[SOLVED] New SSD for gaming load times. Should I also install Windows on it?

[David_647]

So I got an NVMe SSD today, 1TB. Install was fine, however I realized getting windows onto it isn't a simple copy+paste (unless you want to add everything from your boot drive) so I haven't really done much with the SSD so far other than benchmarking it.
I'll be using it primarily for games and my other, boot HDD (also 1TB) for storage and less demanding games.
Anyway, is there any advantage to installing windows onto the SSD other than fast boot times. Will it improve game performance or the performance of other slightly demanding programs like Adobe Lighrroom or Photoshop or will installing said programs onto the SSD be all I need to get a boost in performance?

The main issues with a new Windows install are that I don't have an activation key (a friend gave me one from an old laptop but he threw said laptop out a while back) and the fact that I'll have to reinstall drivers, etc to the SSD.

So should I use my current HDD as my boot and storage drive and my SSD for programs only or should I install Windows on my SSD and use it as my boot+gaming drive?

Thanks!
-David

 

[zyh1987]

macrium reflect free to clone your hdd to ssd. once everything works. wipe your hdd for extra storage.

 

[saabir2007]

Depends how much space your programs/games take up. If you have 300GB+ left after putting everything on it, then that's what I'd do. Everything on the SSD will load up faster than from a HDD. I'd definitely make it the boot drive though.
Moving everything to my NVMe was a bit of a pain though, since my BIOS wouldn't recognise it at first (Samsung 970 Evo).

 

[USAFRet]

The OS and applications on the SSD is the way to go.

You not having the license key is not really a factor.

1. If the current OS is valid and activated, a new install in the same system should activate itself. Skip entering the license during the install.
2. You can possibly discover the license key with Belarc Advisor.

Cloning is a possibility.
What make/model/size is the new drive?
How much space is consumed on the current C drive?

 

[David_647]

SSD is a Samsung 970 evo 1TB.
My HDD is about 915gb full
I don't really want to clone as I would have to meticulously delete a bunch of photos, some music and some video files along with other stuff like old save games and some junk which I really should get rid of to free up space though I don't really mind being on the HDD when I move my games over as that should free up about 500GB or so.
As such I don't really want to clone to my SSD as about half the stuff on my HDD won't really benefit from NVMe speeds and I don't want to go through my SSD meticulously deleting files as my method of "filing" is pretty fragmented and disorganised and the files go back about a decade or more as I cloned an older, dying drive about 5-7 years ago.

If I do a fresh install of Windows will programs on the other drive, or moved to the SSD still be compatible?

 

[USAFRet]

If I do a fresh install of Windows will programs on the other drive, or moved to the SSD still be compatible?

No.
They'll need to be reinstalled. The new OS on the SSD will know nothing about them.

You're going to have to do some reorg anyway. The old drive is currently a big pot of Windows, applications, and all your personal files, all mixed together.
You'll have to discover all your persojal files, copy them to elsewhere, and wipe that HDD completely. Then, copy back and use that drive as desired.

As said above, a clean install on a new drive does not trigger any licensing issues.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[David_647]

Well, it's going to be a lot of work getting everything reinstalled onto the other drive. I had heard you could just go into programs and move one but naturally the new install of Windows won't detect them in programs so a reinstall will be necessary, as you said, I should have thought that one through.
So lots of downloading will need to be done though it's probably better to get it done ASAP rather than copying stuff over to the SSD and using it that way as I would end up having to wipe it anyway.
I may wait until after Christmas to do everything, or just do things incrementally right now changing between boot drives until everything is done.
I don't currently have any other drives (except for an old 300gb one which is filled with photos (.RAW image files) which will need to be backed up anyway.
I'll probably buy a third HDD (4TB seems to be reasonably priced) and start transferring files and photos onto it, then retire the 300GB drive and put it into storage in case of a drive failure and me losing all the photos I've taken.
I don't have any other storage currently other than a 16gb flash drive a friend lent to me (my 32gb one got installed in my grandmother's freeview box so she could record and pause TV but she never uses it) and a pair of 32GB SD cards which are both almost full with photos so I'll have to wait on a new HDD before I get to backing up the useful stuff on the 1TB drive and wiping it.

Edit: Biggest pain is going to be SaveGames and getting them transferred over. Thankfully most have moved to AppData though some games just have to be special and use their own directory.

 

[USAFRet]

"I had heard you could just go into programs and move one "
Someone gave you wrong information.

Also, you need to start thinking about a comprehensive backup solution. Currently, you are one misclick/virus/bad drive away from losing it all.

 

[Mr.Spock]

If you're a WD or Sandisk drive owner you can use Acronis to image your drive directly to the SSD.
Also WIndows 7 image backup follow by a restore to the SSD should also work.

Both have the advantage of no necessarily requiring a massive reinstall. You can size the HDD boot partition down if you don't want to migrate everything. Definitely put the O/S on SSD as you'll be loading dll's and running background processes and the small random reads kill performance if left on your HDD.

So I got an NVMe SSD today, 1TB. Install was fine, however I realized getting windows onto it isn't a simple copy+paste (unless you want to add everything from your boot drive) so I haven't really done much with the SSD so far other than benchmarking it.
I'll be using it primarily for games and my other, boot HDD (also 1TB) for storage and less demanding games.
Anyway, is there any advantage to installing windows onto the SSD other than fast boot times. Will it improve game performance or the performance of other slightly demanding programs like Adobe Lighrroom or Photoshop or will installing said programs onto the SSD be all I need to get a boost in performance?

