Should you install games on a different SSD from Windows?
Posted by Imminent_Con@reddit | buildapc | View on Reddit | 96 comments
I am building a computer and I have 2 ssds one is a 4 TB SAMSUNG SSD 990 PRO PCI-Express 4.0 x4 and the other is a Crucial T700 PCI-Express 5.0 x4. Windows is installed on the PCI 5.0 ssd and my data on the PCI-Express 4.0 ssd.
I was wondering if I should install my games on the 5.0 ssd or the 4.0 ssd? Is there a performance difference since i usually have other apps running when i play the game?
NoFoot6210@reddit
I did just to keep my steam library separate from my OS. Had to reinstall Windows and spent 3 days downloading everything again. Not gonna happen again.
equilibrium57@reddit
Doesnt matter
BadAdviceAI@reddit
You should always do this. It makes reinstalling windows a lot easier when you don’t have to reinstall all the software. Smart people have done this since forever.
PM-Your-Fuzzy-Socks@reddit
you won’t notice a difference. we’re talking like milli-milli-milliseconds of a difference in loading and such
MDA1912@reddit
You say that but in my mind it depends on the game and what else you’re doing.
For me, World of Warcraft runs better on its own SSD separate from the OS, especially if I want to have streaming on the second monitor.
PM-Your-Fuzzy-Socks@reddit
that’s anecdotal evidence. do you have proof of this?
MDA1912@reddit
My statement is based off of 30+ years in the IT and software industry along with what I've observed by having played World of Warcraft since it came out - it's about to celebrate 20 years of existence.
In what way would you like me to provide you evidence? Please be specific. Because hey, I could be wrong, but sure let's find out.
Plenty-Industries@reddit
From hdd to ssd you'll notice a difference.
But from a SATA SSD to m.2 NVME SSD - you will hardly notice a difference.
Most games barely even transfer data faster than SATA SSD's in the first place; most SATA drives averaging around 500MB/s read/write and dont take advantage of the 3000+MB/s read/write speeds of NVME drives, except the handful that actually use new tech such as DirectStorage where such speed is beneficial.
There's been enough side-by-side testing of SATA SSD's vs PCIe NVME SSD to show that even at the biggest chasm of performance - you're still looking at maybe a 10second difference for something like 99% of games
Someone who has spent 30 years in an industry that thrives from ever improving technology would know this.
Installing a game on the same drive as your OS, has almost never been any sort of performance detriment for nearly 20 years now.
MDA1912@reddit
Me:
Key words:
For me. And I could have made it clearer that when I play Netflix while logging in and out of wow everything lags to shit with Netflix stuttering. This was much worse way back in the bad old days of using spinning disks, but it even persists today. Because I just tried it. It only struggled a tiny bit, but it was noticeable.You:
Me: Yes, I'm not saying it stops or anything. Holy shit people want to argue about every little fucking thing.
Put all your shit on a single storage instance with my blessing. For me netflix + wow works better when the OS uses separate storage from the game. Could be a browser issue, IDK and IDC.
Plenty-Industries@reddit
You're stating a placebo, because that hasn't been the case for 20 years LMFAO.
Install WoW and Windows on the same SSD and it wont run any worse than if you had them installed on separate drives.
If this is coming from someone with 30 years of IT experience, you wouldn't be the person I hired for my company knowing that you're trying to pass off an opinion as a matter of fact lol.
happyshaman@reddit
Idk man load times, fps numbers or something would probably be a good start.
MDA1912@reddit
That's not specific.
I'm asking do they want me to grab perfmon logs and if so which counters, etc. And I'm not talking about the performance of my particular hardware (which is decent) I'm talking about how many bytes WoW reads/writes to/from disk. Also, youtube or netflix though that could be the fault of the browser.
Ah well, I tried. Their anecdote > my anecdote I guess, fuck me.
