Quick tips for installing 2x 970 EVO 1TB's into new Win 10 PC

Paul Anderegg

Distinguished
Aug 30, 2012
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Just waiting for me CPU to arrive, to drop into my Z390 Asus Code MB. Slapped in a pair of 970 EVO 1TB NVME drives. Looking to use this mainly for PC gaming, with a secondary use of transcoding large video files into h265 using HandBrake,

When installing Windows 10 Pro onto the first drive, do I need to format in any particular way, or just default cluster/block size (4k?)? NTFS still the way to go for Windows 10?

Once I get the OS installed on SSD 1, would it be easiest to just throw my Steam and Origin games on the C drive or on the secondary drive? Would it really make a difference during game play to have the games installed on the second drive? I will be using Acronis to backup the C drive, so it would be simplest to have everything on the same drive and the second SSD as the backup and large file storage.

Paul
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
1. Have only one drive connected while you install the OS.
Connect the second one later.

2. You can put your games and whatnot on whichever drive. It makes no difference performancewise.
Steam games are particularly easy to have install on other drives.

Steam games location
In the steam client:
Steam
Settings
Downloads
Steam Library Folders
Add library folder
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To move an already installed game
Games library
Right click the game
Properties
Local Files
Move Install Folder