Hard drive advice

[Surfbird]

Just looking for advice...I bought a very strong computer system about a year ago...working fine...this flight simulator works great on it...however, when the last update 2.007 came out and the automatic update from Steam was attempted, I received a message that my disk space on Drive "C" was full. Upon checking the size of the drive, I found that I had two drives in the machine...one was "C" and the other was "E". Drive "C" was set up for 232 GB of space and Drive "E" was set up with 1.2 TB of space. I know...I should have known this at the outset..

My question is...what is the recommended way for me to get Drive "E" to be the main drive for this sim and other games from Steam...do I have to remove iL2 from Drive "C" and re-load it onto "E"? and what of future updates...will these updates looks for a Drive "C" or "E"?

And...the short cut icon on the desktop...will that also recognize "E" if I set things up that way?

I am not a computer guru by any stretch of the imagination...obviously...

 

thanks

[SCG_Space_Ghost]

Hey Surfbird, I'll try to walk you through deleting the E:\ partition and expanding the C:\ partition in to the remaining space.

 

1. Start by backing up all of the data on your E:\ drive - WARNING: The following procedure will format and NUKE any data on the partition.
2. Open your start menu and search for Disk Management.
3. Right click the E:\ drive and select "Delete Volume" - WARNING: This can NOT be undone and will remove any data from the E:\ partition. CAN'T. BE. UNDONE.
4. What was previously your E:\ drive will now appear as unallocated space.
5. Right click the C:\ drive and select "Extend Volume"
6. Click next through the menu - the default settings should attempt to expand C:\ in to any of the space that was previously occupied by the E:\ drive.

If formatting the entirety of E:\ isn't a practical option for you, substitute "Delete Volume" with "Shrink Volume." 1024MB = 1GB, do the math to determine how many MB are required to supply the number of GB you want to add to C:\. 

 

Alternatively, you could relocate the game files to your existing E:\ drive (assuming that E:\ is currently storing data/a volume of data that you can't easily move) and create new shortcuts to reflect the change.

 

Let me know how it goes!

 

Disclaimer: Space_Ghost is not liable for any damages or data loss incurred by following this procedure.

 

More information: In order for a partition extension to work, the two logical partitions must occupy a contiguous space (no logical partitions in between) or you will be unable to expand the drive.

An example: (System Reserved) (C:\) (E:\) = Contiguous, C:\ can be expanded into unallocated space removed from E:\.

Another example: (System Reserved) (C:\) (F:\) (E:\) = Not contiguous, C:\ can't be expanded into unallocated space removed from E:\ because F:\ is in the way.

Edited February 21, 2017 by Space_Ghost

[TP_Silk]

If the 240GB is an SSD and the other disk is a mechanical drive, I would be tempted to leave the SSD as your main Operating System drive and just move or re-install any games that don't need the response time onto the other drive. What you can do is many cases is to take a copy of the data for those games as is, copy it to the E:\ drive and then uninstall the games. Once you have done that re-install them but don't accept the default location for the game files. Most games will default to a suggested location of something like C:\Program Files\........ or C:\Program Files (86)\........ so all you need to do is to change the letter C to an E when re-installing and it will put the files in the new location.

 

Just as a further recommendation, I would leave the installation files for BoS/BoM on the SSD drive and just move the rest.

Another option is to move your downloads, pictures, documents, etc to the mechanical drive. This can be done easily from within Windows and this guide shows you how http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-move-windows-7-personal-folders-my-documents-another-drive.htm (I know it says Windows 7, but it works for later versions too).

[Zippy-do-dar]

I moved all my steam folder to a different hard drive have a read of link below on how to, it's simple

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

[19//Moach]

I would thoroughly recommend everyone uses SSDs for everything and never look back... 

 

also - the letters assigned to each drive are mostly arbitrary, you can easily change them on windows setting and they will have no effect on your system's boot order and such (your MoBo decides which device to boot from based on your BIOS settings) -- however, changing the drive lettering is a good way to screw up a lot of program path names - so don't do that unless you got a VERY good reason for it.... 

