Question How to "properly" run games from an SSD

[ibex333]

Hey guys,

When storing games on the SSD, do I also have to store my "Documents" folder on the SSD as well? Many games store their saves not in their directory but in Documents.

As I understand, if the game needs to load it's save from Documents and the folder happens to be on a slow spinning HDD, it wont matter than the game itself is on the SSD because the save is still on the slow disk...


Am I right? Wrong? Explain please.

 

[UsandThem]

Do you not have your OS installed on a SSD?

To me, it would be odd to have your OS on a slow spinner, yet have the games installed on a SSD. The biggest benefit is having the OS on a SSD, while having games installed on a spinner (where the performance benefit isn't anywhere near the same).

 

[TheELF]

Technically you are right but reading a save file from a hdd is still very fast unless there is some game that makes huge save files.
Also why would anybody have an ssd and not have their OS installed on it?!

 

[ibex333]

I do have my OS installed on the SSD, but I move out folders like "Documents" onto a slow spinning disk. My SSD is only 256GB.

I recently purchased a 1TB SSD, but I do not want to move my OS there or my Documents folder unless I have to. The intent for that 1TB SSD is to store games only.

 

[UsandThem]

Like TheElf mentioned, if they are small files loaded at the beginning, there shouldn't be any delay.

However, if the game has auto saves, and those saves are large, it could cause a momentary slowdown. I don't really play any newer games, so this is just an educated guess on my part. It is possible that the game may give you the option to save your games to a spot on one of the SSDs?

 

[whm1974]

I do have my OS installed on the SSD, but I move out folders like "Documents" onto a slow spinning disk. My SSD is only 256GB.

I recently purchased a 1TB SSD, but I do not want to move my OS there or my Documents folder unless I have to. The intent for that 1TB SSD is to store games only.

Large SSDs getting cheap enough to have more then one in our systems. So you have thought replace the 256GB SSD with a 1TB one?

That is how my rig is set up, with two 1TB SSDs, one of which I have my games on.

 

[ibex333]

I suppose I'll just have to compare load times in games and decide when the saves should be located on the SSD and when it is not necessary.

 

[TheELF]

I do have my OS installed on the SSD, but I move out folders like "Documents" onto a slow spinning disk. My SSD is only 256GB.

Mine is 124Gb and has overprovision so it only shows up as 110Gb in windows, has windows 10 on it, the page and hybernation files, a bunch of software one of which is FSX ( ~13Gb) and still has 40Gb free.
Oh yeah,of course it also has all the documents folder and saves on it.

 

[ibex333]

Mine is 124Gb and has overprovision so it only shows up as 110Gb in windows, has windows 10 on it, the page and hybernation files, a bunch of software one of which is FSX ( ~13Gb) and still has 40Gb free.
Oh yeah,of course it also has all the documents folder and saves on it.

Fair enough. I just wanted to avoid cluttering that particular drive.

By the way, so far it seems at least in Metro Exodus and Fallout 4 the location of save doesn't matter at all. I kept them on the spinning disk. however, by moving both games onto the SSD, the load times improved very significantly! The difference is striking.

 

[hoorah]

Also why would anybody have an ssd and not have their OS installed on it?!

My grandfather wanted to upgrade to an SSD in his machine, then installed it as a secondary drive and uses it as a temp location for photoshop. He insists its faster that way. The reality is he got scared of re-installing the OS, because his OS drive is a file organization nightmare. He's pretty stubborn, and he's gonna have a bad day when that OS drive fails because he has no backups.

 

[Furious_Styles]

My grandfather wanted to upgrade to an SSD in his machine, then installed it as a secondary drive and uses it as a temp location for photoshop. He insists its faster that way. The reality is he got scared of re-installing the OS, because his OS drive is a file organization nightmare. He's pretty stubborn, and he's gonna have a bad day when that OS drive fails because he has no backups.

Have you recommended using one of the free dive migration programs? I've used multiple and they have worked well. Otherwise you're right it's going to be a really bad day.

 

[VirtualLarry]

He's pretty stubborn, and he's gonna have a bad day when that OS drive fails because he has no backups.

Aww, geez. I'd hate to see that day. A little "Macrium Reflect Free" goes a long way... and a NAS or an external HDD (2TB or larger).

Download, install, setup Scheduled Backups, from then on, it's basically "fire and forget". Don't forget to buy a USB flash drive, and make the Macrium bootable restore WinPE USB drive, so that you can do a bare-metal restore with a new drive, if your primary drive fails.

That said, I ran into a problem recently with Macrium. I'm using the Free version, 7.2.x I think, and I went to restore, and ... my last backup on my NAS was from Feb., I didn't have any backups from March. Whoops.

It seems that the scheduled backups, don't have very robust error-reporting if they fail for some reason. (I had forgotten to "unlock" my encrypted section of my NAS for my backups, and was thus inaccessible for Macrium to use.) They do indicate the result of the last backup, if you open Macrium and then look under "Scheduled Backups", under the "Status" column.

I have a 4TB HDD in this rig too, maybe I'll set it to back up my SSD to my HDD, and then I'll manually copy those backup images to my NAS.

 

[TheELF]

then installed it as a secondary drive and uses it as a temp location for photoshop. He insists its faster that way.

Using a ssd as a scratch disk for photoshop in deed will make it faster.
Still you would install windows and photoshop on it and still use the rest of it as a scratch disk.

 

[hoorah]

Aww, geez. I'd hate to see that day. A little "Macrium Reflect Free" goes a long way... and a NAS or an external HDD (2TB or larger).

He's been instructed on Macrium. He has a dozen ways he can do it, he's just afraid to take the leap. Keep in mind the guy is in his 80s, and got started with computers as they were emerging in the 1970s and 1980s. Too many 'this should work' followed by 'whoops, C:\ drive is gone, you just lost everything' events in his life.

All the more reason to back things up, but you know how that goes.

He does a lot of amateur video production and his desktop is actually a fairly robust HP workstation with a 6-core xeon. He mostly uses 2-8TB external drives when working on projects. I've tried to talk him into using an SSD for his OS drive and NAS with a RAID array for performance, as plugging in USB drives is a huge bottleneck. He gets it, but at the same time I think he can keep track of the USB drives in his head easier, so thats what he does. I just don't think he likes opening up the computer and messing around with the insides.

 

[hoorah]

Have you recommended using one of the free dive migration programs? I've used multiple and they have worked well. Otherwise you're right it's going to be a really bad day.

Yeah. His problem is that his 1 (or 2, I don't remember) TB OS drive is too full of stuff to do a drive copy to a 240GB SSD. Also, as I mentioned in the other post, he's just really nervous about messing with stuff. Adding the SSD drive as an internal drive was out of his comfort zone, but he did it. Messing with the boot order in BIOS or doing a full reinstall makes him nervous. To be fair, he remembers the days when OS installs were many hours, required finding a bunch of long forgotten driver and program discs, and nothing ever worked right the first time. I mean, I remember those days too, but I also know how much easier it is now. He doesn't have that experience yet.