What's the reasoning behind this

[Spazthe magician]

When it comes to having the OS, what's the point to having the OS on it's own drive with nothing else on it, and another drive with all games and programs on their own drive?

 

I'm assuming that this is nothing more than a preference issue and not some really valid reasoning.

 

Or am I missing something?

[SimplyChunk]

My reasoning for doing it is so i don't have to download the games again when it comes time to nuke my windows install.  I do this every 6-12 months cause the update process Windows uses leaves a lot of crap behind and all manner of registry tomfoolery.  so best to keep all these 100+GB downloads on a separate drive and just format a small 256GB nvme drive when it comes time to reinstall Windows

[191x7]

7 minutes ago, Spazthe magician said:

When it comes to having the OS, what's the point to having the OS on it's own drive with nothing else on it, and another drive with all games and programs on their own drive?

 

I'm assuming that this is nothing more than a preference issue and not some really valid reasoning.

 

Or am I missing something?

The drive with the OS gets a lot of reads and writes, and those decrease the lifespan of an SSD.

Having the OS on a drive without other stuff makes it easy to reinstall the OS or replace the OS or the drive. Fewer issues reinstalling everything.

Also, one can have a small but fast OS drive and use slower drives for other stuff. This can hhelp with budget machines, old system etc.

 

[DoctorNick]

11 minutes ago, Spazthe magician said:

When it comes to having the OS, what's the point to having the OS on it's own drive with nothing else on it, and another drive with all games and programs on their own drive?

 

I'm assuming that this is nothing more than a preference issue and not some really valid reasoning.

 

Or am I missing something?

This is mostly a thing of the past, when SSDs' or faster HDD's where smaller in capacity. You could argue that never games will benefit with this as well because of the increased load on the drive, having the game loading on a separate drive than the OS drive might boost loading times etc.  

[Kisai]

9 minutes ago, Spazthe magician said:

When it comes to having the OS, what's the point to having the OS on it's own drive with nothing else on it, and another drive with all games and programs on their own drive?

 

I'm assuming that this is nothing more than a preference issue and not some really valid reasoning.

 

Or am I missing something?

Traditionally, mechanical hard drives were slow.

 

So if you had another drive, running the games and programs (which have scratch files like photoshop) off the other drive, doubles the potential performance.

 

The OS also tends to log a lot of thing things for no apparent reason (particularly with Linux and BSD OS's) and the user will never look at. So all that disk activity is isolated.

 

This is not the same as partitioning. Partitioning a drive offers no performance difference other than, again, on a mechanical drive, where the inner tracks of the drive are faster than the outer. Which is why you'd usually have like the boot partition and swap partition near the beginning of the drive, but you'd be stuck with it's size forever if you have a swap partition. Windows creates a pagefile on the OS drive, and it becomes fragmented over time as a consequence of the OS changing it's size. So, if you stick the page file on another drive, or split it between two drives, you double that performance. 

 

However, again, a lot of this is about working around performance bottlenecks. When OS's got so large that it made more sense to roll out OS images rather than installing it to the drive, and virtualization came along, it only made sense to put the OS on a separate drive/drive image so you could replace the OS without having to do anything with the user's files. Windows unfortunately is not that flexible. Steam is however, and Steam can move games to another drive without much trouble. But applications installed by the Windows store, or directly (sideloaded) can not. They have to be uninstalled and reinstalled, and even then there is a lot of cruft they leave inside the user's directory that if the OS drive is swapped, that user data directory is lost in the process.

 

 

 

[Spazthe magician]

3 hours ago, SimplyChunk said:

My reasoning for doing it is so i don't have to download the games again when it comes time to nuke my windows install.  I do this every 6-12 months cause the update process Windows uses leaves a lot of crap behind and all manner of registry tomfoolery.  so best to keep all these 100+GB downloads on a separate drive and just format a small 256GB nvme drive when it comes time to reinstall Windows

Well I use Ghost Spectre Windows 11

[SimplyChunk]

personally i got an nvme 256GB for Windows and programs.  an older SATA 512GB SSD for games i'm playing at the minute and a couple of 2TB Spinners split into 4 drives for deep storage/games i'm not playing/pictures/installers

[Spazthe magician]

So the general consensuses is to put the OS on one drive and use the other for actual storage

[SimplyChunk]

1 minute ago, Spazthe magician said:

Well I use Ghost Spectre Windows 11

I have no idea what that is.  If it's Windows based though I'd still nuke it every 6-12 months just for the shits and giggles 

[Chiyawa]

Well, there's a lot of reason:

 

Having OS and game library in different drive has its perks:

- If OS drive failed or the OS drive corrupted, your game library drive is unaffected, unless if your PC infected by virus. This can save you a lot of time from re-download your game.

