SSDs!

[Supahh]

If you use an ssd for booting your pc, can they still be utilized for downloading games so the games can launch faster too?

If so, I presume that this will also slow the boot time?

 

Leave your two cents down below.

[Supportsneedlove]

Boot SSDs are pretty standard nowadays.

 

You can put games on there too, and no, it won't slow down your boot.

[Supahh]

Just now, Supportsneedlove said:

Boot SSDs are pretty standard nowadays.

 

If your download speed is high enough then yeah.

 

Yep.

My average download speed is 80 - 90 mpbs, whilst my upload speed is around 30 - 40.

I have a Samsung 860 EVO 250GB SSD.

 

Can I install games on my ssd to improve their boot time, whilst still using the ssd for boot times and just keep my 2tb hard drive for storing photos, movies etc?

 

Will this effect any boot times or anything?

[Supahh]

Just now, dieegoperi said:

The SSDs are just like HDDs but faster AND MORE EXPENSIVE

Use it with brain since you don't want to download everything in there, if your download speed is below 100 MegaBYTES per second, donwload it to your HDD. And... well, sure you won't notice any boot time increase in games, maybe 4 seconds...? And in some games, 20 seconds in total between loading screens.

I wouldn't use an SSD for games.

^^, so I have a 250gb samsung ssd, which I got for $100. How can I fully utilize the size of the ssd, as it's 250gb.

[Spotty]

2 minutes ago, Supahh said:

If you use an ssd for booting your pc, can they still be utilized for downloading games so the games can launch faster too?

If so, I presume that this will also slow the boot time?

You can most definitely use your SSD for storing game files. The only downsides to this is that game files generally take up a large amount of space, and larger capacity models of SSDs are much more expensive than equivalent capacity HDDs. Some games will benefit from being installed on a SSD, while others will not. Generally speaking if the game has long load screens, installing it on an SSD can often help improve those game loading times.
Having games installed on the OS drive will not hinder the performance, or boot time, of the SSD.

 

1 minute ago, Supahh said:

My average download speed is 80 - 90 mpbs, whilst my upload speed is around 30 - 40.

80-90mbps (bits) = 10-11MB/s (Bytes). Your typical HDD can typically do sustained writes in excess of 100MB/s.

You won't notice any difference in the time taken to download the game to either the SSD or HDD, since HDD write speed is not limiting your internets download speed.

 

3 minutes ago, Supahh said:

so I have a 250gb samsung ssd, which I got for $100. How can I fully utilize the size of the ssd, as it's 250gb.

Install your operating system on it. The biggest improvement SSDs give is in lower latency and they are much, much faster at accessing the data on the drives compared to HDDs. Install your typically used programs, such as chrome/firefox and whatever else on it as well as they will help the program open up much faster when you open it.
If you have enough space left over after your OS and programs are installed, then you can install some games on it. For a 250GB SSD you may only have enough space for one or two of your favourite games, depending on game file size, so consider whether or not that game has loading screens/times that could possibly be improved by being installed on an SSD.

[dionkoffie]

change the location of the default Windows downloads folder to a folder on your HDD. I have a 240gb SSD, but my downloads folder is on my HDD.

[Supahh]

18 minutes ago, Spotty said:

 

Install your operating system on it. The biggest improvement SSDs give is in lower latency and they are much, much faster at accessing the data on the drives compared to HDDs. Install your typically used programs, such as chrome/firefox and whatever else on it as well as they will help the program open up much faster when you open it.

I actually installed my operating system on my hard drive. Will I have to reinstall windows on my ssd now and re-download everything?

[homeap5]

8 minutes ago, Supahh said:

I actually installed my operating system on my hard drive. Will I have to reinstall windows on my ssd now and re-download everything?

Of course no. You can clone (image / restore) your system using software for that. If you're experienced enough. (example). And if you have enough space.

[Sfekke]

41 minutes ago, Supahh said:

If you use an ssd for booting your pc, can they still be utilized for downloading games so the games can launch faster too?

If so, I presume that this will also slow the boot time?

 

Leave your two cents down below.

Having Windows on the drive you use to download games on SSD or not will slow it down at some points for example :

Windows is indexing files you recently added, if that happens while you play a game and load into the next scene/level it'll be slower since two applications try to access it at the same time.

 

If your game is not on an SSD, defragmenting every now and again using what Windows gives you by default or Defraggler Piriform speeds up games like The Sims 2/3/4 & GTA V.

