Size of the game installed on a second drive.

[mrorminski]

I have heard if I install a game on a second drive (storage) it will still put some files on main drive (system drive). I'm interested how much data it can be. For example game like witcher 3?

I'm going to buy a new ssd for system and hdd for the rest of stuff.
I don't want to buy to small ssd but also not to big - they are pricey.

I would feel safier if I could know how much game needs to install on the system drive and how much of the game can be moved to a second drive.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Most games will put the save files and at times one or two config files on the drive the OS is installed on. It's usually Documents folder, Program Data folder, or AppData folder.

The Witcher 3 stores them at Documents\The Witcher 3. Such files measure in MBs not GBs though, and are relatively small compared to game install files.

The bigger concern about where to store them is retaining them after an OS reinstall. This can be done by placing copies of the savegames on a storage drive after each game session, or by redirecting the save location to write to a storage drive, which is a much more complex process.

 

[USAFRet]

I have heard if I install a game on a second drive (storage) it will still put some files on main drive (system drive). I'm interested how much data it can be. For example game like witcher 3?

I'm going to buy a new ssd for system and hdd for the rest of stuff.
I don't want to buy to small ssd but also not to big - they are pricey.

I would feel safier if I could know how much game needs to install on the system drive and how much of the game can be moved to a second drive.

Each game may or may not put small pieces of itself on the C drive. There is no one answer that covers all games.

Buy a 120GB SSD, and you'll be continually fretting over the tiniest space change.
Buy a 250GB SSD, and you won't have to worry about it.

 

[USAFRet]

Steam games can be easily installed on a second drive.
Thusly:
Steam games location
In the steam client:
Steam
Settings
Downloads
Steam Library Folders
Add library folder

But there may still be some small fragments on the C drive.

 

[Frag Maniac]

The largest of the files on the OS drive will be the savegame files, but TW3 is fairly light on savegame file size. A Nexus mod shows a level 80 savegame at about 2MB file size. That might be compressed, but uncompressed it couldn't be more than 5Mb.

https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/2676/?tab=2&navtag=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fwitcher3%2Fajax%2Fmodfiles%2F%3Fid%3D2676&pUp=1