Steam on a small SSD

So I put together a new build that included a new motherboard, graphics card, and a new SSD boot drive. My old boot drive is still in the machine, migrating from C drive to E drive. My question is what to do with all my Steam games?
Steam was installed on the (now] E drive, but running Steam from that drive lets some games run, others not. The SSD is too small to fit all the games on, so I'm not sure what the best course is to still access all the games and hopefully all the Steam data with them.
Do I do a clean install of Steam to the E drive, and then re-apply the old Steam apps file? Re-install and just let the games re-install also? Or Uninstall and reinstall those games that aren't working?
If anyone's been through this, I'd appreciate the help. Steam help has been less than, er, helpful

Jak

I've done the below several time.. zero issues

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_...

if you have multiple steam folders with steamapps in each one.. you can also simply consolidate the steamapps into one by copying one into the other..

I have a NAS with all my larger files and backups. I back up games I'm not playing using Steam's backup\restore function to the NAS and restore them whenever I want to play them again.

It's been a pretty good system so far.

Thanks very much, folks.
I should have mentioned that the rebuild involved going from XP to 8. Should that matter in those instructions, GG?

Jakobedlam wrote:

Thanks very much, folks.
I should have mentioned that the rebuild involved going from XP to 8. Should that matter in those instructions, GG?

I dont think so... once you run the steam.exe it will start downloading all the various other files..

Lester_King wrote:

I have a NAS with all my larger files and backups. I back up games I'm not playing using Steam's backup
estore function to the NAS and restore them whenever I want to play them again.

It's been a pretty good system so far.

Just in case anyone else happens upon this later: Restoring Steam games from backup now gives you the option to create a new library on a new drive as well. Once a new Steam game folder is established on a new drive, future installs/restores will always have that as an available option. This is an alternative to the old method of using symlinks to split your library between an SSD and regular drive.

As of a little while ago, Steam allows games to be installed outside of the Steam folder. Do you know if this effects moving them around? There must be some settings file or something somewhere that points to all those other folders. I would look into that instead of doing a symlink.

That way you can have some games on the SSD if you want and some on another drive.

If you just want to move the whole thing though, it's as easy as copying the folder somewhere else and launching Steam.

At the end of the day, Steam is pretty smart about getting itself to work. It's not as smart at synching your settings (favorites, view, etc) across multiple PCs :()

A steam game on any drive (not using junctions, just inbuilt libraries) is either:
- A collection of .gcf files in the steamapps folder on the same drive as steam itself. Valve seems to be getting ready to convert at least their gcf games(HL to orange box) away from gcf.
- An NCF file in steamapps and a subfolder in steamapps/common that contain the game files. This pair can be on any drive, just shut down steam, move them to their corresponding directory and steam should pick them up.
- An ACF file is like NCF but on the new content delivery system.

edit: To match an ACF file to it's game, go to steam and find the game on the store, note down the number in the URL address, so http://store.steampowered.com/app/49... is for Borderlands2, and appmanifest_49520.acf is the matching file

there's a couple utilities out there that automate this process with a click. Good for those of us who are lazy.

SteamTool
SteamMover

I use one called SteamJunction. Can't for the life of me find where I got it from but SteamTool is highly recommended.

That's the only functionality I think is missing, the ability for steam to move a game location between libraries for you.

That, and having the steam client on SSD without it keeping a load of bulky files, games and user data on the same drive by default.

Arise thread!

So I'm thinking of adding an ssd as a secondary drive to an existing system. It's not just my gaming rig but primary work computer and don't want to go through the hassle of cleain install to a new c: drive etc etc.

Question 1: With the Steam client installed on C: but games installed to a directory on the new D: (ssd) will I notice a nice bump in performance?

Question 2: Would moving the Steam client and games to the new ssd perform better still?

Question 3: Or is Windows the bottleneck and the ssd should definitely be the boot drive?

Put your OS on the SSD, period. You absolutely positively want Windows on the SSD.

Steam lets you define multiple library folders now, so you would also be able to selectively install games on the SSD. I would default to installing on your standard hard drive, and install games with mega load times on the SSD.