- You can extract your game library drive and put it on other PC, and it should works (depending on game client, but I know EA App outright refuse to acknowledge the existing game files and force you to re-download everything).

- Although not proven, but having a separate game library drive can improve loading time. If you share the drive, many of the time the drive have to pause loading your game for the OS to write data to the drive, which lead to some loss of time, since OS swap their RAM data back and forth between page file (which is a temporary storage space on the drive assigned by the OS to handle more programs and data if your RAM capacity is almost filled up).

- A speedy SSD for OS to make your system response faster, but can be expensive if you want to store a lot of games. HDD offer exorbitant of capacity at a fraction of SSD cost, so you can save quite a lot there. A few months back, a 4TB HDD cost almost the same as 1TB SSD (be it SATA or NVMe). Now 4TB HDD cost the same as 1.25TB SSD. With modern games now can occupy 100GB of your disk space, you'll really need a big capacity drive.

 

[SimplyChunk]

1 minute ago, Chiyawa said:

Well, there's a lot of reason:

 

Having OS and game library in different drive has its perks:

- If OS drive failed or the OS drive corrupted, your game library drive is unaffected, unless if your PC infected by virus. This can save you a lot of time from re-download your game.

- You can extract your game library drive and put it on other PC, and it should works (depending on game client, but I know EA App outright refuse to acknowledge the existing game files and force you to re-download everything).

- Although not proven, but having a separate game library drive can improve loading time. If you share the drive, many of the time the drive have to pause loading your game for the OS to write data to the drive, which lead to some loss of time, since OS swap their RAM data back and forth between page file (which is a temporary storage space on the drive assigned by the OS to handle more programs and data if your RAM capacity is almost filled up).

- A speedy SSD for OS to make your system response faster, but can be expensive if you want to store a lot of games. HDD offer exorbitant of capacity at a fraction of SSD cost, so you can save quite a lot there. A few months back, a 4TB HDD cost almost the same as 1TB SSD (be it SATA or NVMe). Now 4TB HDD cost the same as 1.25TB SSD. With modern games now can occupy 100GB of your disk space, you'll really need a big capacity drive.

 

There's always one late to the party 

[Chiyawa]

1 minute ago, SimplyChunk said:

There's always one late to the party 

Yep, took me a bit of time to type an essay. But of course, my typing speed is not that great to begin with. Before I hit send, there's like so many conversation has been happening.

[mariushm]

These days, for a regular person, there's no reason why you should have one partition just for the operating system and one for other stuff. 

In fact, it can be bad because some programs have installers that don't let you change the default installation path easily (like for example Google Chrome, some Office products etc), so if you create a small partition just for the OS, such programs could mess your planning. 

 

In some companies / offices using a small partition for the OS and default programs was done as a way to reduce service/upgrade times. Install the stuff once, then create a disk image of the partition. If the drive fails, you just plug a new drive and dump the disk image onto the new drive, which takes only a few minutes. Then, windows updates can be installed from the local server that cached them and the computer is back online and no important data was lost because users profiles and other data is stored on a network drive, not on the local computers.

 

There was another small benefit in the days of mechanical drives to have a small partition for the operating system and most important programs. The first partition is on the edge of the platters, so programs stored on this partition can be accessed much faster, the read/write heads don't have to move as much jumping from track to track all over the platter, so you get lower latency and programs would load a bit faster. 

This was also done to improve database servers, the technique was cold short stroking.

Games don't care that much about latency, as when you're loading a level the game just seeks the big file that holds all data and then sequentially reads segments from that file and loads them in memory and in the video card.

