Separate HDD for Games

[Legionaire68]

I recently got a WD Raptor 150GB and did a Vista reinstall onto my Samsung 250 GB and put my games on the Raptor. Does this mean if I reinstall again on the Samsung or get a new P.C I can just plug the Raptor in and play?

 

[djcrowle]

as far as im aware installing your games on another hdd will cause u a headache when u reinstall ** o/s. Im fairly certain that when games are installed they create files in ** registry, these files will still be placed in the registry even if u have the game installed on another drive. - please correct me if im wrong!

personally id keep both ** o/s and ** games on 1 hdd, but keep a copy of anything important such as game saves, configs etc...

 

[james.miller]

its dependand on the games in question. some games will run out of a folder, some install specific files in other folders and wont run without them.

ALL steam games, for instance, will run without installing anything anywhere else. ive formatted and changed my pc specs dozens of times but my steam folder on a seperate drive has always worked regardless. you dont even have to reinstall steam - just run the steam.exe. the only thing you have to watch with steam are the games saves which are normally in your documents folder somewhere.

 

[Jimbo Mahoney]

I do this and 99% of games are fine.

C: - windows

E: - games (physically separate HDD)

Format the C drive fairly frequently and the games keep on working (the vast majority do anyway).

 

[wombraider]

In my time I have had 4 different drives holding my games
To allow me to change / re-install OS what I do is to export the specific registry keys
needed for each game ( both HKLM and HKCU branches)
I store these in a dir on my games drive.

If I need to re-install OS , after the re-install I change the drive letter of the games
drive to match what it was originally ( for me R: ) , then merge the reg files.

For me the longest lived game was Operation Flashpoint , I still use the first original install from 6 years ago.

I also have my documents stored on another drive (H , that way some games
that write config / save files in there are still working ok.