Well, I think I'd disagree with Legion, at least somewhat. Having everything on the SSD is clearly going to be the fastest overall solution. But if you absolutely do not want to reinstall, adding an SSD, and putting Steam and your games out there, will still be a big speed improvement over what you have now. You won't be getting everything you could be, but if you're on Win7 and later, and you've got a reasonable amount of RAM (8 gigs or more), Windows should usually have the memory cache pre-loaded with system DLLs you use a lot, so it shouldn't be hitting the spinning drive very much during game loads.

Now, Legion is right that you'd be better with everything on the fast drive. If you don't do that, everything else is going to be slower than it could be, especially bootups. (which take a long time, partially because the memory cache isn't running yet.)

But if you're buying an SSD just to load games faster, you can probably get most of the benefit by doing what you're thinking about.

I have one computer left in the house that doesn't have an SSD. It has a 10,000 RPM drive, and even with that, basic Windows operation is beyond painful.

Loading games faster will be thoroughly undermined with Windows chug-chug-chugging the whole system down. If you have anything that hits disk during normal operation (like an anti-virus), you will feel it.

Also, if the idea of reinstalling your OS makes you uneasy, that's typically a red flag indicating that you might not have your backups in order. So fix that. Wiping and reinstalling should be fairly painless, besides just the time waiting.

An SSD is like a golden ticket, waiting to make your computing life suck 200% less. Why in God's name would you not take full advantage of it?

Also, if the idea of reinstalling your OS makes you uneasy, that's typically a red flag indicating that you might not have your backups in order.

That's a very good point. If the thought of a reinstall actually worries you, better backups should be high on the list.

However, reinstalling is still a big PITA every time I do it, so I can totally see wanting to avoid that.

How much RAM does the system have that you say is so painful? Low RAM on a spinning drive sucks, but you shouldn't really feel it that much if there's enough for a good size RAM cache.

Malor wrote:

How much RAM does the system have that you say is so painful? Low RAM on a spinning drive sucks, but you shouldn't really feel it that much if there's enough for a good size RAM cache.

8 GB. I'm not sure how much of the slowness is my standards having changed, working exclusively on SSD machines for the past 2 years, but I want to throw the machine out a damn window whenever I use it. (Wife's machine, so I don't spend that much time on there)

It's not as bad as the machine gets further away from boot, but every time I start it up to do something on it, R-A-G-E.

By comparison, putting the OS on the SSD is like having your balls gently cupped by an angel. When the angel descends from heaven, you don't complain about the inconvenience of unbuckling your belt.

It's not as bad as the machine gets further away from boot

Yeah, boot and the first couple minutes of usage will always be slow on a spinning drive, that's just how it is. But I was surprised by how little I benefited when I went to my first SSD: it was better, but on a 12 gig machine, it wasn't the night-and-day better that I'd come to expect from all the raves. I reboot only rarely, so the slow period didn't really bother me.

The biggest difference I see is that you can be hitting the drive with multiple programs at once, and they all basically run at full speed. Where I really notice this is in my daily backups. Or, rather, I don't. I can't even tell when the machine is backing up, and if I were on spinning rust, I would most certainly know.

But if you've got at least 8 gigs, you don't reboot that often, and you typically only do one or two things at a time, the difference between SSD and spinning rust isn't that dramatic. Deviate from that usage pattern, however, and the SSD can win in a huge way.

By comparison, putting the OS on the SSD is like having your balls gently cupped by an angel.

Are angels allowed to do that? I was under the impression that that kind of pin-dancing was strictly off-limits for that job description.

*Legion* wrote:

Also, if the idea of reinstalling your OS makes you uneasy, that's typically a red flag indicating that you might not have your backups in order. So fix that.

Oh don't worry about that, I have three separate sets of backups... but only for my data. I've had terrible experiences in the past restoring images though - especially after installing new hardware. I'd rather just do a clean install all things considered. However, this is a fairly new machine that's running perfectly otherwise. Maybe I'm getting old, but doing the re-install thing just ain't all that fun for me anymore.

Along these lines...
I was just fiddling with my backups. I use Mozy Home, which finds surprising ways to disappoint me. Anyway, had to reconfigure what was getting backed up.
Do most folks backup steamapps? Its an enormous folder, so would require almost its own hard drive. Just wondering if this is something reloading Steam would reload on its own?

