PC gaming on multiple hdds?

AtomSmasherMazionga

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Hi there folks! I'm doing some major overhauls of my PC, and I have a question. Let's say, for example, I have a VERY heavily modded Skyrim install (like 10 GB+) and I have it installed to a 2TB HDD. If this HDD (which is the main location for games, programs, media, etc) is the SECONDARY HDD and I boot from a 120 GB SSD as my primary drive, will my games (again, on the Magnetic HDD) run/load faster than if the HDD was the only drive in my PC? or would I get the full speed of a SSD on my games? Basically, if I boot from an SSD and run games off the HDD, how will my games be in relation to speed? I'm tired of waiting 10+ minutes for my PC to boot, and another 15+ minutes to load a save on Skyrim and ANOTHER 10-15 minutes every time I hit a load screen. My specs are good enough for skyrim (though GPU is Shit)
Core I3 3110M @2.4GhZ
Windows 7 64 bit
6GB DDR3 RAM
Intel HD Graphics 4000
Max Resolution 1366x768
 
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Hi there folks! I'm doing some major overhauls of my PC, and I have a question. Let's say, for example, I have a VERY heavily modded Skyrim install (like 10 GB+) and I have it installed to a 2TB HDD. If this HDD (which is the main location for games, programs, media, etc) is the SECONDARY HDD and I boot from a 120 GB SSD as my primary drive, will my games (again, on the Magnetic HDD) run/load faster than if the HDD was the only drive in my PC? or would I get the full speed of a SSD on my games? Basically, if I boot from an SSD and run games off the HDD, how will my games be in relation to speed? I'm tired of waiting 10+ minutes for my PC to boot, and another 15+ minutes to load a save on Skyrim and ANOTHER 10-15 minutes every time I hit a load screen. My specs are good enough for skyrim (though GPU is Shit)
Core I3 3110M @2.4GhZ
Windows 7 64 bit
6GB DDR3 RAM
Intel HD Graphics 4000
Max Resolution 1366x768
Well, I've always heard it's best to game off of a SSD if you can of course. I don't think multiple HDDs would slow it down but if the resources come from different HDDs that might be why.
 

windhazard

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It only benefits from the loading time of SSD if it's installed on the SSD. If it's simple like you think, you only have to buy a 20GB SSD for the OS and everything will run faster, no?
 
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AtomSmasherMazionga

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So
It only benefits from the loading time of SSD if it's installed on the SSD. If it's simple like you think, you only have to buy a 20GB SSD for the OS and everything will run faster, no?
so basically, I have to install the games I NEED to be fast on the SSD and the rest on the HDD?
 

Joe88

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Theres nothing wrong with putting games on a regular hdd, I have a 120GB ssd for OS, the only game I have on it is TF2 and really all it does it load maps faster. The rest and giant games (mostly 20-50GB) are on a 6TB hdd and load fine.
Something sounds wrong there it shoudnt take skyrim that long to load.
 
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Tom Bombadildo

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What you might be thinking of is a RAID 0 setup, which is where data is split evenly across multiple HDDs, "combining" the read/write speeds into one so data stored on them is accessed/written faster.

But yeah, if your PC is taking that long to boot or load anything, you've got a major problem on your hands there.
 

FAST6191

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Others have said good things (if things are taking that long then something is quite wrong) and while it is theoretically possible that kicking the OS to a SSD, and thus not having the HDD pull double duty for game and OS, would see speeds increase I do have to say many modern hard drives have considerable amounts of cache on them, and modern OSes have a lot of their core components stuffed into RAM. To that end the real world speed increases you might see might be more modest.
 

AtomSmasherMazionga

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Theres nothing wrong with putting games on a regular hdd, I have a 120GB ssd for OS, the only game I have on it is TF2 and really all it does it load maps faster. The rest and giant games (mostly 20-50GB) are on a 6TB hdd and load fine.
Something sounds wrong there it shoudnt take skyrim that long to load.

I just checked my Skyrim config, everything was set to high, no wonder it was so slow. I always play on custom settings slightly better than low but not quite as high as medium and some things set to slightly better than medium but not as good as high. not letting my sis touch my PC anymore.

What you might be thinking of is a RAID 0 setup, which is where data is split evenly across multiple HDDs, "combining" the read/write speeds into one so data stored on them is accessed/written faster.

But yeah, if your PC is taking that long to boot or load anything, you've got a major problem on your hands there.

that might be what I'm looking for, but I'll be honest with you, I have no idea. I have an SSD which is lightning fast but has only 120GB, I've got a 2TB HDD, a 500GB HDD and an old school 1MB HDD. was hoping to use the SSD and the 2TB HDD for a "Blend of storage and speed" as the retailers call it.
 

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