though - there's still plenty of space and I was too lazy to re-install it to HDD.

I should have said 'Source' games, sorry!

Also, I've seen you mention that BF3 issue before, and I'd like to say that I've never experienced it. Once the game starts loading, I'm good; that's the point of the queue, that when you're number comes up, you get in. It's not a load-time race, and your experience leads me to believe that there's a problem on your end, as I haven't heard about this from any other source.

Airmantharp wrote:

JohnC wrote:

Airmantharp wrote:

was fast enough for most Steam games with it's abysmal ~50-60MB/s sequential read rates.

I'd have to disagree with that. The numerical difference between HDD and SSD "level loading times" might be small, but the "subjective difference" is what really counts, and when I used HDD I was "annoyed" by various degree by just about every game I have on Steam when it came to initial loading/level loading/map loading, especially when playing games for a long periods of time. The only game that still annoys me in this regard is BF3, which doesn't seem to "care" much about how many RAM you have or how fast is the SSD, and still does this dumb thing where, on a highly populated server, it detects a free spot, starts to sloooooowly load multiplayer map, during which the "free slot" gets taken by someone else and the game then instantly "unloads" the multiplayer map and drops me back to queue... I still have BF3 installed on SSD, though - there's still plenty of space and I was too lazy to re-install it to HDD.

I should have said 'Source' games, sorry!

Also, I've seen you mention that BF3 issue before, and I'd like to say that I've never experienced it. Once the game starts loading, I'm good; that's the point of the queue, that when you're number comes up, you get in. It's not a load-time race, and your experience leads me to believe that there's a problem on your end, as I haven't heard about this from any other source.

Maybe that depends on server population... I usually try to only play on "full" 64-player servers.

I've been using junction links with the command prompt and haven't had any problems. If you're comfortable with the command prompt in windows, that's what I would recommend -- and no reinstalls are required.

Even if you're not, it's as easy as:
1. Open up windows explorer and move folder containing game data from SSD to HDD
2. In a blank spot on the explorer window press shift + right click, select the option called "Open command window here".
3. Type:

(make sure you keep the quotes)* and press enter.
4. You're done.

*Example:
Original game folder name: "serious sam 3"
New folder path on the hdd (the HDD is drive E for this example) "e:\games\serious sam 3"
Command:

Ryhadar wrote:

2. In a blank spot on the explorer window press shift + right click, select the option called "Open command window here".

I never knew this existed, it's going to be really helpful to me. Thank you so much.

BobbinThreadbare wrote:

Ryhadar wrote:

2. In a blank spot on the explorer window press shift + right click, select the option called "Open command window here".

I never knew this existed, it's going to be really helpful to me. Thank you so much.

Looks like it is new for Win7 (and Vista?). XP does not appear to have that option.

just brew it! wrote:

BobbinThreadbare wrote:

Ryhadar wrote:

2. In a blank spot on the explorer window press shift + right click, select the option called "Open command window here".

I never knew this existed, it's going to be really helpful to me. Thank you so much.

Looks like it is new for Win7 (and Vista?). XP does not appear to have that option.

I don't see it in my XP workstation at work here, either. In the past it was easy to enable using Microsoft PowerToys. Apparently, if anyone wants it on an older OS version, it can still be added and there are several ways to do it.

Yeah, sorry should've mentioned it's 7/Vista (I think?) that this shift + right click trick works for. Though seeing as how the OP is playing BF3 he/she at least has one of those.

BobbinThreadbare wrote:

I never knew this existed, it's going to be really helpful to me. Thank you so much.

Yeah it's a pretty awesome trick.

You can also shift + right click any file and select "Copy as Path" to get the full path to the file (presumably 7/Vista only). I use this almost daily.

Much of this process of moving things around to take advantage of the SSD"S speed is obviated by using the SSD as a cache in Intel's SRT system. If you have a chipset that supports it, you might want to look into it. It's what I did recently and I've been very happy with the results. In this system, the SSD doesn't store files, it caches logical blocks. This way, you don't have to dedicate the drive for the OS or particular games. My OS loads quickly, and if I want to speed up a new game, I'm sped up after the first two loads. When I'm done with that game, it automatically get flushed when space is needed.

Ryhadar wrote:

Yeah, sorry should've mentioned it's 7/Vista (I think?) that this shift + right click trick works for. Though seeing as how the OP is playing BF3 he/she at least has one of those.

BobbinThreadbare wrote:

I never knew this existed, it's going to be really helpful to me. Thank you so much.

Yeah it's a pretty awesome trick.

You can also shift + right click any file and select "Copy as Path" to get the full path to the file (presumably 7/Vista only). I use this almost daily.

Finally... a couple of compelling reasons to switch to Windows 7!

Well, I moved files from my HDD to other HDD and reformatted. I haven't tried all the programs out yet, but
I'm guessing it is almost easier to reinstall games while I sleep.

The HDD is formatted and I appreciate the help.

I gotta disagree with a lot posted here. I have a 1TB WD Black that I install all my programs/games on, and youd be super surprised how much never needs reinstalling. Even after fully changing my hardware, I've never had to reinstall steam or any of my steam games, even through 3 hardware changes. You'd be surprised how many random programs work properly as well without being properly installed.

Yeah when you reinstall an OS to an SSD and have a separate HDD for steam... you literally just double click on the steam.exe and it will run its own stuff sorting out it's problems, but then it will just work.

Origin doesn't do this. You have to redownload... :/

EsotericLord wrote:

I gotta disagree with a lot posted here. I have a 1TB WD Black that I install all my programs/games on, and youd be super surprised how much never needs reinstalling. Even after fully changing my hardware, I've never had to reinstall steam or any of my steam games, even through 3 hardware changes. You'd be surprised how many random programs work properly as well without being properly installed.

Steam is well-known to do this, but most other programs don't work that way. I'm sure that's by design because they'd much rather you use the existing games on your hard drive than use their bandwidth to download them all again, not to mention it's time-consuming.

I'm sure there are other programs that work fine, but they will lack any previous shell integration, and it is kind of annoying to fire up a program and have it not work, only to have to reinstall it when what you really wanted to be doing was using the program for some purpose.

JohnC wrote:

Not really, no. For example, I never turn off my PC (only when some software requires a reboot, like a new video card drivers), so "loading of OS" is not critical

I'd have to say that you're in the minority here, if not the tiny minority. When Windows does load on a mechanical, it takes another minute after getting to the desktop to become practically usable, whereas with an ssd you get to the desktop nearly twice as fast and it is instantly ready for action.