Help
cancel
Turn on suggestions
Auto-suggest helps you quickly narrow down your search results by suggesting possible matches as you type.
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Windows + Games on one HDD or separate ?

x0rkinko
Level 7

‎06-10-2012 01:47 PM

Hey men, i need an advice. what is the best solution for playing games if i have windows and games installed on first hdd or games should be on second hdd with other programs. You know which solution is faster and better for playing without lags, faster loading...I have two 750gb HDDs 7200rpm. What do u prefer? Thanks for all opinions 🙂
Asus G74Sx - 3D - 17.3-inch Full HD display (1920 x 1080) - Intel Core i7-2670QM quad-core processor (2.2 GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 3.1GHz) - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M 3GB GDDR5 VRAM - 16GB DDR3 SDRAM, 4 x SODIMM Sockets - 750GB 7200RPM hard drive #1 & 750GB 7200RPM hard drive #2 - WIN 7 ULT 64BIT.
Labels:
0 Kudos
3,391 Views
5 REPLIES 5

zsld0423
Level 9

‎06-10-2012 03:34 PM

I have my Windows OS installed on my SSD, and a majority of all my other programs and games are installed on my 750GB 7200RPM secondary hard drive. The only big program I keep on my SSD is Microsoft Office 2010, and I've never had any issues with games loading slowly. Since you've got 2 750GB hard drives, it shouldn't make much or any difference which hard drive your stuff is installed to. BUT one good thing about installing programs to the 2nd hard drive is that if you ever wipe your OS to do a clean install, you won't have to go through the installation process for all those games again. You'll just want to make sure you back up the game saves since those are usually on the main hard drive. That's what I've been doing and I keep a folder with all my games as shortcuts so I know what is installed after a wipe . Then just make sure to re download programs like Direct X and other things like that so the games will run. Hope this helps!
Sager NP9370
256GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD + 750GB 7200RPM Secondary HDD
nVidia GeForce GTX 680M 4GB VRAM
Intel Core i7-3630QM 2.40GHz
16GB RAM
Mouse: MadCatz R.A.T. 7
Keyboard: Razer Lycosa Mirror
Additional Monitors: 24" 1080p Insignia LED/LCD TV and 21" Acer LCD Monitor
Windows 7 Ultimate

Zygomorphic
Level 17
In response to zsld0423

‎06-10-2012 05:21 PM

+1 Rep, zsld0423! Excellent advice, I would say the same thing myself. If speed is real important, look into an SSD. That, or the awesome Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drives. I have one myself, and they are real fast--even the older ones boot Windows almost as fast an as a slow SSD. The newer (750 GB) one is even faster, and I hear that Seagate is working on a write-cache firmware update. Since the hybrid drives use SLC cache, there is no risk of hitting the write/erase limit before the mechanical HDD breaks. A write-cache would make the system awesome. Let's hope that Seagate gets that firmware update out the door, and that ASUS starts using those drives--their awesome because they are OS-independent. LINUX boots real quick! :cool:
I am disturbed because I cannot break my system...found out there were others trying to cope! We have a support group on here, if your system will not break, please join!
http://rog.asus.com/forum/group.php?groupid=16
We now have 178 people whose systems will not break! Yippee! 🙂
LINUX Users, we have a group!
http://rog.asus.com/forum/group.php?groupid=23
0 Kudos

brecker
Level 8

‎06-10-2012 05:25 PM

all windows proceses running may be using the first hdd, if you have pagefile enabled it will be on the main one as well, so you should have more speed availeable on the second one... now wether that would make a notisable different on games i don't know, i guess it depends on the game and your configuration...

if you run multiple virtual machines using one hdd it will be slow as hell, but if you run them from multiple hdds they will be more smooth... i think you can apply that to games... if you run multiple games / instances of the same game at the same time you will see a difference if they are running on different hdds...
0 Kudos

Zygomorphic
Level 17
In response to brecker

‎06-11-2012 09:27 AM

brecker wrote:
all windows proceses running may be using the first hdd, if you have pagefile enabled it will be on the main one as well, so you should have more speed availeable on the second one... now wether that would make a notisable different on games i don't know, i guess it depends on the game and your configuration...

if you run multiple virtual machines using one hdd it will be slow as hell, but if you run them from multiple hdds they will be more smooth... i think you can apply that to games... if you run multiple games / instances of the same game at the same time you will see a difference if they are running on different hdds...


While I don't believe that you can move the Windows Processes, you can move the pagefile/remove it completely. If you have 16 GB of RAM, simply disable the pagefile if you never get even close to using that much. Alternately, move the pagefile to the less-used HDD, and free up some space for games on the first. I use my second HDD for primarily data, since that allows me to tweak/reinstall windows without risking my important files.
I am disturbed because I cannot break my system...found out there were others trying to cope! We have a support group on here, if your system will not break, please join!
http://rog.asus.com/forum/group.php?groupid=16
We now have 178 people whose systems will not break! Yippee! 🙂
LINUX Users, we have a group!
http://rog.asus.com/forum/group.php?groupid=23
0 Kudos

Gorman
Level 12

‎06-11-2012 09:13 AM

@zsld0423

I wouldn't be willing to just run games off the second HDD once I wiped and reinstalled the first... I imagine that can't be good for the configuration of the games, not to mention the registry and dependencies...
0 Kudos