SSD and HDD Setup. What Do Fellow OzBargainers Do?

• 

  scrimshaw on 04/10/2014 - 14:03

  +6

  To slim down your SSD usage, you need to create symlinks to your secondary HDD.

  You can do this by (this instruction is for Win 8.1)

  Open up Win Explorer (WIndows + E buttons)
  On the left hand pane where you will see the list of commonly used folders such as 'Downloads' 'Music' 'Pictures' and 'Videos' or so on, you can right click on them, Properties -> Location tab then move that folder from the default C:\Users\USERNAME\Videos to another drive.

  Your libraries panel will automatically adjust themselves to reflect the change. To undo the symlinks you can always use the 'Restore Default' button you saw earlier in the Location tab.

  You cannot move programs if you've already installed them, but from now on you can be selective and choose where you want your programs and Steam games installed, as you're given that choice to install to a destination directory.

  • 

    mmd on 04/10/2014 - 14:40

    Cheers Scrimshaw
    Do ppl normally install steam games on the SSD or the HDD?

    • 

      scrimshaw on 04/10/2014 - 15:05

      That is a matter of personal choice really.
      I have all my games go on a Samsung Spinpoint F3, good enough IO performance for all my steam games.

      • 

        c0balt on 04/10/2014 - 17:49

        +1

        Thanks scrim, you saved me a bit of space on my 250gb EVO.

        O.P another thing to consider when putting games on an SSD or HDD are texture pop ins. Games like GTA, Borderlands and many more fade higher quality textures on top of lower ones when needed - and disc read speed is pretty important for this. Sometimes when playing GTA you can be driving really fast (too fast for the HDD read speed) and all of a sudden hit an invisible object that fades in once you die.

        Games like Call of Duty tend to load everything it needs into RAM rather than calling on it from the HDD when needed.

        So it's not just game load speed, but the way the game will call on the resources can actually give better performance during the game.

        Steam games are great in that it's not hard to transfer a game between the SSD and HDD, and back again if you wish. Not using the backup feature, but copying and pasting + deleting in the right order under the SteamApps folder on multiple drives.
        http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/96370/how-can-i-mo…

        I use a 250gb EVO for my primary drive and had a spare 1tb W.D. green+ 500gb Hitachi lying around that I run with in my gaming PC.

• 

  ethereal88 on 04/10/2014 - 16:34

  -2

  1TB SSD EVO for OS + 1TB EVO SSD for scratch + soon to get 6TB HDD for storage. Use Libraries to organize it.

  • 

    twinbag on 04/10/2014 - 19:19

    That much storage will make you go blind ;)

    • 

      StickBug on 16/10/2014 - 12:40

      I've got a 256gb SSD + 4tb WD green + 3tb WD green in my computer and a NAS with 4x 4tb WD green with 2x 4tb WD reds when one of those fail, and about another 10~ or so various 2-4tb sitting around which are broken….

• 

  Cheeper on 04/10/2014 - 22:28

  I usually put the os & small essentials on the ssd then games and large programs and saved data on the HDD. Easy.
  Games seem to run faster… must cache on the ssd?

• 

  cypher67 on 04/10/2014 - 22:33

  I bought a 4-Bay NAS with 4x3T WD Reds in Hybrid Raid and then a decent SSD for the machines OS & Games. I installed steam to the SSD but I only keep the games I'm playing on installed. I know this is probably overkill, but I have other people in the house the share the NAS, plus my Smart TV for easy access.

• 

  Soundwave on 05/10/2014 - 08:13

  I have a 240GB SSD as a OS drive with my programs on it and a 2TB HDD as my storage and anoth 240GB SSD for game recording.

  99% of my games are Steam based and I don't play all of them all the time. I might swap between 3 max.

  So what I did was download them all and then backed them up through Steam and saved them on my 2TB.

  That way, I don't have to redownload the game and I can install it on the SSD if I want to play to get faster/smoother performance. When I'm done, I just uninstall but make sure it keeps the save file.

  You can just install on the 2TB, but I do find the SSD performs a lot better on load times etc.

  So I only have Counterstrike Source and Battlefield 4 installed. Once in a while, I'll play Borderlands 2 or Farcry 3.

• 

  Karlos101 on 05/10/2014 - 09:05

  I generally keep games off of what ever drive my operating system is on. If you really wanted to be secure and performance minded about it. Get your self another Ssd (or another hdd) purely for game installs.

• 

  srhardy on 05/10/2014 - 09:43

  +1 SSD boot OS & install apps
  +1 move MOVIES, PICTURES, MUSIC & DOCUMENTS/DOWNLOADS to HD (see first post on how2)

  Install STEAM on the HD as well as all steam GAMES (you can move steam installed games folder, search google on how2)

  Make a small (16gb) partition on SSD and set fixed SWAP file maybe?

  • 

    mmd on 07/10/2014 - 03:01

    Make a small (16gb) partition on SSD and set fixed SWAP file maybe?

    Is that the same as in the ssd tweaks in Whirlpool under set pagefile?
    •Leave pagefile on the SSD but set it to a fixed and reasonable size.
    ◦Pagefile performs well on the SSD, depending on the amount of RAM in the system set it to 1 or 2gb in size (fixed, min and max the same value). It's up to the individual user as to how much page file they need…it should be a balance between available space on the SSD and how much RAM you have and regularly use. Left to it's own devices Windows will allocate a pagefile the same size as your installed RAM – on a 2GB RAM machine, no sweat, but on a 4/8/16GB machine it starts to chew up space pretty quick.
    – Go to control panel => system and security => system
    – Click on advanced tab
    – In the Performance section click on Settings
    – Click on Advanced
    – Click on Change in the Virtual Memory section
    – Change the virtual memory (ie the pagefile size) to the desired size
    – Don't forget to reboot

• 

  mrmarkau67 on 05/10/2014 - 11:20

  I have a conventional SSD for OS and basic programs, an msata SSD for "My Documents" working files, page files and hibernate files, and a spinning drive for media.

  In general its good to spread you stuff across multiple drives so that there is less contention.

• 

  rbrb on 05/10/2014 - 11:28

  OS, apps, games, etc on the SSD. Media and other data on the SSD.

• 

  mmd on 07/10/2014 - 02:57

  Thanks for all the good info guys.
  Is it still advisable to follow SSD tweaks as advised in Whirlpool?

  • 

    mrmarkau67 on 07/10/2014 - 09:40

    +1

    Yes, it all seems very sensible.