Pitiful_Apricot8314@reddit
This is only true on a HDD. Nvme/ssd No chance.
discboy9@reddit
That would be a nanosecond :)
InsertFloppy11@reddit
updoot for having the same thought as me haha
skyfishgoo@reddit
certainly on a different partition at least, yes.
this makes backing up your data easier since it will not have to include all your game installs and it will make your games more "portable" should you decide to move to another machine.
travelavatar@reddit
Dude i have 4.0, 3.0 and sata m.2 ssd.. the performance difference is not noticeable at all
EnforcerGundam@reddit
No noticeable difference at all… Heck even with pcie gen 3 drives. They barely improved the random iops of newer drives
FinancialRip2008@reddit
heck even sata3 is tough to distinguish from more modern drives while gaming, and sata is slooooow.
Ghostrider215@reddit
That is absolutely not true
PM-Your-Fuzzy-Socks@reddit
no, it’s true. if someone switched your drives to sata, you likely wouldn’t notice for 90% of the games you play
Ghostrider215@reddit
Interesting how little people in these forums actually know about hardware. Unless you have proof to back this up, I’d quit
misteryk@reddit
it's around 10%. Maybe you'd notice that if you knew to look for a difference but other than that it's pretty much the same https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt_iJTrzOus
InsertFloppy11@reddit
to give some context. if a game loads within 4 seconds using sata, then it will load within 3.6 seconds using nvme.
can you feel that difference? obviously yes, but you probably dont pay attention to that and also probably dont give a fuck about it lol
getajobtuga@reddit
If you have only a SSD it's kinda whatever
legotrix@reddit
well I have 1tb HDD and 2tb hdd for cold storage 1tb sata SSD for games and two 1tb M.2 PCIE 4.0 with one for OS and another for WORK. 6TB TOTAL
I may not have the best specs but got all my drives from the last black Friday bargain, I do not worry about top high-end for whenever Squadron 42 or Star Citizen is out we all require an upgrade regardless, so I decided to let my office work pay for my new PC eventually.
rooplstilskin@reddit
You do work on your personal computer?
Nothing in your employment hiring docs or anything that says any machine you produce work stuff for, they can technically go through or even claim as their own?
Like, if loaded up work on my personal machine, produced some code or the like, and they found out, they would have a field day with me. They could claim that anything ever produced on my personal machine during the same time is company property.
uu__@reddit
Not enforceable where I am
The only thing you might get is if your work pays for your new pc you will have to pay tax on the benefits if you use it for personal use too
legotrix@reddit
Well I am learning davinci resolve, affinity and clipstudio in the meantime I am studying languages, I have a side job and hope to do work for local magazines photography and marketing as my career in logistics is shit.
You could say I returned to study with a entry level job paying my software and courses.
Fetzie_@reddit
I separate them for two reasons:
DragonQ0105@reddit
Indeed. I don't know why most comments are talking about performance when that is irrelevant. Having games & OS on separate partitions makes reinstalling your OS much easier & faster.
Having them on separate physical SSDs sort of adds a layer of protection if one of them dies but proper backups are more important. With fast internet redownloading games isn't much of a problem anyway.
RecalcitrantBeagle@reddit
I mean, a multi-drive solution does mean you're less likely to lose everything, but you're more likely to lose something. Really, as long as you have a separate partition for Windows for convenience, and an external back-up of some kind for important stuff, single vs multi-drive set-ups are effectively interchangeable for 99.9% of users.
I guess you could technically run a set-up where you have a dedicated games drive in one PC, and then you can unplug it and move it to another PC... but that feels extremely niche.
aVarangian@reddit
under no circumstances does having 2 drives increase the likelyhood of loosing 1 drive
RecalcitrantBeagle@reddit
I meant in the sense of having a failure of something in general. You have one drive, it has a set failure rate. Adding another drive doesn't decrease its failure rate, and comes with a failure rate of its own. It's not going to make it more likely that an individual drive fails, but it increases the chance of a drive failure in general.
Also, RAID 0 definitely exists, so there are circumstances where adding more drives increases the chance of losing a given piece of data.
aVarangian@reddit
Other RAIDs exist, meaning you can also never lose data from 1 drive failure.
Exactly. Their likelihood of failure is independent. The probability of losing any data is unaffected by having 2 drives instead of 1.
You are contradicting yourself. And this is nonsense, people upvoting you should go back to school.
