OS on HDD, gaming on SSD...or not?

[Maaack]

I am buying a SSD for my system and currently have Win7 on a 10k RPM HDD. I am looking to maximize current setup for gaming so my thought was to put Steam on the new secondary SSD and leave the OS, as is, on the 10k RPM HDD.

Would it be better for gaming to install BOTH the OS and my game on the new SSD or just leave Windows on the HDD and install my games on the SSD?

Just not sure where the bottleneck would occur in this setup: the old HDD reading windows with games on SSD

or

my system reading both windows and my games from the new SSD?

I assume the ideal setup would be TWO new SSDs with one for the OS and one for games but not an option atm

Thoughts or advice much appreciated!

 

[cl-scott]

Steam is a bit of a different beast, but there are still plenty of OS components that a game may need to load to run, so I'd suggest the OS and at least the core set of games go on the SSD, everything else on the HDD. You'll probably only be able to fit a certain number of games on any given SSD, so pick the ones you play the most for the SSD. You may also want to stop Steam from automatically updating those games to save on write cycles.

 

[Kindredsouls]

I don't know what size the SSD or the Raptor is, and without knowing that I can't give you my opinion on which I'd use where but I can tell you a few things to consider:


Steam and Steam's games have to be all in one spot. You can't have two separate Steam folders one on each drive. So Steam will have to be either on the HDD or SSD.

You want to turn indexing off on the SSD. indexing helps searches go more quickly but creates more writes and SSD's life span is determined by how many writes it has. For that same reason you may want to also turn off page filing to the SSD.

 

[cl-scott]

Steam and Steam's games have to be all in one spot. You can't have two separate Steam folders one on each drive. So Steam will have to be either on the HDD or SSD.

This is actually not true anymore. With a very recent upgrade to the Steam client, they officially rolled out support for storing games in other locations besides where the Steam client is installed.

 

[Kindredsouls]

This is actually not true anymore. With a very recent upgrade to the Steam client, they officially rolled out support for storing games in other locations besides where the Steam client is installed.

<searches the settings in Steam> Well I'll be.... that's great. Thanks for the correction cl-scott!

 

[Maaack]

Thanks to everyone for the input. Not sure what size SSD I am going with, probably not the largest as the system is already 2 years old so might be building a new one not too far off.

Merry Christmas everybody!