 

[Chiyawa]

2 minutes ago, TechlessBro said:

Post a little and edit my friend.

Hmm... Well, I mean if I don't write my opinion clearly and shortened a lot of facts, people might get confused or incomplete picture of my message. Also, I will need to read what I type 3 or 4 times to make sure my message doesn't offend anyone and that people are clear of what I'm talking about. I have a slight autism and sometimes I jumble a lot as I'm typing, which can make a lot of people confuse. So, I don't think this method of 'post now, add later' suit me well, because I would have a tough time to explain everything again.

[Chiyawa]

1 minute ago, TechlessBro said:

I know that problem. Stream of thoughts, fingers not fast enough to keep up.

Indeed, but for my case, I need to filter my thoughts, my wordings and expressions, or people will have a tough time getting what I mean.

[Alex Atkin UK]

21 minutes ago, Kisai said:

The OS also tends to log a lot of thing things for no apparent reason (particularly with Linux and BSD OS's) and the user will never look at.

Its a very obvious reason, if something goes wrong you want to be able to check the logs to find out what it is.

Windows logs plenty, its just much more hidden so you have to actively look for it whereas Linux a lot of it is plain text files and its more in your face about it.  Let's not forget Windows telemetry, they're not at all clear what data is sent to them when monitoring the state of your PC.

[AndreiArgeanu]

I don't really know. Not sure if it makes that much sense nowadays or that many people do it this way. Generally it's OS, programs, couple games you play most often and unimportant/backed up data on one drive (the SSD typically) and projects, important data, large/ games you play slightly less often goes on other drives (HDD typically). This is usually done because the SSD with the OS on it has a larger number of reads and writes, so if it goes kaput (which they rarely do, usually you get a SMART error telling you that your drive is about to fail giving you some time to get data off it) you don't lose anything significant and usually after that getting back up and running is relatively easy since all you have to do is install OS and download some programs to get back up running.

Regardless if you do regular backups to a NAS or some external drives of important files, you can put everything on one drive, it's just going to be a bit of a pain getting back up and running unless your backup consists of the whole disk image.

[jaslion]

1 hour ago, Spazthe magician said:

So the general consensuses is to put the OS on one drive and use the other for actual storage

Nope that was something from the past when we had small ssds and needed larger mechanical storage or if we only ran hdds.

 

Nowadays it matters not a single bit

[Needfuldoer]

It's tech folklore. Back in ye olde days, you could make your OS load ever so slightly faster by corralling it in a small partition on the outside edge of a spinning hard drive's platters, where data throughput was a little better. When Windows 9x would fall on its face, you could erase the C:\ drive and reinstall without touching your data on the other partitions.

 

That's completely irrelevant now in the age of 0ms seek times and versions of Windows that don't need to be reinstalled every other Tuesday (unless you constantly tinker with it thinking you can "tune" it better than the developers).

[PDifolco]

43 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Nope that was something from the past when we had small ssds and needed larger mechanical storage or if we only ran hdds.

 

Nowadays it matters not a single bit

Still seems pretty sensible to do it now

- separated drives means you can reinstall windows and keep you library (or the reverse) if a drive crashes

- easier to manage backups  

- 2 drives have twice the lifespan of 1 as it's now dependent on R/W volume

- will always be faster as OS R/W willl be on one drive and game/stuff on another

 

What are the downsides ?

[Spazthe magician]

I understand about the corrupted and lost files and crap. Hell, you're entire computer can get wiped if the wrong/right thing happens so it's irrelevant where things are stored. I was basically asking if there was any reasoning meaning actual NEED as far functioning due to how computers have evolved

 

Your computer NEEDS RAM

Your comp NEEDS a CPU/Cooler

Your Comp NEEDS fans

 

You comp doesn't NEED a dvd drive anymore

Your comp doesn't NEED to install an OS on one drive and stuff on the other

 

As I said above, from people's replies it's a matter of preference for the WHAT IF scenarios kind of like backing up your files, you don't have to but it's a good idea and you should. But there is no actual NEED to do it. That was my point.

 

 

Thanks for the information.