This is like the joke of the statistician afraid of flying, who brings a bomb on board because it is less likely for there to be 2 people bringing bombs on a plane than just 1 person doing so.
RecalcitrantBeagle@reddit
Other RAIDs do exist, but you did say no circumstances, which is untrue. And it's not the individual pieces of data I'm referring to, but having some data loss whatsoever.
If you have dataset A and B on one drive, with a 1% failure rate, you have a 99% chance of losing nothing. If you have dataset A on one drive, and dataset B on another drive, you still have a 99% chance of dataset A being fine, and a 99% chance of dataset B being fine; but, you only have a 98.01% chance of dataset A AND B being fine, and thus losing nothing. Now, you're much less likely to lose everything, but you're much more (relatively) likely to lose something.
420KillaNA@reddit
if you DON'T install games to C:\Program Files\ or any Windows related folder - Windows install and updates don't wipe more than Windows related content and if the drive is not formatted when installing Windows again
if make a C:\Games\ folder that isn't normally associated with Windows and choose not to wipe the entire drive and/or format the drive - then everything stays during the install and won't be affected - however you would still have to repair Steam library and storage to point to the Games folder(s) and/or do the tricks with Epic app to rename the game folder(s) then install the game to the same folder location, wait a few seconds and then pause the install and quit Epic app and then delete the new folder and change the name of the existing renamed folder back and then open Epic client again and continue install and it will skip to the verify part and recognize the game has been installed and then only update any new changes as needed
but it's possible to avoid Windows from forcing you to reinstall games in alternate non-Windows folders - as it will just change most old Windows installs and the C:\Windows\ folder to "Windows.old" - and some may still need reinstall as new Windows installs won't have any system registry entries associated and may not run without proper reinstall - unlike ye olde days of Windows 98 through Windows XP whereas now everything has downloadable DRM aka "digital rights management" and basically verifies you own and have the right to access the games and checks your Steam or other games platform account for this data to allow you access to play the game or not - which is stored on Steam servers and in Windows registry or other game files
so this doesn't always work regardless - but most games can be restored - perhaps best if make "backup copies" on a separate larger HDD - you won't be playing from the HDD most likely unless the game doesn't need SSD - but you can get a cheaper 4tb+ sized HDD and make backups and then use WinRAR, WinZip, or 7-Zip and compress each backup file/folder further - then copy each to the large backup HDD storage drive - and safely erase everything on SSD/NVMe drives - and when want to reinstall - copy them back to the SSD or NVMe drive and download your preferred compression app and extract the backups and point Steam or other apps to the data and still avoid downloading 25+ gigabytes of data
I do this for the ~140gb required by Baldur's Gate 3 and other >100gb+ games like GTA V and plenty others as most of the mainstream 3D FPS and other games are averagely above 30gb and some - like Microsoft Flight Simulator - which has about a 125-170gb update needed after installing the base part of the game
ngl internet is pretty damn fast and it's pretty quick unlike 25+ years ago on dialup internet and 150gb download nowadays isn't bad - the 25gb download and update to League of Legends always says "about 25 minutes" and ends up less than 5 mins @ Spectrum ISP 600mb connection that I have currently - it's considerably longer obviously for BG3 around 125gb download and expands to around 140gb - GTA V is like 120gb download and turns to 135ish iirc - both average about an hour and isn't super painful as old dialup days were downloading anything above 5mb even
Cyber_Akuma@reddit
I would assume because the OP asked about the performance difference. I like to have them on separate drives too after I used to just have one massive high-end drive for both and it was just a pain to deal with.
With the way Windows likes to create multiple partitions for a standard install and the way a lot of software likes to write to the user folder even if it's a large amount of files and said software is installed on another drive entirely I prefer to have them be physically separate drives and not just partitions. That way I can also get a higher-end faster drive for my OS and a lower-end but bigger one for my games, and can easily upgrade them if I ever need more space without having to do both, or reinstall/clone windows since it's generally the game drive I need to upgrade.
SoVerySick314159@reddit
Also, if you keep your games elsewhere, you reduce the data on your C: drive, and so, the size of backup images.
