About Steam games and "Small" SSD space. (Steam Mover, Salvation?)

[BFG10K]

I could see messy, but why dangerous?

Delete them the wrong way and it deletes your data, not the links.

 

[imaheadcase]

I don't see what the big deal is, just reinstall the game from steam each time you want to play. It saves all the info you have from games so its not a issue.

 

[turn_pike]

I don't see what the big deal is, just reinstall the game from steam each time you want to play. It saves all the info you have from games so its not a issue.

Unless you have ISP grade connection it'd take forever.Just two days ago I got a sudden urge to replay Supreme Commander. Downloading 15 GB from steam and installing it takes forever. By the time its done, the urge was gone and I only played one mission to test the game out.

Theres also :
- metered broadband
- The fact that fast internet is not ubiquitous. (I used to bring my computer to a place with fast internet to download stuff and play them at home.)
- and games with mods and customization such as Skyrim


I am sure others can come up with their own reasons

 

[imaheadcase]

If you got a terrible ISP, don't use steam. Problem solved then.

 

[Craig234]

Unless you have ISP grade connection it'd take forever.Just two days ago I got a sudden urge to replay Supreme Commander. Downloading 15 GB from steam and installing it takes forever. By the time its done, the urge was gone and I only played one mission to test the game out.

For some reason this says 'condoms' to me.

 

[Demo24]

Some of us don't have great internet. It can take me many hours to download any decently sized game, I'd rather not wait that long one day just to play something. Pretty much any game I'm interested in playing is installed to a 2tb drive, only bf3 sits on my ssd setup. Load times really aren't bad so it doesn't bother me much.

However I've been wanting for years the ability to install certain games to other drives natively in steam.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

As I've said, it's very easy and fast to make a local backup of Steam games. This way you don't have to download them again.

 

[Anteaus]

My FSX install takes 50GB by itself. When you consider that plus the handful of other games I play regularly (10-20GB a piece average), not to mention Windows itself, 125 is ridiculously small. I guess I could keep installing/uninstalling, but then you could run into activation issues (after all not all games are Steam). Also, there is always the potential of needlessly reducing your SSDs lifespan by doing so much shuffling.

OP, I agree with you in that some gamers can easily get by with a 125GB drive, but not everyone has the same gaming habits. Personally, I would much prefer something in the 500GB range, but those are still very expensive. In the meantime, my 1TB Black series is more than adequate 🙂.

 

[JAG87]

I don't understand why people put games on an SSD in the first place.

 

[Red Storm]

I only install the games I actively play, so I could easily make do with a 128GB SSD.

 

[Mem]

I'm making this post because I cannot understand the people complaining they have too small space on their SSD's for their Steam folder/games.

Let's say you have a 80GB SSD containing the Steam folder. Of course this is not enough to store 100 games.

But how many games do people really play? My guess is maybe people switch between two or three games for periods, then they move over to other games. Well, a 80GB SSD is enough for at least 10 game installs. Why do people "need" to have all their Steam games installed all the time?! :\

One can even take a backup of the game, within Steam, and store it on a local harddrive. This eliminates the need for downloading it from Steam again. And the savegames are usually stored in My Documents anyway.


Many people claim they need to use their SSD's for harddrive caching, because of the SSD's small size. I just don't understand this. Using a SSD for Harddrive caching will never yield the same performance as a native SSD anyway.

And let's face it, even a 120GB SSD is cheap nowadays. 120GB will suffice for Windows install, programs and many games. Even 80GB will do that.

Why do people need to have more than 10 games installed at once?! How long does it take to reinstall the game from a local backup anyway? :biggrin:


Regards
The_Golden_Man

So full of holes where do I start ok first mechancial HD is so much cheaper and far larger then SSD,best solution IMHO is using Z68 board like I do with SSD as cache drive.


I'm a serious gamer have have lots of games installed that I always go back and play plus have quite a few mods for Morrowind,Oblivion,Skyrim etc... to name a few so reinstalling them on a small SSD HD and reinstalling the saves files and patches would be very annoying and not enough space for the too many games I've.

SSD as Cache does give a very good performance I suggest you look at some benchmarks that many sites have.

Also a lot of my games are not on Steam,like any gamer I've games on Steam/Origin and plenty of retail games as well.
I could throw in my MMORPGs then I occasionally play and they too have the layouts ie hotbar icons etc how I like them,plus my beta testing games and you see I need space.

Throw in Windows and other software and you see more space is needed.

Let me know when I can get a cheap 1TB or 2TB SSD same price as mechanical 1TB or 2TB HD.
End of the day I'm very happy with my 64mb M4 SSD as cache drive ,its does the job and I don't have to worry about storage space when using it as cache SSD which is an important factor.

