installing apps on secondary drive, determining which should be stored on c

[3aq]

which programs and apps do you determine as vital to be stored on your main, and which do you just plain store on secondary?

 

thanks in advance.

 

currently in the process of full factory reseting a computer (lying out road map for a healthier system).

 

[HeyYou]

I install my games on a separate harddrive. Most apps, (office, and things of that nature) get installed to their default locations. (program files of some flavor or other) My C drive is a 250gb SSD, so, I limit what I put there.......

[3aq]

by default location you mean c?

 

I figure putting the vital core (like drivers, antivirus, primary net browser, coding languages in c:/)

office suite, ps, unity, video/audio editors, various ides and the like I am unsure.

[HeyYou]

Yep. Most programs want to install in some flavor of Program Files folder, on the C drive. For most, yeah, that's where they go. For games though, given that some of my installs are north of 40 gig..... yeah, they go on another drive. :D

[3aq]

Initially I was one who stored all apps on c (ssd) and files on d (sshd), it worked well for the most part, but I still felt the bloat croaching.


I agree with you on your point, however the thing I don't like about storing exe (games in this case) are the load times associated. That being said, I took the time and ran some tests, copied over two copies mo2+sse on c and d respectively. with the help of LAL, ran a short marathon through 4 load screens.


Unsurprisingly, what I noticed between c and d was load time difference of 20s all the way to a minute long. The load sequence for racial menu at start took 40 seconds longer. Changing between boundaries (not loading to a different c) took equally as long, longer if environment was heavily foliaged and decorated.


So this lead me to believe that larger size = larger loads. With this thought in mind, wouldn't it be better to store the large exe that one mostly uses onto C and leave the smaller-medium ones on D. That is to say, exe smaller than 2 gb would get marginal performance increase on c whereas those larger would see great performance increases. So would it be better to move the ides, suites, and editors** onto d then? This I can see able to save a good 20-40 gb in the long run, which you can use as cache space or what ever on your C.. But I don't know, so again, what're your thoughts on this?

** sadly, graphically ides, suites, and editors require it to be on c otherwise their performance will become rather horrendous. :-(

Edited December 22, 2018 by 3aq

[HeyYou]

My secondary harddrive is also an SSD. After playing games installed on an ssd, I couldn't go back to the mechanical HDD's..... so, there aren't any in my machine any more.

[3aq]

:0 lucky. mine is... a hybrid of both?

 

back to main topic, what're your opinion say, just for the sake of this topic, your secondary drive magically turned into a sshd?

[HeyYou]

:0 lucky. mine is... a hybrid of both?

 

back to main topic, what're your opinion say, just for the sake of this topic, your secondary drive magically turned into a sshd?

I'm not a fan of the hybrid drives, performance is good for a bit, then drops like a stone.... I would rather have a mechanical drive, at least it's consistent. But, the tech has gotten dirt cheap of late, and you can get 500gb SSD for under a 100 bucks...... (I cheat, I work at a PC shop, and get them at cost...... :) )

[3aq]

guess I'm SOL then? =(

 

not a fan of it myself, but atm ssd is still too exorbitant for my taste; I'll bide my time, perhaps in another couple of years (3-4 years time), ssd will go the way of solar panels, and drop drastically in price. In the mean time, I'll try and figure something out myself..

 

ps: what do you mean, it's good for a bit then drops like a stone? -- shelf life of it, or just performance in general. that comment has me worried.

Edited December 23, 2018 by 3aq

[HeyYou]

guess I'm SOL then? =(

 

not a fan of it myself, but atm ssd is still too exorbitant for my taste; I'll bide my time, perhaps in another couple of years (3-4 years time), ssd will go the way of solar panels, and drop drastically in price. In the mean time, I'll try and figure something out myself..

 

ps: what do you mean, it's good for a bit then drops like a stone? -- shelf life of it, or just performance in general. that comment has me worried.

Performance. :) The way it works, it uses the solid state portion as a 'buffer', and so long as the data you want is in the buffer, speed is right up there, but, if it needs to actually fetch stuff from the mechanical portion, data speed drops like the proverbial rock. VERY noticeable in gaming applications. I would rather have one, or the other, so data bus speed is consistent.

 

Yeah, I'll grant that 100 bucks for 500 gb is still a bit expensive, considering you can get terrabyte WD Gold drives for about the same price....... I have a 250 gb drive, that the o/s, and various apps are installed on, and a 500gb drive that my games are installed on. I think I only have four or five games actually installed...... (Skyrim and FO4 being right up there on the list.......) so, space isn't that much of an issue at the moment. I also have a NAS, and I store a LOT of stuff on that, as it isn't used WHILE gaming, access speed just isn't an issue.