Game Partition

[seekermeister]

I'm wondering if installing all games in a partition dedicated for that purpose is a good idea? Since games tend to frag more than some things, it would seem that keeping them isolated would help keep the OS healthy. But at the same time, I have read where some people believe that this might slow down access to a program's files during play, effecting the quality of the game. Anyone have any actual experience along these lines, that can comment?

 

[Jonathan_King]

I do not have any experience with this, but I cannot think of a reason why having them in a separate partition would slow access time. It's the same hard drive, so access times should be the same.

Can anyone think of a reason why it would slow access time?

 

[RST101]

I have all my games on a dedicated drive and it causes no adverse affects at all.

 

[Coolness]

I'm wondering if installing all games in a partition dedicated for that purpose is a good idea? Since games tend to frag more than some things, it would seem that keeping them isolated would help keep the OS healthy. But at the same time, I have read where some people believe that this might slow down access to a program's files during play, effecting the quality of the game. Anyone have any actual experience along these lines, that can comment?

Yeah, if its on the same disk, a diffirent partition wont slow it. Go ahead, this may be a quite good idea! Might even try it myself (i have a few games on a diffirent partiton, not all)

 

[stormy13]

The only real possible slowdown wold be from trying to read the game files and if there is any pagefile writing at the same time as the heads will have to bounce back and forth from the partition the game is installed on and the partition the pagefile is on. As to how much of a slowdown, not sure but probably not much more than a couple of seconds or so, if that.

I have all my games on a dedicated drive

Same here, main reason is that in the event of having to install/re-install Windows I don't have to install many of the games back afterward; just create new shortcuts for them (also have a reg file for those that won't run just from a new shortcut).

 

[jav]

Most of my games are portable, so they are on different partition.
I don't think there are any side effects.

 

[seekermeister]

stormy13,

(also have a reg file for those that won't run just from a new shortcut).

How did you go about making that reg file? I have a reg cleaner that can back backups of the entire registry, but I don't think that would be very good to use after reinstalling the OS, because it would effect more than just game entries. Also, some programs, of which I assume that some games would be among, have files outside of their own directories, which would need to be restored also. I realize that all of this could be done, but unless I really understood, I think that I would just reinstall any effected games.

 

[stormy13]

How did you go about making that reg file?

Depends on the game and what kind of info you can find on the support site. BF2 is one of those I have a reg file for. All I did was go to EA's support/FAQ page for the game and how to manually uninstall it including all the registry entries, like this,

ANSWER

I just used that and exported all the values shown. For a couple of others that require the same thing I managed to find it either on the support site or on a forum dedicated to the game.

 

[seekermeister]

I think that I get your drift, you merely reverse the manual uninstall procedure. As far as the reg file used, is it an .ini? What is the syntax for creating such a file?

 

[stormy13]

I just saved all the entries in Notepad and then saved it as a .reg, nothing fancy. Then just double click on it if/when needed to add it to the Registry.

 

[sygnus21]

I just saved all the entries in Notepad and then saved it as a .reg, nothing fancy. Then just double click on it if/when needed to add it to the Registry.

This is a good tip. Thanks!

My only issue, err...lazyness would be searching for the game entries. I find it easier to just reinstall the game, if needed. However this tip may make me rethink that. This way I don't have to worry about losing stuff during an OS reinstall, especially if you have games with a few mods.

Thanks

And to answer seekermeister's question, yes it's a good idea to keep your games on a seperate drive. I have a seperate HD with a 500GB partition dedicated to games.