120GB may sound like a lot but its not nowadays,games now are in 5GB to 30GB+ , we have long gone from the old 1mb to 2mb DOS days.


I have not even touch MP3s that we all have on our PCs 😉.

 

[Golgatha]

I use a 1TB RAID0 array and an 8GB DDR3 RAM cache (FancyCache Beta 0.8) for my games install drive (Steam resides here with its 100+ installed games). I have a few misc games on my SSD as well.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

I use a 1TB RAID0 array and an 8GB DDR3 RAM cache (FancyCache Beta 0.8) for my games install drive (Steam resides here with its 100+ installed games). I have a few misc games on my SSD as well.

Explain... Can you use that RAMDISK to cache the harddrive??

Is it free? Download link?

Also, does it work well? Experiencing a boost in speed when loading games and appz?

Edit: I just tested Steam Mover, never tried it before. I moved Borderlands, Bioshock 2, Pirates and Skyrim from my 2x80GB (160GB) Intel X25 Gen.1 Raid0 SSD Array (Where I have my Steam folder, and also other games) to my 1TB WD Green Harddrive. It couldn't be easier. Really, I still don't see the problem. If you move a few games you don't play very much, to the harddrive (Using Steam Mover), they can still be played, or even moved back, just as easy as they was moved in the first place.

And I moved these specific games because I don't play them much. I have played 180 hours + in Skyrim, Borderlands and Bioshock 2 I find boring, but Pirates is an old and little game not needing the speed of the Raid0 SSD array. Still I have the possibility to play the games, should I so wish. Either I can run them from the harddrive, or I could move them back to the SSD RAID0 Array. So I really don't see the problem.

An even better solution for people having a huge ammount of Steam games, is to default the Steam folder to a large harddrive, then just use Steam mover to move the games they play the most over to a SSD, when they so wish.

Steam Mover Download link

 

[darkewaffle]

I keep the commonly played stuff on the SSD, junction the other things onto my storage drives. Works well.

 

[Golgatha]

Explain... Can you use that RAMDISK to cache the harddrive??

Is it free? Download link?

Also, does it work well? Experiencing a boost in speed when loading games and appz?

Edit: I just tested Steam Mover, never tried it before. I moved Borderlands, Bioshock 2, Pirates and Skyrim from my 2x80GB (160GB) Intel X25 Gen.1 Raid0 SSD Array (Where I have my Steam folder, and also other games) to my 1TB WD Green Harddrive. It couldn't be easier. Really, I still don't see the problem. If you move a few games you don't play very much, to the harddrive (Using Steam Mover), they can still be played, or even moved back, just as easy as they was moved in the first place.

And I moved these specific games because I don't play them much. I have played 180 hours + in Skyrim, Borderlands and Bioshock 2 I find boring, but Pirates is an old and little game not needing the speed of the Raid0 SSD array. Still I have the possibility to play the games, should I so wish. Either I can run them from the harddrive, or I could move them back to the SSD RAID0 Array. So I really don't see the problem.

http://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/fancy-cache/

Works well as far as I can tell. Games load pretty much instantly as long as it's one you play regularly. The software is Beta and free for 180day trial. Seemed to me to be a good solution to the space vs cost problem for installing all my games. Once 512MB SSDs come down in price and TRIM has been supported under RAID arrays for awhile, I'll probably just switch over to that configuration. The raid array pulls 220MB/s without any caching, and for games sustained read and write is where it's at anyway. In summary, it wasn't too slow to begin with, but the RAM caching adds a bit of extra zip. It's also fun running benchmarks and seeing 6.3GB/s of sustained read and write operations on the 2nd run through. RAM is cheap and the software is free for now, so why not give it a whirl I figured.

 

[HardcoreRobot]

if you only have 5 games why are you trying to apply your situation to people that very likely have many many more?

its a pretty simple answer. when you have more games, or bigger games, an affordable SSD is not big enough.

the fact that you would say 80gb could hold an OS + 100 games shows just how out of touch you are.

 

[vshah]

Some games from steam one might actually want on their SSD drive. Some games with brutal load times can benefit a lot with an SSD.

ah, i guess it's worked out for me that those games that I want to load quickly i haven't bought on steam. afaik there's no way to install some on the ssd and some on the hdd

 

[The_Golden_Man]

if you only have 5 games why are you trying to apply your situation to people that very likely have many many more?

its a pretty simple answer. when you have more games, or bigger games, an affordable SSD is not big enough.

the fact that you would say 80gb could hold an OS + 100 games shows just how out of touch you are.

Here;

Explain... Can you use that RAMDISK to cache the harddrive??

Is it free? Download link?

Also, does it work well? Experiencing a boost in speed when loading games and appz?

