SSD gaming - 1drive w/partitions or 2 drives OS/Games?

[sparkuss]

I'm in the middle of filling out my Newegg wish-list and will have enough to get just about whatever I want.

It's going to be my new dedicated PC gaming box (with some extra apps/storage for game mods/audio/editing etc)

So for those that are already SSD gaming, which is/has been the best setup?

A single large SSD with partitions for OS/games/apps? Or should I get 2 SSD, 1 for OS/Apps and one for just the game installs?

Only other criteria: Will be Win7 Pro/Ultimate and I want to retain ability to image my clean OS install back to the SSD in case I burp something down the road.

 

[Gunbuster]

Single large drive, one partition.

 

[sparkuss]

With only one large partition are users deciding to forgo imaging all together now on SSD?

Without partitions I'll also have to nuke the whole drive to do any fresh installs as well.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

If you're going to image back to the clean OS install as you say, then you'll have to reinstall your games anyway, so what difference does it make? You have a valid concern, maybe you just didn't word it right?

I used to partition all my drives out into three or four, for organization, etc. Got too tedious. I now stick with two physical drives in my machine. Accomplishes data separation for easier re-installs, as well as gives a bit of performance boost by not having a single drive as a bottleneck.

Two SSDs would be my choice if I had the money.

 

[taltamir]

i don't see any real difference between the two options op. your games will load just as fast on either situation.
SSD is great for gaming, it made games like NWN2 playable.

oh, one issue, it might (i don't know if any game is that intelligently threaded) improve your speed if you have your saves (documents directory for many games) on one SSD and the actual game files on another SSD.

 

[Emulex]

wouldn't two partitions allow two threads to service at once? assuming the ssd you chose is very good at ncq this may or may not be better.

 

[taltamir]

wouldn't two partitions allow two threads to service at once? assuming the ssd you chose is very good at ncq this may or may not be better.

you can have as many programs as you want accessing the drives (with a thread being a software thread).

What you are saying sounds like you mean having the drive read and write simultaneously at two locations. This is simply not the case.
the overall drive speed is not improved by partitioning it.

besides, with storage, if it takes operation A X minutes to complete and operation B Y minutes to complete, then doing A and Y at the same time takes MORE than X+Y minutes to complete.
but partitioning a drive should not increase the amount of concurrent operations it receives. NCQ mitigates this penalty by a whole lot.

EX: copying file.exe from E:/blah to E: should take the same time as copying it from E: to C: if E and C are partitions on the same physical drive.

 

[sparkuss]

Thanks for the inputs.

I think I'm leaning towards 2 drives just due to capacities and my current build.

My boot is only 30gb now and my games are less than 100gb. Maybe an 80/100-128 setup.

As far as the partitions, I still want a separate Win7/Office partition that I can image and replace whenever necessary. I haven't read much on how "dirty" WIN7 gets in time compared to my current XP.