Hardware & Technical Needs knowledge about SSD and HDD PCs

[Leif_Erikson]

Just bought a new PC for my son and it has a 240g SSD and 2TB HDD. Now we know the basics like the SSD is ideal for booting Windows and the HDD is better for storage but after that have no idea.

For instance if he uploaded Steam would he be better putting it on the C drive SSD and any games uploaded from there go into the D drive HDD?

And is there a Window settings for items like games to automatically go to the HDD?

 

[tolm]

Been a while since I ran Windows but typically when you install some software (eg. a game) you get to choose the install location as part of the process.

With only a 240Gb SSD I would imagine you’ll want to put games on the 2TB HDD to avoid filling up the primary Windows drive.

 

[EUS]

I install games on my HDD, and to my SSD, depends on the game.
Steam is great for that, you have a default folder, but any game can be put to wherever you like.

 

[Ashnak]

Ok, you already bougth the PC, so it's too late in any case.
Problem is: windows likes to put everything into the corresponding user's directory on the boot (C:\) drive

There's a partial solution for that:

After you've set up the users (you should at least set up one additional user account with restricted rights for everyday work, in addition to the admin account), log in as that user and open the file explorer. Then right-click on the named folders (Documents, Pictures, Music etc. - or whatever they're called in your language) and open the "Properties" menu for that folder. Then go to the tab "Location" and enter a location (directory) on the HDD (in your case, probably the D:\ drive - in my case, it's a network drive on my NAS, and both my PCs share the same folders there ). That at least will let you put all of your user specific data onto the HDD.

That still won't help ypou with the location of the game files themselves - but as EUS has said, Steam offers you the possibility to use any folder on your system as the default location for the game files. Other games and software in general might be more picky about their location - and last not least, keeping the software on the SSD will let it start (and possibly run, especially in the case of games) much faster.

The core problem is that anything managed by Windows will want to install in (one of the two) the general "Program Files" folder on that machine - and those are nailed to C:\. Some programs (like Open/LibreOffice) you might get as a so-called "portable" version that can be installed to (and run from) any storage medium, including a USB stick.