Edit: I just tested Steam Mover, never tried it before. I moved Borderlands, Bioshock 2, Pirates and Skyrim from my 2x80GB (160GB) Intel X25 Gen.1 Raid0 SSD Array (Where I have my Steam folder, and also other games) to my 1TB WD Green Harddrive. It couldn't be easier. Really, I still don't see the problem. If you move a few games you don't play very much, to the harddrive (Using Steam Mover), they can still be played, or even moved back, just as easy as they was moved in the first place.

And I moved these specific games because I don't play them much. I have played 180 hours + in Skyrim, Borderlands and Bioshock 2 I find boring, but Pirates is an old and little game not needing the speed of the Raid0 SSD array. Still I have the possibility to play the games, should I so wish. Either I can run them from the harddrive, or I could move them back to the SSD RAID0 Array. So I really don't see the problem.

An even better solution for people having a huge ammount of Steam games, is to default the Steam folder to a large harddrive, then just use Steam mover to move the games they play the most over to a SSD, when they so wish.

Steam Mover Download link

 

[bunnyfubbles]

I think the VelociRaptor fills the perfect niche for people like us who want faster performance than 7200RPM drives but have too many games to fit on a SSD.

900GB variants are almost certainly on their way, and they’ll be completely viable for big game installs.

I think the Raptors are still too expensive. I'm seeing the 600GB drive still pricing just over $200 and the smaller versions are just as expensive if not more so (and those ones are often slower than a modern 7200RPM)

For my money I'd rather go with 7200RPM HDD + SSD cache

Even starting from scratch a new 1TB drive (which can be respectably fast in their own right) with its inflated flood price ($110-140 without looking too hard) plus a purpose built ~50-64GB SSD Cache drive (~$100) leaves one with a solution that can be heads and tails faster than the Raptor as well as much more capacity for roughly the same price, or much less if an older HDD or SSD is available for reuse.

 

[shortylickens]

I dont use my SSD for steam. Just the OS and swap file. I've got almost 1 whole terabyte downloaded and thats only 1/3 of my games. I'll probably get fed up with video games before we have 3TB solid states.

 

[SunnyD]

My system setup goes something like this:

C Drive - Boot drive = 160GB SSD
D Drive - "Work" drive = 1TB 7200RPM HDD
E Drive - "Storage" drive = 1TB 7200RPM HDD (Though this one is going to move eventually as I have a server for slack storage now)

Games go on in D:\Games. However, I install all my games to C:\Games, which is a junction folder which points to D:\Games.

I have probably 80 or 90 games on Steam, though I have maybe 10 of them installed at this point.

 

[LumbergTech]

I would rather just have a large SSD than be constantly moving shit around. Its a waste of time. I want to play games, not manage games.

 

[Anteaus]

I don't understand why people put games on an SSD in the first place.

That's like asking why someone would buy a high end GPU and not play any 3D games. It takes me about 30 seconds to boot my machine with my HDD, after which any drive latency isn't noticeable unless I'm actually loading games or messing with video. I don't mind the boot time. I want a SSD that can actually provide system wide speed bonuses, not only parts of it.

You ask why people put games on SSDs? I respond by saying that the only reason people decide not to in the first place is because of size handicap. Based on what you've said, if I gave you a 1TB SSD, you wouldn't use it for any type of gaming.

Anyways, I'm pro SSD. I'm just not going to by one till I can get 500GB for less than $300. The current price point for that capacity is $700-800. Still far from affordable, at least at those capacities.

 

[imaheadcase]

I don't understand why people put games on an SSD in the first place.

Why don't you understand that? You are on anandtech and don't understand how great SSD drives are for games and other things?

If you don't put games on ssd drive and dump them on all on a mechanical drive THAT is something that is not understood.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

That's like asking why someone would buy a high end GPU and not play any 3D games. It takes me about 30 seconds to boot my machine with my HDD, after which any drive latency isn't noticeable unless I'm actually loading games or messing with video. I don't mind the boot time. I want a SSD that can actually provide system wide speed bonuses, not only parts of it.

You ask why people put games on SSDs? I respond by saying that the only reason people decide not to in the first place is because of size handicap. Based on what you've said, if I gave you a 1TB SSD, you wouldn't use it for any type of gaming.

Anyways, I'm pro SSD. I'm just not going to by one till I can get 500GB for less than $300. The current price point for that capacity is $700-800. Still far from affordable, at least at those capacities.

Have you ever tried a system using a fast SSD? 😱 When I got my first SSD, a couple of years ago, I was shocked at how much faster and more responsive my system became!

I've been a PC enthusiast since 1995, and the last time I got really shocked was when the Voodoo 1 cards arrived. First time I tried the 3Dfx Glide patch for Quake, coming from 2D was a HUGE experience for me. So was going to my first SSD. Maybe even more fantastic then my first experience with 3D gaming and Voodoo 1!