Will having steam installed on my HDD hinder performance on games installed on my SSD?

[Zckl]

The title basically says it all. I have a newly built system with an SSD and a HDD. Like most people I want as little on my SSD as possible, but I do want some select games to go on it so I can get those advantages. But that got me thinking, if I install steam on my HDD and then a few games on my SSD, when I play those games since it has to use steam and steam's installed on my HDD will that slow the game down?

 

[dariens007]

i would install the steam client itself on the SSD and the games on the HDD. check this out for help.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7418-YUBN-8129

even if you installed both steam client and games on HDD it shouldn't really affect performance, other than not getting the benefits of a SSD

 

[Frag Maniac]

Not really. At worst it would only affect install speed of DLed updates, which would be minor.

If you have a fairly fast HDD I'd just install Steam on it. I still have Steam and my Steam games on my Seagate Barracuda 1TB, which is noticeably slower than my WD Black and MUCH slower than my SSD, but most of the time I spend waiting is the DL time anyway.

IF I had a bigger SSD, I'd probably put it on that, but I, like many, only have a 128GB one. Then again, I'm a bit biased, because I don't use Steam that much. I only have 3 games on Steam.

Steam likes to install the games within the Steam client via the target path (Drive Directory)\Steam\SteamApps\common. You have to make sure before you DL any games that you designate another install location.

I have a 128GB SSD and I only put the OS and programs on it. I have the OS on a separate partition. Any extra space I have on the SSD is used for captured videos if my HDD slows performance too much.

If you have a fairly good system and HDD, you won't see that much gain from installing games on an SSD, other than a bit faster level load time. For this reason if you DO install games on an SSD, it's best to install ones you play mp with, so you can get a quick load time into the map you're playing in.