My steam account...
- Thread starter lolage
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Yes, it's also a far lot quicker than using the backup and restore features, they take hours.
So after doing that you can just install steam, and there is no problems?
Soldato
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Similar here, just keep it on a partition seperate from windows.
If you're formatting and re-installing, might be worth creating 2 partitions on your new install. One for windows, the other for games/personal files. So you can flatten your windows install in the future without having to set up all your games etc again.
The backup feature in steam is terribly slow, so just copy the lot to an external drive and back again. As has already been mentioned here already.
No need to reinstall steam, just run the Steam executable, and it'll auto-install a service, job done.
I have Steam on my D:\, and it persists Windows installs, no need to download anything
Nope, no need to install it just copy it back. You'll need to set up any desktop and start menu shortcuts you want, and iirc you'll need to enter your log in details again but other than that it'll work straight away.
PK!
At the moment i have a 80gb which is rapidly running out of space. So my plan is to put windows on my 80gb and install my new 500gb hard disk on it for music/games/films
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I'd personally partition the 80GB. 20GB for XP and the rest as a games partition. Saves a lot of a trouble in the long run.
Soldato
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steam can be installed and run from anywhere - it doesnt need any registry entried or anything like that. infact if you copied the entire steam folder you wouldnt even have to re-install steam, just run the steam.exe thats in the folder and away you go.
ill be damned if im backing up my steam folder to anything other than another hard drive. its just far too large lol.
wrong choice. install windows fresh on the 500gb drive ( partition it first) as it'll be far faster than what you have now. use the 80gb for music instead, but keep your eye on it as its an old drive.
I like that idea. Will 60gb be enough though? As a lot of games nowadays seem to be like 8gb for install. Maybe i should use the 60gb for music and partion 150gb for games from my 500gb.
They are both equally the same drive, just different sizes.
Soldato
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if its an 80gb i can not see how. what model is it?
So your old 80GB drive has the same access speeds, transfer speeds, and cache amount as your new 500GB drive?
James is right, I expect the 500GB will be *much* faster for a Windows install
Soldato
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depending on the age and performance of the drive, a new 320gb drive for example could have up to twice the average transfer rate or a lot more.
my old 80gb maxtor
my 160gb western digital:
my 250gb 7k250 hitachi (in red, now in my ps3), my 500gb seagate 7200.10
my wester digital AAKS 500gb (red) vs my seagate 7200.10 (blue)
as you can see, the 500gb WD (average 73.5mb/sec read) is a goood 2 times the speed of the 80gb maxtor (35.9mb/sec). the new drives like the single platter 320gb's are averaging over 100mb/sec. of course, that isnt all there is to the speed of an operating system on a hard drive, but its a pretty good indication and you can be sure its going to be a lot faster.
my old 80gb maxtor
my 160gb western digital:
my 250gb 7k250 hitachi (in red, now in my ps3), my 500gb seagate 7200.10
my wester digital AAKS 500gb (red) vs my seagate 7200.10 (blue)
as you can see, the 500gb WD (average 73.5mb/sec read) is a goood 2 times the speed of the 80gb maxtor (35.9mb/sec). the new drives like the single platter 320gb's are averaging over 100mb/sec. of course, that isnt all there is to the speed of an operating system on a hard drive, but its a pretty good indication and you can be sure its going to be a lot faster.
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