Will loading games from another drive slow things down?

[Trojan Horse]

I wanted to get a 1tb ssd for my boot drive.

I was thinking of getting another 1tb ssd for my steam games and such. This way if I upgrade or format my OS drive which could get messy over time, I don't have to reinstall any games.

Will loading be faster from a 2tb boot drive?

 

[Phemo]

Perhaps, often the larger drives do have slightly higher read/write speeds. In reality however, I doubt you'd notice any difference. Just get a second drive and run it alongside your existing and enjoy.

 

[EsaT]

Unless second drive would be HDD, any difference would be minimal.
There's very little real world difference between highest snake oil benchmarketing NVMes and SATA signaled SSDs:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nvme+ssd+hdd

 

[wiiija]

Unless second drive would be HDD, any difference would be minimal.
There's very little real world difference between highest snake oil benchmarketing NVMes and SATA signaled SSDs:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nvme+ssd+hdd

I agree, in fact I'll go as far to say there simply is not any real world difference between nvme and sata ssd! I went from a samsung M2 sata ssd to a 970 evo nvme and its absolutely no difference apart from benchmarks.

 

[ninezerofive]

I currently run all my gams from HDD while system is on nvme m.2

As long it's at least 7200 it' fine, with SSD there should be no problem at all.

 

[Stephanie Peterson]

If you want to improve things use something like primocache and an old small ssd.
I use a 256gb m2 drive as boot and a 3tb games/video hdd with primocache using a 64gb secondary ssd as a cache for it - speeds things up off the mechanical drive nicely.
Good bit of software.

 

[EsaT]

If you want to improve things use something like primocache and an old small ssd.
I use a 256gb m2 drive as boot and a 3tb games/video hdd with primocache using a 64gb secondary ssd as a cache for it - speeds things up off the mechanical drive nicely.
Good bit of software.

Really shame that AMD licensed tiered storage FuzeDrive instead of PrimoCache.
In home use SSD caching has lot less potential pitfalls than tiered storage, which shares weak points with striping.

 

[ANDARIAL]

This way if I upgrade or format my OS drive which could get messy over time, I don't have to reinstall any games

Not quite 100% true
You usually have to reinstall games as `sometimes`the save file is on your `C` drive but you should not have to re-download all the game from places like steam if the game is on a different drive

 

[ukbilleh]

Yep agree no noticeable difference in the real world and very little noticeable difference between nvme and a decent sata ssd when loading games. Some decent youtube videos showing this comparison out there.

 

[Jamin280672]

I have 3 drives in my PC, ive got an Evo 970 500gb nvme for OS and Program files, I then have a 1tb Samsung Evo 850 for Steam games and any standalone games I install, and then finally have an 8tb Seagate mechanical for music, pictures, movies etc, I dont notice any difference in game loading times, works perfectly.

 

[Deleted member 209350]

sata ssd's work fine for boot times in comparison with nvme. You'll never even notice the difference.

Where Nvme thrives is with file transfers, but ofc for that you'll need to be transferring between 2 nvme drives instead of just one

 

[Kurgen]

Not quite 100% true
You usually have to reinstall games as `sometimes`the save file is on your `C` drive but you should not have to re-download all the game from places like steam if the game is on a different drive

Pretty much is.. You may lose some savegames and keybindings at the most, ive never lost any games from reformatting an os drive

 

[Jamin280672]

Before doing any formatting of your OS drive, install your new drive, you can then move you steam games and saved files to that new drive without affecting them, you can then format you C Drive (OS Drive) to a clean state, once Windows is installed and set up, install steam as normal, then goto steam settings and change the installation path of games to the folder on your new drive, when you select in steam to install the games that are already there on that secondary hard drive, all it will do is check them and update them if required:

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/move-steam-games-another-drive-folder