How to setup this system

[Peerzy]

I'm setting up a system tonight and the OS drive is going to be a 64GB SSD, 2nd drive (2TB) for storage.

The user has about 200GB from their old system, most of it being music, movies, documents etc and 20GB of Steam games.

How best to set this up?

Ideally I want all of the My Docs stuff on the 2nd 2TB drive. Do I just paste the stuff over onto the 2TB drive and add the folders into the Library stuff.

How about Steam? Do I install that on the 2TB or is there a way to have the program on the OS drive and the data (games) in another folder?

Using Win 7 64bit.

Thanks

 

[TheVoice]

You can just copy the folders over and add them to the Library, or set the locations of the Documents, Music etc folders that Windows creates to the existing folders. Either way should work.

As for Steam, probably easiest to just install it straight to the HDD.

Presumably you'll be using partitions?

 

[Peerzy]

You can just copy the folders over and add them to the Library, or set the locations of the Documents, Music etc folders that Windows creates to the existing folders. Either way should work.

As for Steam, probably easiest to just install it straight to the HDD.

Presumably you'll be using partitions?

Understood and agree with the My Docs and Library stuff.

Steam - If I install it to the SSD on his old PC the Steam folder (with games) was 20GB, I don't think using 20GB of his 64Gb SSD is a great idea.

Hadn't considered partitioning - why would he need them?

 

[SiriusB]

You don't need partitions at all.

As for steam, you can install it to the SSD, and use Junctions to move the data to the HDD. As far as Steam is concerned the steamapps folder and its contents is still on C:\.

 

[Peerzy]

Didn't think he needed specific partitions, it'll just be one big 1.81TB of useable space.

Junctions? Is this a Windows function? I've had a google for it thinking it was software but obviously all I got was about roads!

 

[SiriusB]

Install Steam on C:\ as usual.
Delete the contents of C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps
Copy the steamapps folder from the old machine/backup to the HDD, I will assume E:\Steam\steamapps
Open an elevated command prompt and enter:

mklink /J C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps E:\Steam\steamapps

Voila.

 

[Peerzy]

Brilliant, cheers will give it a go tonight after I've got the system built.

Does this mean anymore games he downloads and installs to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps will automatically be actually stored in E:\Steam\steamapps?

 

[SiriusB]

Yup

 

[TheVoice]

Didn't think he needed specific partitions, it'll just be one big 1.81TB of useable space.

You don't need them, but they're quite a nice way to keep things organised a bit, as well as reduce performance deterioration as a result of fragmentation. Far easier to run a quick defrag on a single partition (for games, for instance), rather than having to do one for the entire drive.

Is there really any point installing Steam to the SSD? Isn't going to make a particularly dramatic difference.

 

[marc2003]

i'd just run steam directly from the 2TB drive. i really can't see the point of having the steam app on the SSD but not the games. it's just a glorified web browser afterall.

and don't waste time installing it either. just run steam.exe directly from the "steam" folder and it will automatically set itself up/update if necessary.

 

[SiriusB]

Good point actually. I still run some games from my SSD, so only some games are sent to my HDD via junctions.

This link can show you how to do individual games: http://www.************.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?4566-How-To-Split-a-Steam-Install-(Vista-Win7)