Cyber_Akuma@reddit
This! My Windows install of several years of testing and experimenting with many different things went from 2TB to a little under 250GB once I finally moved my games off the drive and to their own dedicated drive. My games are all digital from Steam or other such storefronts and can be easily downloaded, I don't need to back them up. It made my OS backups much smaller and faster.
t0m0hawk@reddit
Yup.
I have 3 ssds in my pc. One for windows and some programs. One for the majority of my software and files. The third is for games.
Home server deals with backups, additional storage, and downloaded content, all stored on large HDDs.
TheWhiteZombie@reddit
Same, and have been doing it this way for years. I literally had to reinstall windows last night, then reinstalled steam etc, pointed the storage locations to my D and E drives and boom, all my games are ready to play.
th4@reddit
You can do that with partitions tho, no need for another drive :p
kumikanki@reddit
I don't get why you don't need to reinstall games and software if you reinstall or swap the drive where windows is.
Even if the windows is on a different drive you will need to reinstall them all if you install windows again.
Fetzie_@reddit
With Steam and Battle.Net you can go to the game library settings and tell them where the previously-downloaded games are located. Then they import the games and you can start playing immediately. You only have to actually install bnet and steam themselves, which are fairly small downloads.
CanadianKwarantine@reddit
You don't even need to reinstall Steam if it's on a separate drive. Just launch it, and it will fix the registry path on its own.
kumikanki@reddit
Now I get it. Thx.
Alauzhen@reddit
This is what I do also. Things you don't want to disappear always on the drive that is not C:
Luckyirishdevil@reddit
I do the same. When I decide a clean wipe is needed it just pull the drive, wipe, reinstall windows, reinstall my games ssd, and remap steam and Battle.net to the other drive
hells_cowbells@reddit
I have them separated, mostly because I've had an addiction to buying SSDs, especially when they were dirt cheap last year. I've upgraded over the years, and just use the older SSDs for dedicated gaming/other storage.
owlwise13@reddit
There is no real difference in performance. The up side is, if you have to reinstall windows all your data stays safer.
SwissMidget@reddit
Not sure if it was mentioned buuuuuut...
I create at least a separate partition for my games folder because I only have the one drive in my laptop. It's a bottom to middle line laptop that was fairly cheap... don't yell at me lol.
I ran across the suggestion to do this at some point. The reasoning was that the C: drive has certain permissions/restrictions so not having your games on that drive is better. I think I was having trouble with one of my games and the ultimate reason was that it was on the C: drive. Putting it onto a partitioned drive labeled as G: did in fact, fix whatever issue I was having.
Not sure if it was just coincidence but yeah, that is my 2 cents.
styx971@reddit
i usualy do keep them separate , it makes things easier when you need to reformat
bravo009@reddit
I have an SSD exclusively for games because if I wanted to reinstall Windows for whatever reason, my games won't be affected.
BigGuyWhoKills@reddit
In your situation I would put the OS on the gen4 and games on the gen5. But either way will be fine.
When gen4 first came out (and Intel didn't have it yet) the Intel fan boys swore that gen3 was good enough. They weren't wrong. The difference was minimal. And I expect the difference between 4 and 5 to be even smaller.
In the old days, we'd put Windows on a drive or partition that held it and not much else.
Then we'd put apps and games on another partition that took the rest of the boot drive.
Lastly, games would go on another drive, which would be the fastest drive in the machine. Sometimes we would also move the swap file to this drive.
The benefit is we could reinstall Windows without losing any data. We also got good at restoring games after reinstalling Windows without running the game installer. This is really easy in Steam and Ubi Play.
Now I put the OS and the games I play the most on my boot M2 SSD, and everything else goes on the big HDD.
pongpaktecha@reddit
I have a separate SSD for games not because of any speed/performance benefits but so that I don't have to reinstall my games if I need to reinstall Windows
rygaroo@reddit
I just sync my Steam folder to an hdd so I can swap SSDs, xfer the Steam folder back, then reinstall games without needing to download anything.
pragmaticzach@reddit
Definitely the best answer. In retrospect I wish I had gotten a smaller SSD just for windows, and then a larger one just for games/programs. It would be so convenient to just reinstall windows without worrying about anything else.
