Where should my steam folder be?

E

EnderW

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Sep 25, 2003
Messages
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What would be faster for loading games?

A) Intel X25-M G2 160GB
B) 4 x Samsung F3 500GB on Intel ICH10R RAID0
 
4 drives in raid 0... so if only 1 of them messes up you just lost all you're data. Great idea.

Really though, between a fast 500GB/1TB F3 and an SSD, there won't be much in it without RAID.

Just wait the extra 2 or 3 seconds mate, save yourself some money and go buy something much more useful.

80GB /160GB SSD for the OS, external. 250GB HDD for backups of it. 2 x 500GB RAID 1 for Games and a third 500GB as an external backup. near bulletproof solution.
 
B. Risk of data loss doesn't matter for my purposes if I was in your situation. They're games you download from Steam. Almost all game data gets saved on your system drive (the SSD) or the Steam cloud anyhow, so apart from losing a few hours re-downloading the games, and having to perhaps redo keybinds, there's no loss of data.

A doesn't work because 160 GB really isn't that much space when you consider one game from Steam can take up 5-10% of that drive. At least that's my problem right now.
 
My main Steam folder is on my HDD. I then move whatever game I'm currently playing to my SSD, and use this method (though a little backwards from the guide) to access it transparently via the original location. When I get a new game, I delete the link for the old game and move its folder back, then move the new game to SSD the same way. Whereas the guide defaults to SSD and explains how to move stuff to HDD to save space, mine defaults to HDD and I move it to SSD to increase performance.
 
^Ditto. The Steam folder doesn't need to be in it's entirety anywhere.

As for the OP... The question seems a bit loaded, if you have FOUR 500GB drives in an array then I would think you either have way more games than what's gonna fit on the SSD or you simply have more drives than you know what to do with... I'd probably just put some on a 2-drive array and some on the SSD but that's just me, I like to keep things simple. :p
 
getting ready for a reformat/system upgrade so I'm once again faced with this decision

my steam folder has gotten a lot bigger and I'd like to utilize some of this hard drive space, but I know sometimes SSDs can raise minimum FPS which is a benefit I'd like to keep

any more input?
 
EnderW said:
but I know sometimes SSDs can raise minimum FPS which is a benefit I'd like to keep
Click to expand...

What? After the graphical data is loaded into RAM, there should be no performance hit. Certainly not an FPS hit. I think the best you could expect is much faster load times.
 
On the fly load of texture in levels can slow down the computer and can cause FPS drops is probably what hes thinking of.
 
ethraax said:
What? After the graphical data is loaded into RAM, there should be no performance hit. Certainly not an FPS hit. I think the best you could expect is much faster load times.
Click to expand...

Cyant said:
On the fly load of texture in levels can slow down the computer and can cause FPS drops is probably what hes thinking of.
Click to expand...

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Let me help here, SSD for your config currently = 160/200mb read and limited space, raid0 F3's x4 = 300mb+ read with significant space for a gaming library.
 
Hmm, what Anand review was that chart from? Did he test with any other games? That's interesting, I've read all his SSD reviews but I never noticed that, or didn't give it much thought... That seems like a huge difference between the 5400 rpm drive and the top SSD, I wonder if actual gameplay reflects the same thing as that benchmark.
 
Impulse said:
Hmm, what Anand review was that chart from? Did he test with any other games? That's interesting, I've read all his SSD reviews but I never noticed that, or didn't give it much thought... That seems like a huge difference between the 5400 rpm drive and the top SSD, I wonder if actual gameplay reflects the same thing as that benchmark.
Click to expand...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2614/14
based on his comments on the benchmark, I'm inclined to believe it's purely a result of sequential transfer speed
 
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