 

15 minutes ago, Supahh said:

I actually installed my operating system on my hard drive. Will I have to reinstall windows on my ssd now and re-download everything?

 

7 minutes ago, homeap5 said:

Of course no. You can clone (image / restore) your system using software for that. If you're experienced enough. (example).

There are plenty of tools, reinstalling will be easier if you are not experienced.

Let your PC download overnight that way it doesn't bother you

[Spotty]

14 minutes ago, Supahh said:

I actually installed my operating system on my hard drive. Will I have to reinstall windows on my ssd now and re-download everything?

Installing your operating system on to the SSD will give you the most benefit from the SSD. Your computers boot time will likely go from 1-2 minutes down to ~20-30 seconds. Programs will respond much faster as well and you should notice the whole system be more snappy and responsive. I would highly recommend installing your OS on to the SSD.

 

You can use cloning utilities to clone your existing OS drive to the SSD, providing that the used space on the current OS drive is less than that of the SSD.

However, I would recommend doing a fresh install of windows on to the SSD with the windows installation media just to rule out the possibility of any errors being transferred over that may cause you issues down the line.

 

Either way you will lose any information that is currently stored on the SSD, so if you have anything stored on it make sure you back it up to a HDD before proceeding.

 

8 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

you'd just need a bootable disk cloning utility, although check if the utility recognises NVMe SSDs (if the samsung SSD you're having is an NVMe SSD)

It's SATA based Samsung 860 evo, so they shouldn't have any issues in that regard.

 

46 minutes ago, Supahh said:

I have a Samsung 860 EVO 250GB SSD.

[Spotty]

1 minute ago, VegetableStu said:

ahh okay wasn't reading the thread closely ,_,

It's all good, Stu.
Was just touching on it in case OP wasn't sure about what type of SSD they had and wanted to clarify for them that it wouldn't be an issue.

[Supahh]

12 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Installing your operating system on to the SSD will give you the most benefit from the SSD. Your computers boot time will likely go from 1-2 minutes down to ~20-30 seconds. Programs will respond much faster as well and you should notice the whole system be more snappy and responsive. I would highly recommend installing your OS on to the SSD.

 

You can use cloning utilities to clone your existing OS drive to the SSD, providing that the used space on the current OS drive is less than that of the SSD.

However, I would recommend doing a fresh install of windows on to the SSD with the windows installation media just to rule out the possibility of any errors being transferred over that may cause you issues down the line.

 

Either way you will lose any information that is currently stored on the SSD, so if you have anything stored on it make sure you back it up to a HDD before proceeding.

 

It's SATA based Samsung 860 evo, so they shouldn't have any issues in that regard.

 

Do you recommend me to partition the ssd to its full size (250gb) incase anything is somehow on it, as the size of it is 230 gb right now. Same goes for my hard drive.

[Spotty]

1 minute ago, Supahh said:

Do you recommend me to partition the ssd to its full size (250gb) incase anything is somehow on it, as the size of it is 230 gb right now. Same goes for my hard drive.

Partition it to the full size of the disk. Unless you are planning on installing multiple operating systems (such as a Linux based OS) on to the drive, there's really no practical reason to carve it up in to multiple partitions.

 

~230GB sounds about right for a 250GB capacity drive. It's just the difference in ways that the HDD manufacturers calculate and advertise space (Gigabytes) vs how the OS calculates capacity (Gibibytes). HDD manufacturers calculate 1KB as 1000B. Windows calculate 1KB as 1024B. When you multiply that difference out to Gigabytes, there is a noticeable discrepancy.

 

Quote

Why Your Hard Drive Shows Less Space Than Advertised

If you’ve paid attention to hard drives, USB flash drives, and other storage devices, you may have noticed that they always have less space than promised once they’re formatted. The reason for this difference lies in the way hard drive manufacturers advertise their devices, versus the way Windows computers actually use the storage devices. There’s also some overhead required when Windows formats your drive, for the file system and boot data, though in comparison to today’s large hard drives, it’s not a lot.

To a hard disk manufacturer, one KB is 1000 bytes, one MB is 1000 KB, and one GB is 1000 MB. Essentially, if a hard disk is advertised as 500GB, it contains 500 * 1000 * 1000 * 1000 = 500,000,000,000 bytes of space. The hard disk manufacturer thus advertises the disk as a 500 GB hard disk.