RedLimes@reddit
My games go on my old 2.5" SATA drives unless they are special to me and then they get a spot on the main drive. I don't want to keep redownloading a games to my main drive, I'd rather use the "junk" drives for that.
My main drive is a 980 Pro and I can't tell the difference in speeds between the two in gaming.
Cyber_Akuma@reddit
Performance wise most games won't see a difference even off a SATA drive compared to NVME. I only like to do it because it makes backups and reinstalls easier, also that way I can use a smaller drive for my OS so I can afford a better one and get a cheaper lower end but bigger drive for my games.
Redacted_Reason@reddit
2TB SSDs are cheaper than 4TB ones per GB, so I have a 2TB for Windows, programs, etc, and a second 2TB just for games. I’m still not sure what I’m doing with the other 2x 2TBs. Maybe VMs or something.
Snowbunny236@reddit
I have my OS on an nvme with a DRAM cache. My games are mostly on a sata SSD. No difference in load speeds.
Bad_Company_Sr@reddit
I'll preface this by saying I have no real world experience with PCI-e 5.0 drives, but there is suppose to be a significant speed difference between PCI-e 4 and 5. What I would do is install any games known to have long load time/screens on the Crucial drive (faster) and put the rest on the Samsung (slower). I do the same thing with my games but my drives are PCI-e 4 and 3.
Ok-Sympathy9830@reddit
That's what I do. Got a 1TB Gen 4 for the OS and stuff and a 2TB Gen 5 for my games.
Ttamlin@reddit
I do, but for practicality/storage reasons, not performance. As others have said, you will not notice the performance improvements.
However, my OS drive is only 500 GB, so I have a dedicated 1 TB drive for games. Not entirely Steam library, but it's close. It's just a standard SATA SSD, nothing fancier than a Samsung Pro whatever they're called. A nice SSD for sure, but nothing crazy.
Taylorig@reddit
Always had separate drives. It's probably habit in my case from the ide drive days. But also as others have mentioned, when your os drive takes a crap. Or it's just time to do a clean install of the OS. Everything else is safe. I have a 250GB nvme for OS. 2TB SSD for games. And a 4TB SSD for other games/stuff.
zarco92@reddit
Doesn't matter.
nesnalica@reddit
games cant even use the fullspeed of SSDs.
some newer games benefit but overall its not that much of a deal. especially if both are NVMes.
BarrierX@reddit
Nah. it doesn't really matter unless you want to often reinstall windows for some reason.
sinner_dingus@reddit
ideally yes
BidNo4423@reddit
Games never go on my C Drive! Just in case my C Drive takes a crap, I'll never lose Games.
Dr-Moth@reddit
Make sure you know where your saved games are. While the game might be on the second drive, most games these days are saving to your user account folder on the primary drive.
You can configure the location of this in windows. Or even better, get a backup tool to make daily backups of the save game folders to another drive or location.
These days my saves are backed up to my NAS. (I used to use Google Drive but it was slowing down the PC scanning the save game folders every boot).
Ok_Emotion9841@reddit
Until the c drive is fine and the ones your games are on take a crap.
TangerineOk7940@reddit
Partition 5.0 drive and give like 100-200gb to windows and just save shit where you have space or want to organize it.
farrellart@reddit
I always have O/S and software Drive - project drive - back-up drive. SSD's fail without much notice. Why make life harder when they do.
You won't see any performance gain these days though - the drives are really fast now.
Dr-Moth@reddit
If you're worried about drive failure and have multiple drives, you're better off with mirrored drives.
SearingBrain@reddit
Yeah you’ll notice a difference putting games on a secondary drive if you have stuff running besides the game like youtube videos open. I have a T705 gen5 primary and 990 pro gen4 secondary and definitely got more frames multitasking when its on the secondary. However when it was just a small single player game without other apps open I got better results on the primary. Splitting the load provides more read/write capacity, and gen5 is faster than gen4. Don’t listen to the bugmen.
