ssd drive and steam

Im probably gonna buy a ssd drive soon and put my windows on that. So if I have a ssd and a hdd could I still have my steam games on the hard drive?

Thats the only issue holding me back from buying a ssd drive. Ive read that you can install steam games on another hard drive.

You can, but you'll likely want Steam on your large hard drive and then use something like Steam Mover to move over the more intensive or frequently played games to your SSD.

install steam to your other drive... pretty simple. there is also a program called steam tool that lets you move games from one drive to the other whenever you choose. i found this to be a pain in the butt and just put steam on the HDD instead. MuD3

Yeah im gonna install my ssd this way when I get one.

So im in a sticky situation then. Either put steam on my bigger hard drive and defeat the purpose of the ssd speed or have steam on my ssd and go with the risky steam mover thing I know nothing of.

Download Steam Mover. It allows you to switch one or more games to and from the HDD and original steam folder on your SSD in one click. Don't worry about installation errors or anything. Windows percieves the files to be in the original steam folder no matter what.

This works for non-Steam games as well but they'll need to be installed in the steam folder originally.

So im in a sticky situation then. Either put steam on my bigger hard drive and defeat the purpose of the ssd speed or have steam on my ssd and go with the risky steam mover thing I know nothing of.

slipknot0129

Whats risky about it?

[QUOTE="slipknot0129"]

So im in a sticky situation then. Either put steam on my bigger hard drive and defeat the purpose of the ssd speed or have steam on my ssd and go with the risky steam mover thing I know nothing of.

XaosII

Whats risky about it?

possibly could corrupt files

Nothing Steam is very forgiving with where you put your files. The directory changed 10x but as long as the steam files and games are intact than is game on.

Something Origin and EA cant do right, since I fricken reinstalled bf3 .... too many times -.-

So im in a sticky situation then. Either put steam on my bigger hard drive and defeat the purpose of the ssd speed or have steam on my ssd and go with the risky steam mover thing I know nothing of.

slipknot0129

In my experience an SSD doesn't make much of a difference in games. Most titles are designed so that they aren't constantly streaming a ton of data from the drive and your average 7200RPM drive is plenty fast these days, so unless you know you're going to be spending a ton of time with a Steam-based game that will really take advantage of the SSD you're not really missing out on much by installing Steam to your HDD.

The main appeal of an SSD is the increased responsiveness of Windows and your other everyday programs, not anything to do with gaming (well, except for Steam loading in a fraction of the time).

In my experience an SSD doesn't make much of a difference in games. Most titles are designed so that they aren't constantly streaming a ton of data from the drive and your average 7200RPM drive is plenty fast these days, so unless you know you're going to be spending a ton of time with a Steam-based game that will really take advantage of the SSD you're not really missing out on much by installing Steam to your HDD.

Slow_Show

Load times go from fast to silly fast, but I do find that an SSD is limited by your internet connection. With so many games requiring some form of online authentication (even if it's just logging into Steam), you're held back by that process.

And as for Steam Mover, I've tried it a copy of times now. No problems at all to report. I think the main tip is not to do anything silly while transferring the files.

[QUOTE="XaosII"]

[QUOTE="slipknot0129"]

So im in a sticky situation then. Either put steam on my bigger hard drive and defeat the purpose of the ssd speed or have steam on my ssd and go with the risky steam mover thing I know nothing of.

James161324

Whats risky about it?

possibly could corrupt files

Then you can right click on the game, Properties > Verify Integrity of Game Cache, and then it'll redownload any corrupt files.

Any other superficial reasons?

Thought I would add.. The only time Steam Mover can corrupt files is when a game-related file is running in the background and you attempt to move the game. It won't exactly "corrupt" the file, it'll just fail to move it because it's in use, actually corrupting the installation. This file can be the game executable itself.. or some other file that runs alongside it. For GTA4, I've had issues with the Rockstar launcher. With Shattered Horizon, I've had issues with sh_server.exe.

Ultimately the fix for this broken installation would be to move the whole game back to the steam folder so that Steam Mover can recognize it correctly, then if you'd like, move it to your HDD.

Before you move a game, take a quick scroll through the processes and you can prevent this problem beforehand.