However, manufacturers of RAM don’t sell it in even groups of 1000 – they use groups of 1024. When you’re buying memory, a KB is 1024 bytes, a MB is 1024 KB, and a GB is 1024 MB. To work back from the 500,000,000,000 bytes above:

500,000,000,000 / (1024*1024*1024) = 465.66 GB

Keep in mind that the hard drive manufacturers are using the accurate description of the terms–the prefix giga, for instance, means a power of 1000, whereas the correct term for powers of 1024 is gibibyte, though it isn’t often used. Unfortunately, Windows has always calculated hard drives as powers of 1024 while hard drive manufacturers use powers of 1000.

_{Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/123268/windows-hard-drive-wrong-capacity/}

[Supahh]

1 hour ago, Spotty said:

You can most definitely use your SSD for storing game files. The only downsides to this is that game files generally take up a large amount of space, and larger capacity models of SSDs are much more expensive than equivalent capacity HDDs. Some games will benefit from being installed on a SSD, while others will not. Generally speaking if the game has long load screens, installing it on an SSD can often help improve those game loading times.
Having games installed on the OS drive will not hinder the performance, or boot time, of the SSD.

 

80-90mbps (bits) = 10-11MB/s (Bytes). Your typical HDD can typically do sustained writes in excess of 100MB/s.

You won't notice any difference in the time taken to download the game to either the SSD or HDD, since HDD write speed is not limiting your internets download speed.

 

Install your operating system on it. The biggest improvement SSDs give is in lower latency and they are much, much faster at accessing the data on the drives compared to HDDs. Install your typically used programs, such as chrome/firefox and whatever else on it as well as they will help the program open up much faster when you open it.
If you have enough space left over after your OS and programs are installed, then you can install some games on it. For a 250GB SSD you may only have enough space for one or two of your favourite games, depending on game file size, so consider whether or not that game has loading screens/times that could possibly be improved by being installed on an SSD.

So why don't people just go for a say, 120gb ssd or lower for boot times if windows only takes around 50gb, is it due to other things being installed such as games?

 

Also, how can you make it so you choose which application you want to download on your ssd

[TechyBen]

1 hour ago, Supahh said:

If you use an ssd for booting your pc, can they still be utilized for downloading games so the games can launch faster too?

If so, I presume that this will also slow the boot time?

 

Leave your two cents down below.

I use a 120GB for a laptop. As no games.

Larger SSDs can be a bit quicker sometimes, as they have more chips to use. Sometimes that are £/$20 or 30 more, so not much (120gb vs 250 or whatever), but the largest ones are about double the price each doubling of size. So that also means most people won't go 100% SSD.

[Car712]

1 hour ago, dieegoperi said:

if your download speed is below 100 MegaBYTES per second

I got 10 MBPS lol

[Spotty]

Just now, Supahh said:

So why don't people just go for a say, 120gb ssd or lower for boot times if windows only takes around 50gb, is it due to other things being installed such as games?

120GB can be fine for some people, though it is on the smaller sides of things. Windows itself may only take up ~50GB (or more, or less, I'm not sure exactly how much it takes up these days), but once you start installing all of your favourite programs like Chrome, Firefox, VLC, iTunes, Steam, etc it starts to eat up a fair bit of space. 250GB will be plenty for your OS, your programs, and a couple of games depending on their size. Some people may only have one or two games that they play, while other people may have a Steam library full of 500+ games.

To use GTA V as an example since it's a fairly popular game, the game files for GTA V are approximately 80GB.

This means that for those with a 120GB SSD, even if that is the only game they want to install on it, there just won't be enough space for it alongside Windows 10.

Of course there are plenty of other games that don't take up as much room as GTA V, but generally speaking if people want to install any games on their SSD, I would recommend a SSD larger than 120GB (250GB at least, 500GB preferably). If, on the other hand, they just wanted a super cheap SSD to install just the OS & a few programs on for an older machine that they aren't gaming on anyway, then 120GB would be fine.

 

7 minutes ago, Supahh said:

Also, how can you make it so you choose which application you want to download on your ssd

Your OS installs on to the SSD, and then you download your programs from the internet. Your default download folder location is stored on the OS drive (C: drive), which would be your SSD. When you run the installer .exe, after you agree to its terms and click through it will ask you where you want to install the program and it will default to a location likely within C:\Program Files or C:\Program Files(x86). This will install that program on to the SSD.
If you wanted to install it on to the HDD, then you would change that install directory to a different location, such as making a folder on your HDD (D:) called "Programs", so in this case you would change it to D:\Programs.

