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Games Install Small Files to C:/ Drive...

W

Wingnut172N

Charter Member
When I first learned to build / setup computers (10 years ago) I was told to partition a C:/ drive for the OS, and to install all games and other files to D:/. Thereby keeping the OS separate from any other files. With my new build PC, I've done that, but what I've found is that modern software, always puts something on C:/ regardless of where the game is installed.

This is very frustrating to me, as now I have a full C:/ despite having plenty of room on D:/

So...is the old wisdom of separating your drives, no longer valid? Should I just have a large C:/ and that's it? Not sure how to avoid programs from spamming by C:/ with random files. PMDG products do this, as well as many others. Thoughts?? I'm a bit frustrated...
 
Most software is going to write something to the registry, which is part of Windows, anyway. There is no way around this. Other programs will also install folders on whatever drive Windows is installed on and there is no way around this either.

With hard disk drives, you really wanted the C drive to be the first partition. This put the C drive and Windows on the outer most part of the disk, which is the portion with the highest linear speed as the disk spins, therefore has the fastest read and write speeds. You would then have another partition for other programs which did not need the fast read speeds required by the operating system and it kept all of the files and updates associated with the operating system on the fastest portion of the drive. You also routinely de-fragmented the hdd so as to keep all the data as close to the outer edge of the disk or the outer edge of each partition in order to maintain fast read and write speeds.

With solid state drives, this is completely unnecessary as a ssd will keep the same read and write speeds regardless of where the files are located on it until it gets 75% filled. If you have a large ssd, it is fine to install programs like games and sims on the C drive, just not to the C/Program Files directory as that can cause security issues. There is no reason to partition a ssd. Keep in mind you want the ssd to be no more than 75% filled, so if your games and sims are going to take a lot of disk space, install a second hdd or ssd for your games and sims.
 
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