The main issues with a new Windows install are that I don't have an activation key (a friend gave me one from an old laptop but he threw said laptop out a while back) and the fact that I'll have to reinstall drivers, etc to the SSD.

So should I use my current HDD as my boot and storage drive and my SSD for programs only or should I install Windows on my SSD and use it as my boot+gaming drive?

Thanks!
-David

 

[David_647]

"I had heard you could just go into programs and move one "
Someone gave you wrong information.

Also, you need to start thinking about a comprehensive backup solution. Currently, you are one misclick/virus/bad drive away from losing it all.

Edit:
After several restarts and a blood sacrifice to the Microsoft God it went back to the "setting up windows" mode. After that I set up just like normal (or like the guide said, installation is much more streamlined (except for the 20 or so "do you want to send Microsoft your data" screens) than installation was for XP) and have booted into a working install of Win10.
I'll plug in the HDDs now (after shutting down, obviously) and start the driver installation from driver install downloads I have on the HDD.
Then comes the download and install marathon, Yay.
NB The stuff typed below is outdated but I'll keep it there just in case someone in a similar situation stumbles across my thread.
/Edit

Followed the clean install guide to the letter. There were some issues with getting it to install in the beginning, I had to delete system (I assume this was drive lettering off the SSD as I initialized, formatted and lettered it) , then everything worked fine, except for the "pc is restarting" part, which required a manual shutdown and startup.
I then booted into the login to windows account settings and got to the "do you want the MS office package" at this point the screen was blinking twice then going back to normal. The second I clicked on skip, I got hit with the green screen of death.
Should I attempt to reinstall?

Edit Both of my HDDs were unplugged and unpowered prior to the attempted installation so unless my PC is haunted, or I am extremely unlucky I should have a safe Windows install to boot into.

Any recommendations?

Thanks again!

 

[USAFRet]

Followed the clean install guide to the letter. There were some issues with getting it to install in the beginning, I had to delete system (I assume this was drive lettering off the SSD as I initialized, formatted and lettered it) , then everything worked fine, except for the "pc is restarting" part, which required a manual shutdown and startup.
I then booted into the login to windows account settings and got to the "do you want the MS office package" at this point the screen was blinking twice then going back to normal. The second I clicked on skip, I got hit with the green screen of death.
Should I attempt to reinstall?

Edit Both of my HDDs were unplugged and unpowered prior to the attempted installation so unless my PC is haunted, or I am extremely unlucky I should have a safe Windows install to boot into.

Any recommendations?

Thanks again!

It couldn't hurt.
It should NOT have required a manual shutdown in the process.

A fully functional clean install should need NO manual shutdowns, or encounter any blue/green screens.

 

[David_647]

It couldn't hurt.
It should NOT have required a manual shutdown in the process.

A fully functional clean install should need NO manual shutdowns, or encounter any blue/green screens.

I got it working as can be seen in the above edit, however time will tell if there are any issues. The only problem I'm having right now is accessing "Users/<username>" in Windows explorer. It asks for admin rights, which I grant, then it proceeds to do the worlds longest green ribbon loading bar. (Which just finished as I was typing this out, thankfully!)

As for manually restarting the PC for Windows 10 install, I had to do it for the previous installation too if memory serves. I also got one or two green screens. I think. At the time I put this down to my graphics card (AMD RX480) which supposedly had a few issues, one being that my TV would get multicolour static googling the card listed that it had some issues.
However connecting via an AVR for audio means I can vanish the static by changing source on the AVR and a friend's PlayStation 4 seems to have the exact same issue (using a different HDMI cable) so it may be a factory problem with my TV which I use as a monitor.
However the flickering of a graphics driver install was almost exactly like the flickering that preceeded the greenscreen. Maybe I did get shipped a faulty GPU in 2017. Either way I'm due a replacement card within a few months, to a year, depending on how well financed I am.

I'll give this OS install a day or two of watchful waiting (it activated just fine, thanks!) and if things seem okay I'll just put it down to gremlins inside my PC. Windows installs have always come with a problem or two all the way back to my first formatting of windows XP when I was 13.

 

[USAFRet]

"accessing "Users/<username>" "

This is from the old drive?
If so, that is as expected. The permissions for that space is for the old user in the old OS. Even though the new OS might have the same user name, NTFS sees it as a different entity.

 

[David_647]

"accessing "Users/<username>" "

This is from the old drive?
If so, that is as expected. The permissions for that space is for the old user in the old OS. Even though the new OS might have the same user name, NTFS sees it as a different entity.

Yeah it was for the old drive. It took a long while, but now it can be accessed instantly whenever I want.

I really, really appreciate the advice on installing OS to my SSD. There really is no way to properly benchmark it and the startup time benchmark is somewhat of a let down to how good an NVMe SSD actually is at opening programs quickly. Naturally programs usually open quickly with any new drive install or an old drive format and Windows reinstall but things are opening super fast, like the second I would click on them. Previously I would divert my attention or start finger tapping on my desk until things started but this is great. I had expected an extra TB of storage that made games a little faster. Installing my OS onto it gets rid of wait times almost entirely. I kind of wish I had bought 2TB now; I had heard SSDs made a difference but this brings back memories of doubling my RAM from 256mb to 512mb and getting huge performance boost.

Hopefully my Windows installation completed successfully despite the manual restart and restarts after green screening. As for product keys, they were kept by signing up with a MS account, which is a really nice, pro consumer thing Microsoft has done.

I really appreciate all the help you've given and if I have any OS issues I'll be sure to make a thread on it in the appropriate forum. As you're a moderator and you have answered all my questions you can feel free to close the thread, if you feel there is nothing more to add.

Thanks again
-David