For the most part you will want to install programs on to your SSD (C Drive), so in most cases you can just leave the install directories to their default without changing and it's no different than installing any other program any other time.

For games, (this applies specifically for Steam, but other Game services such as Origin and uPlay have similar functions) you will typically still install the program Steam on to your SSD, but you can set your Game Library location for Steam to a different drive. This will tell Steam to default install games to that location. You can change the default Game Library location by going to File > Settings > Downloads > Steam Library Folders - as shown in the image below.
 

 

In your scenario, you will want to set your game library location to the HDD, so it will be a folder within your D: drive. In this case you could make a folder on D: drive titled "Games" that will be D:\Games.

 

 

When you go in to Steam and click to install a game, it will pop up asking you what location you want to install the game to. It will default to whatever your Steam Library Folders is set as the default install folder (which in your case you would have set to D:\Games). However, if you wanted to install your favourite game on to the SSD you will simply tell it to install to the Steam Library Folder that is located on the SSD instead (C:\Program Files(x86)\Steam\").

 

 

[Supahh]

6 minutes ago, Spotty said:

120GB can be fine for some people, though it is on the smaller sides of things. Windows itself may only take up ~50GB (or more, or less, I'm not sure exactly how much it takes up these days), but once you start installing all of your favourite programs like Chrome, Firefox, VLC, iTunes, Steam, etc it starts to eat up a fair bit of space. 250GB will be plenty for your OS, your programs, and a couple of games depending on their size. Some people may only have one or two games that they play, while other people may have a Steam library full of 500+ games.

To use GTA V as an example since it's a fairly popular game, the game files for GTA V are approximately 80GB.

This means that for those with a 120GB SSD, even if that is the only game they want to install on it, there just won't be enough space for it alongside Windows 10.

Of course there are plenty of other games that don't take up as much room as GTA V, but generally speaking if people want to install any games on their SSD, I would recommend a SSD larger than 120GB (250GB at least, 500GB preferably). If, on the other hand, they just wanted a super cheap SSD to install just the OS & a few programs on for an older machine that they aren't gaming on anyway, then 120GB would be fine.

 

Your OS installs on to the SSD, and then you download your programs from the internet. Your default download folder location is stored on the OS drive (C: drive), which would be your SSD. When you run the installer .exe, after you agree to its terms and click through it will ask you where you want to install the program and it will default to a location likely within C:\Program Files or C:\Program Files(x86). This will install that program on to the SSD.
If you wanted to install it on to the HDD, then you would change that install directory to a different location, such as making a folder on your HDD (D:) called "Programs", so in this case you would change it to D:\Programs.

For the most part you will want to install programs on to your SSD (C Drive), so in most cases you can just leave the install directories to their default without changing and it's no different than installing any other program any other time.

For games, (this applies specifically for Steam, but other Game services such as Origin and uPlay have similar functions) you will typically still install the program Steam on to your SSD, but you can set your Game Library location for Steam to a different drive. This will tell Steam to default install games to that location. You can change the default Game Library location by going to File > Settings > Downloads > Steam Library Folders - as shown in the image below.
 

 

In your scenario, you will want to set your game library location to the HDD, so it will be a folder within your D: drive. In this case you could make a folder on D: drive titled "Games" that will be D:\Games.

 

 

When you go in to Steam and click to install a game, it will pop up asking you what location you want to install the game to. It will default to whatever your Steam Library Folders is set as the default install folder (which in your case you would have set to D:\Games). However, if you wanted to install your favourite game on to the SSD you will simply tell it to install to the Steam Library Folder that is located on the SSD instead (C:\Program Files(x86)\Steam\").

 

 

Thanks that response helped a lot.

[homeap5]

Anyway, I assume that you have one HDD with single partition and EVERYTHING on it (games, movies, photos, system) and SSD, and not any third Hard Drive to use.

So the only option for you is to install Windows on SSD (or buy really big SSD that have enough space for cloning).

Good thing is that you may install Windows on your SSD, you still have HDD intact, so you can move whatever you like later. Even programs (some of them) and games. And you may do this operation how long you want. For example - you noticed that you still have one game missing and wants to play? No problem, boot from your HDD and play game and think how to move game to new system later.

 

If you're talking about slow down boot when you install programs and games - no, it's not like that. You may have 1000 programs installed and 2000 games and it will work the same as fresh new system. Only programs that automatically starts with Windows can slow down start.