Jakobedlam wrote:

Along these lines...
I was just fiddling with my backups. I use Mozy Home, which finds surprising ways to disappoint me. Anyway, had to reconfigure what was getting backed up.
Do most folks backup steamapps? Its an enormous folder, so would require almost its own hard drive. Just wondering if this is something reloading Steam would reload on its own?

I do not. Steam games can always easily be re-downloaded/installed

Now games saves are a different story. While I don't consider it critical data, I do try to back them up. Most games nowadays store their save files to the 'Documents' folder in Windows and are automatically backed up. Older games though you sometimes have to go out of your way to back up. In fact, I have lost a couple of games because of forgetting to manually back up. (Dragon Age and KOTOR II spring to mind as particularly painful).

Finally started moving some of my lower-intensity games over to the HDD instead of the SSD. Feeling much better.

Does anyone have any suggestions/tips on how to go about migrating windows + games/applications from a 512 GB RAID1 array to a 256 SSD? I finally got an SSD to use as my main drive and while I have a working backup drive, I'd rather not go through the hassle of installing windows (my Win 7 install disc is packed away from moving two years ago) along with all my games. I found an article on Lifehacker about how to do this but I just wanted some second opinions before I go ahead with this over the weekend.

That article looks fine to me. The clone utility even knows about aligning the SSD partitions correctly, so it should work fine.

It's good enough article, in fact, that you might want to link it in the "IT Guy Toolkit" thread.

Malor wrote:

That article looks fine to me. The clone utility even knows about aligning the SSD partitions correctly, so it should work fine.

I picked up a Samsung drive, so I'm probably going to use their clone utility. Is it safe to assume their clone utility will take care of this as well?

It's good enough article, in fact, that you might want to link it in the "IT Guy Toolkit" thread.

Will do

Is it safe to assume their clone utility will take care of this as well?

Well, I assume it probably does, because people would be complaining about bad performance if it didn't.

Malor wrote:
Is it safe to assume their clone utility will take care of this as well?

Well, I assume it probably does, because people would be complaining about bad performance if it didn't.

This is true. Thanks for the advice, will post here with results after the install.

Also, I still can't get over how small and light the drive is.

Yeah, that's one of the things that continues to amaze me, as computers advance and advance. They're not getting much faster, but they're getting incredibly tiny. Toffler had a famous book called Future Shock, and I've been feeling that more than a little, for the last few years.

The engineering marvels that have been wrought, to pack 64 gigabytes of rewritable storage into a chip the size of my thumbnail, which I can buy for fifty lousy dollars, are literally mind-boggling. I sometimes wish people would slow down a little, and appreciate just what those guys and gals are quietly accomplishing. In some ways, we live in a time of miracles, but we so rarely realize it.

I've never opened one to look, but it wouldn't shock me if most of that drive is empty space.

Malor wrote:

I've never opened one to look, but it wouldn't shock me if most of that drive is empty space.

Pretty much. They're in a 2.5" body just for compatibility with existing drive bays, really.

On Apple laptops, they solder the storage chips to the board instead of using a drive, and it is indeed just a few thin little chips.

Yeah, that's pretty tiny.

And, wow, what a bad idea, soldering chips with such short lifetimes to the board. When that SSD fails, the Air is useless.

Good for Apple, because they can sell more replacements. Not so hot for users.

shoptroll wrote:

I picked up a Samsung drive, so I'm probably going to use their clone utility. Is it safe to assume their clone utility will take care of this as well?

Yup, I just got a couple of new 840s, one to upgrade a smaller one and shake it loose for an older laptop and another as a replacement for an old plate-spinner. The plate spinner wasn't cloning so I just reinstalled but the other two machines I cloned with the included Samsung utility and it worked great.

Malor wrote:

Yeah, that's pretty tiny.

And, wow, what a bad idea, soldering chips with such short lifetimes to the board. When that SSD fails, the Air is useless.

Good for Apple, because they can sell more replacements. Not so hot for users.

Well, that's the trade-off for a machine built as thin as is humanly possible given the currently available components.