 

 

 

personally, I recommend having one drive/partition for the OS and another (larger) for everything else - Windows is a "messy eater" despite claims from M$ that it defrags itself automatically (it most totally doesn't, makes huge mess instead) - unless you're using SSDs all the way, you'll find that windows tends to degrade (very noticeably performance wise) over a period of a few months - this seems to be highly related to fragmentation, despite windows refusal to admit it and clean up after itself (other defrag programs do a much better job) 

 

this does not happen with solid state drives - so I conclude fragmentation is highly to blamer for the windows degrading phenomena -- anyways, having the OS in its own smaller partition makes it a lot easier to run this kind of maintenance

 

it may also be ever-so-slightly safer^{[citation-needed]} to have the OS on a non-"C:" drive, as not-so-noble software might exploit the assumption that C:windows will contain what one expects to find - conversely, non-standard lettering for your main drive might be somewhat inconvenient for installing various things you DO want in your computer, making for otherwise unnecessary extra typing on setups (and/or occasional actual problems)

 

 

above all else -- if you're at a point where partitions and OS decisions are being made -- stick to windows 7 -- no OS exists at the present point in computer history that is in any way a worthy successor, let alone a replacement to it (shoosh, linux zealots - IL2 doesn't run on that) - from what I gather, windows 10 is simply "not as bad as 8" - but I have yet to hear anything at all about any way in which it actually improves on 7 - so far, all seems to indicate "it doesn't really, it's just not worse" 

Edited February 21, 2017 by 19//Moach

[Surfbird]

Wow...thanks for the suggestions. I should have mentioned that my "C" drive is a solid state drive. So...I have two different drives...this being the case, would the "Extend volume" command still work in that case or only on partitioned drives?

[Vorondil]

Wow...thanks for the suggestions. I should have mentioned that my "C" drive is a solid state drive. So...I have two different drives...this being the case, would the "Extend volume" command still work in that case or only on partitioned drives?

I would not under any circumstance make an extended partition built from a mix of SSDs and mechanical drives. The performance, durability, and other details of the drives are to different in my opinion. You will essentialy end up with what is sometimes called a Software JBOD, which carries various risks in the future.

 

Much simpler is to just move your steam folder games to the E drive. I assume since your computer is somewhat new, that your E-drive still has alot of space left.

 

Steps:

• On your E-drive, create a folder structure such as 'E:\Games\SteamGames\' to store your games in.
• In Steam: Click Steam > Settings > Downloads > Steam Library Folders.
• Add a Library Folder pointing to your newly created E-drive folder with the buttons presented in that window.
• For every game that you wish to move to E: Right click the game in your game library > Properties > Local Files > Move Install Folder...
• Select destination folder in the drop-down and click 'Move Folder'.
• Et Voilà, you're done.

A guide elaborating on the above.

https://www.howtogeek.com/269515/how-to-move-a-steam-game-to-another-drive-without-re-downloading-it/

 

I'll add that, since an SSD has much faster read speeds than a Mechanical Drive, you might want to leave some games on C: where you feel that the faster load times warrants the cost in storage space on that drive. The benefits of fast read speeds in a game usually are: Faster startup of game; Faster Map-loads and, in some cases where the game uses streamed content* this might be noticeable through less stutters and faster object-loads in levels. This last point though is almost irrelevant, as any game dev worth their salt will use RAM for asset storage, and will adapt the game to work well with normal Hard Drive read speeds.

 

You will almost never see an FPS increase from using a faster hard drive. In the very few cases this happens, the problem is usually a poorly coded game.

 

*such as video textures, music, certain large sound files, pre-rendered cutscenes etc.

Edited February 22, 2017 by Vorondil

[unlikely_spider]

Yeah, listen to Vorondil - DO NOT extend your smaller SSD onto the larger mechanical drive. That will essentially remove all of the benefits of having the SSD, and add many risks as well. There are tutorials that Steam has as to how to install your games on a different drive. But note that your loading times may increase due to the files being on a mechanical drive instead of the SSD. But nothing should change in game.

[ShamrockOneFive]

I bought a second SSD to put some of the demanding games on and that seems to have been the best solution for me. If you can swing it... toss in another SSD and move IL-2 there.

 

I'm a personal fan of Samsung's 850 EVO series although it seems that the 860s are now taking over.

[Surfbird]

Excellent. Many thanks to all for the help. I sincerely appreciate it.

[SCG_Space_Ghost]

The fact that you have two separate drives does change the advice I would give.

 

Since you didn't mention that in the OP, and I interpret directions very literally, I gave you advice assuming you had a 1.5TB HDD split in to two partitions.