Should this work to utilize my SSD?

My system has a small 40GB SSD, and a 1TB HDD. I mostly just wanted the system stuff to be unaffected by the HDD's usage (which was a big slowdown on my last machine), but since the SSD is still half empty, I wanted to try to put some game files on it to speed up loading, but without the hassle of uninstalling and reinstalling between the drives whenever I change games. So I had an idea...

What I did was to take all the major files from a game (in my test, New Vegas), that were installed on the HDD - in this case, the five huge files from the data folder that seem to make up the majority of its data - and move them to a folder on the SSD. Then I made a symbolic link to them back in their original location. So Steam ran the game fine, following the link... but I got no change in load time. I tested it each way, loading the same save from a cold start, 9 seconds of loading. So my question is, is this a feasible method, and New Vegas just isn't loading enough off the drive to notice a change, or is having even the symbolic link on the HDD still slowing down the process to its read speed?


Edited by Goldom - 01 Nov 2010 at 5:09pm

Problem is that with Steam, I'm pretty sure, all its games have to go in the same place - and I can't fit them all on the SSD. But after more test, and having times varying from 6 to 12 seconds doing the exact same thing, I think it just isn't gonna make a difference with this game's load times. I'll have to try it some time with something that takes longer.

edit:
Yep, theory seems sound, it was just that game's loading not being HD related I guess. I moved & symbolic-linked SC2 data in the same way, and it cut level loading time by 1/3 (31s to 20s), and loading the campaign menu by 1/2 (12s to 7s)


Edited by Goldom - 01 Nov 2010 at 6:53pm