Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, morphine, Steel
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.
tpe2012 wrote:I'll make sure to save downloads to HDD.
Wait, I can install Steam and their games onto my HDD, right?
BobbinThreadbare wrote:There are ways to split it up, but they're kind of hackish and complicated.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
Airmantharp wrote:was fast enough for most Steam games with it's abysmal ~50-60MB/s sequential read rates.
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.
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.
mklink /J "[name of the game folder]" "[folder path of the game folder on the HDD]"
mklink /J "serious sam 3" "e:\games\serious sam 3"
Ryhadar wrote:2. In a blank spot on the explorer window press shift + right click, select the option called "Open command window here".
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.
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.
BobbinThreadbare wrote:I never knew this existed, it's going to be really helpful to me. Thank you so much.
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.
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.
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