[Ripred]

5 hours ago, Spazthe magician said:

So the general consensuses is to put the OS on one drive and use the other for actual storage

Makes life easier if you have an issue with windows and need to reinstall, plus the more you fill up a drive the slower it gets, windows isnt very big but once you start downloading games and you hit 80% capacity you'll start to notice the difference, Personally Ill download smaller (less than 20GB) games to my OS drive, maybe a couple larger ones that recommend faster drives and basically all programs will be the the OS drive for speed but once I hit 50% or slightly over on the OS everything else goes on the secondary unless there's an absolute need for a program to be on the faster drive

It all comes down to speed and longevity of the drives

[Spazthe magician]

3 hours ago, Ripred said:

Makes life easier if you have an issue with windows and need to reinstall, plus the more you fill up a drive the slower it gets, windows isnt very big but once you start downloading games and you hit 80% capacity you'll start to notice the difference, Personally Ill download smaller (less than 20GB) games to my OS drive, maybe a couple larger ones that recommend faster drives and basically all programs will be the the OS drive for speed but once I hit 50% or slightly over on the OS everything else goes on the secondary unless there's an absolute need for a program to be on the faster drive

It all comes down to speed and longevity of the drives

No, I get it. But again as I explained above, that's more of a preference and not an actual NEED/reason. I also never keep keep everything important on my comp anyway and I always make a copy of anything I have of real use, on an external drive. I have 2 8TB externals so a corruption of anything doesn't affect me. Personally I really don't mind the time it takes to redo my computer. I use the Ghost Specter of Windows 10/11 anyway so it fully installs in under 10 minutes.

 

What people are overlooking is how games do the exact same thing as people are saying with the info on the drive through patches and updates and such.fully wipe my drive and everything on it once every 3-4 months anyway.

[Stahlmann]

41 minutes ago, Spazthe magician said:

I understand about the corrupted and lost files and crap. Hell, you're entire computer can get wiped if the wrong/right thing happens so it's irrelevant where things are stored. I was basically asking if there was any reasoning meaning actual NEED as far functioning due to how computers have evolved

 

Your computer NEEDS RAM

Your comp NEEDS a CPU/Cooler

Your Comp NEEDS fans

 

You comp doesn't NEED a dvd drive anymore

Your comp doesn't NEED to install an OS on one drive and stuff on the other

 

As I said above, from people's replies it's a matter of preference for the WHAT IF scenarios kind of like backing up your files, you don't have to but it's a good idea and you should. But there is no actual NEED to do it. That was my point.

 

 

Thanks for the information.

There are a lot of things about building your PC that isn't needed. You don't need a case. You don't need a graphics card if you have an iGPU. You don't need an aftermarket cooler if your CPU comes with one. Many things are not technically required, but still good practice. And depending on the use case, needs change. Some people would argue a 2 drive configuration is required for their use case for example.

 

If you don't require such a configuration, you do you.

[Ripred]

28 minutes ago, Spazthe magician said:

No, I get it. But again as I explained above, that's more of a preference and not an actual NEED/reason. I also never keep keep everything important on my comp anyway and I always make a copy of anything I have of real use, on an external drive. I have 2 8TB externals so a corruption of anything doesn't affect me. Personally I really don't mind the time it takes to redo my computer. I use the Ghost Specter of Windows 10/11 anyway so it fully installs in under 10 minutes.

 

What people are overlooking is how games do the exact same thing as people are saying with the info on the drive through patches and updates and such.fully wipe my drive and everything on it once every 3-4 months anyway.

Ah yeah as in needing to there isnt a real need for any functionality, a single large drive will do fine in that case, besides the "what if factor" its just a speed and longevity thing, as I said a drive that approaches 80% capacity will start to show signs of slowing and can add additional wear an tear so to speak reducing the lifespan but if were talking purely being able to run and function there is no need for more than one drive, you don't loose anything function wise if your not concerned about speed or life of drives

edit:And if you don't use many programs or games that will populate the majority of your drive it wouldn't make sense to use many multiples, many of the multiple drive recommendations here come from heavy gamers who will fill a 2TB in a day and or video editors will do the same and are over concerned about data loss, so when you say NEED it gets lost in translation because its highly depending on use case

Edited February 22, 2023 by Ripred