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Separate OS drive?

Post Date: 2021-12-31
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daveyd View Drop Down
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Posts: 31 		  Quote daveyd Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Topic: Separate OS drive?
    Posted: 31 Dec 2021 at 2:06pm
I was listening to this video.

His first suggestion is to put your OS on a separate drive from your games and other applications.

It makes sense for me why this would be the case for mechanical HDD... but is there actually a significant boost in performance for having Windows on one SSD and your games on another? Anyone here done this with your gaming PC?




Edited by daveyd - 01 Jan 2022 at 6:02pm
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Onkel_Ken View Drop Down
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Posts: 2961 		  Quote Onkel_Ken Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 31 Dec 2021 at 2:28pm
I have a 500GB Samsung 980 Pro for my OS and a few everyday games and a 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus for my game library. Windows loads in mere seconds and the 970 EVO Plus is more than fast enough for loading games.

There are several others in the Forum that does the dual SSDs for one reason or another like ease in backing up critical files and quick antiviral scans.

I will watch and see what some of the Forum Wizards have to add to the reasons why 2 are better than a single big SSD for everything. I might even learn something myself.

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Cretae View Drop Down
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Posts: 7331 		  Quote Cretae Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 31 Dec 2021 at 4:06pm
I recommend the smaller Samsung 980 Pro for the primary drive where budget allows. IMHO, it's so fast you may keep it at 500 GB and put some apps and a few of your favorite games there. As Onkel_Ken has found, a slower SSD, even a SATA, handles games pretty well.

The best reason for making sure your OS is not on a huge drive with tons of other storage is that there might come a day when you are compelled to wipe your OS drive to do a fresh install. That often means everything goes. The less you have there, the less you have to put back. Another reason is to make back-ups and scans perform really fast.

You could, if you wish, partition even the smaller 980 to isolate the OS even further. Probably 150 GB would be plenty. If you might decide to go larger than 500GB for your Primary drive, I almost insist you create a "C" partition just for your OS and apps. Again, 150 GB or so. You want your apps like maintenance software, browser(s), and productivity programs on the same partition as your OS so that it can easily access them without searching other drives. Speed has come to mundane computer maintenance, and we are very happy about that. Let's not get in its way!
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Onkel_Ken View Drop Down
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Posts: 2961 		  Quote Onkel_Ken Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 31 Dec 2021 at 5:45pm
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MrCheetah View Drop Down
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Posts: 392 		  Quote MrCheetah Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 31 Dec 2021 at 6:30pm
In the video you linked, Jay does mention both a speed performance (regarding HDDs) but also mentions the data organization/management benefit that @Onkel_Ken and @Cretae describe.
Originally posted by Jay

Even if you have an NVMe SSD, you can still add a two-and-a-half-inch drive, which are extremely cheap these days, and put all your games and secondary programs and stuff on there to keep your OS uncluttered and running quick.


Anyway... To address your primary question:

Originally posted by daveyd

but is there actually a significant boost in performance for having Windows on one SSD and your games on another?

When simply playing a game, probably not significant. However, for example, if you stream/record your session there could be enough contention on a single drive to create some observable performance change (not just in benchmarks).

Edited by MrCheetah - 31 Dec 2021 at 6:54pm
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Cretae View Drop Down
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Posts: 7331 		  Quote Cretae Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 01 Jan 2022 at 5:26am
Hmmm. The link wouldn't open for me, so I couldn't see what the specific recommendations were. As far as performance, I think at the very high level of a Samsung 980 you will be rewarded for a compact drive that takes very little time to search, scan and back up. Other tasks, like opening games and waiting on them to load, will not benefit quite so much. Games are highly scripted, and must load themselves in a specific programmed manner. That tends to limit even how well a very fast drive can perform that task. IMHO, an NVMe drive will outperform a SATA drive, but one NVMe drive against another won't be that significant.   
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Onkel_Ken View Drop Down
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Posts: 2961 		  Quote Onkel_Ken Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 01 Jan 2022 at 5:37am
The link is www.youtube.com/watch?v=9v5d8fsfJSs and is "Can't upgrade your GPU? Upgrade this instead..." by JayzTwoCents. Some great ideas beyond upgrading to SSDs.
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