Brawndo_or_Water@reddit
Watch benchmarks of SSD 3, 4 versus 5. They all load and play the game the same.
SearingBrain@reddit
"the game" which game, Doom 1993? probably. Modded Conan Exiles? No way. If you can provide a link to the benchmark you're saying exists then I'll check it, yet right now I'm certain it doesn't exist because I've already done local analytics that say otherwise.
Majestic_Olive_6236@reddit
Hahahahahahahaha
Yeah, YouTube videos really impact ssd usage. Holy fuck we need to teach children more about how computers work in school.
SearingBrain@reddit
You genuinely think that having several tabs of chrome open to watch videos doesn't use read/write capability on the SSD that the program files are on? You're confident enough to make a hurrhurr comment calling me a kid? Primary example of the bugman archetype that I mentioned.
The data of a video is cached where exactly? OH YEAH ON YOUR SSD/HDD PRIMARY DRIVE, and it is CONSTANTLY shuffling between RAM to program file directories during viewing.
As this person says, "Literally almost everything you do will write to your SSD. Just opening a program will cause Windows to shuffle a little bit of data out of RAM an into the page file. Every single page that you view on the internet is downloaded to your SSD and then displayed by your browser. Every video in youtube is downloaded to your SSD and then played from there. Most of this data is written and then almost immediately deleted when you move on to the next webpage/video."
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/watching-youtube-increases-total-host-writes-on-ssd.261496/post-4159948
Even a Google of "are youtube videos locally stored during viewing" would have displayed that you shouldn't have commented that.
You shouldn't be trying an adult programmer talking about basic IO, you should be grinding loot that will be defunct next week in Destiny 2, hop to it.
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Brawndo_or_Water@reddit
What CPU/Motherboard do you have? PCI-e 5 is known to cut speed of gpu to 8x if there's a 5 installed in that slot.
Teshok@reddit
Normally I seperate them but I've had a couple games that didn't like that and had autosave stutters unless they were in the is drive.
Recogniz3Wealth@reddit
Always! You want to spread the load on both disks.
itguy_tyson@reddit
Raid 0
SASardonic@reddit
I know you're joking but I had a friend help me set up a rig with a raid 0 NVME SSD setup and let me tell you it was in no way worth the instability, even setting aside the lack of data safety
Recogniz3Wealth@reddit
Not talking about raid. It’s just the best practice to have windows and other software load feom one disk while you gave, watch movies from another. These ssd-s have a limited write/read cycle and the bus is under balanced load too. If someone has multiple sad-s then why not. For example I always have a torrent software running in the background and it uses a totally separate disk.
itguy_tyson@reddit
Yeah it's a joke no normal user should do raid 0, it just increases the chance of losing all your data, generally you're right a high performance high tbw main drive ssd and a secondary drive ideally of similar performance but lower speed ssds is sweet too, the benefit being that second ssd should last nearly 10 years, I've got ssds that are nearly 10 years old still going strong
Recogniz3Wealth@reddit
If an ssd lasts me for 10 years I am a happy customer.
teslaactual@reddit
The only difference is from a purely technical level like fraction of milliseconds different
SRFoxtrot341_V2@reddit
I always do, just for convenience and segmentation.
Zippytiewassabi@reddit
Negligible different in performance, but it does help when you have media and OS separated, and one drive goes bad, you only lose one side. And since drives have a finite number of read/write operations, keeping them separate helps extend their life. It’s really if the cost is worth the benefit, but since you already have them, and I consider it a best practice, then go for it.
My next build will probably feature a smaller NVMe for the OS, something like 500GB, then a 2TB+ for applications and media.
rainbowclownpenis69@reddit
I keep my drives separated. If you only have one drive, then go for it.
I have 2 2TB 980 Pro NVMes. One has Windows, the other downloads. I have 2 4TB GM7000 NVMes, as well. One has games and the other is overflow.
rory888@reddit
Only time you'll notice a difference is installing them.
ICastCats@reddit
Once you've got them on NVME that's most of the performance gains. Really your SSD doesn't add so much beyond that. It's why people are comfortable recommending getting midrange SSDs for gaming PCs.