Hey all,
So I have a PC I am pretty happy with and plan to use for a while. Good monitor, lots of RAM, all of that.
The last thing I think I should upgrade would be switching from my 7200rpm hard drive to a SSD. I hear that will make a world of difference in how fast my games load.
Question: Should I be looking to buy a large SSD and clone my entire current hard drive onto the SSD and run everything off of the SSD in the future, or should I be buying an SSD as a secondary drive that I install only my games to? I’ve seen various people on various sites mention both and I’m not sure if one option is considered ‘better’.
If I am just going to use the SSD for the games themselves, do I have to uninstall every game and reinstall them on the SSD from scratch?
Thanks for any tips, advice, etc!
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No you just move the games from one drive to the other. If it is just game loading time you are worried about… just put all your games on the SSD.
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The entire wow installation folder is designed to be self-contained. Meaning you can transfer it from computer to computer with no need for re-installation. However I will say that as with every bit of old data, inefficiencies will present themselves over time. If you have fresh installed wow after patch 8.1 (December 11 2018), the organization of your data .CASC folders and the .index files will be rather organized especially after the folder reorganization of that patch. If you installed wow any time longer than like a year or more ago then it would be wise to just let the installer download wow again for you. Because if you don’t you will lose the benefits of the ssd.
If you are strapped for cash get a smaller ssd. If not just get the ssd as your main drive. I recently sprung up for a 2tb pcie ssd (that I will use for now and then later transfer to my laptop once I get money later on for a nvme, just needed something quick and easy to finish my long overdue build).
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i went the route of using a 1 TB SSD. I have my OS, applications, games, and databases on it. Due to some of the games, I am looking for a second 1TB SSD.
All my documents, photos, and videos are stored on platter drives.
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Is this still accurate? I remember copying the folder around before I’m just curious if it still works with the latest round of monkeying from the Classic demo version. /retail folder etc.
I have an SSD, would gladly just drop that over if so. I guess you just relocate the install folder in the launcher?
2 SSDs one for windows one for games. No excuses they are so cheap atm.
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I just use my SSD for games. I mean if you want to buy a large one, and the extra price is not a concern… your whole system booting faster is never a bad thing. If all you are looking to do is decrease load times, however, a smaller drive just for games would work perfectly.
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They reorganized the WoW folder with Patch 8.1 and I moved my WoW folder to an SSD after that happened. So it still works perfectly fine.
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Awesome, thanks for the tip.
Get an SSD large enough to run Windows and any games. If you have Windows and WoW only, a 256 GB SSD drive will be full. Get you about a 1TB SSD which will give you some growth potential.
Do yourself a favor and make sure Windows gets put on the SSD. Then any games if you have room.
I have 2 SSD. 1 - has only windows. 2 - has all my games on it. Most games can be copied and pasted and then the game launcher settings have to be updated to point to the new file location.
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When I build a computer, I personally use at least 3 drives.
The first is an nvme ssd that I install windows on. This lets the computer load very quickly, and keeps things running quick in the background. A few games that I want to load very quickly go here too.
The second is a sata SSD that is 1tb or larger. This is for most of my games and other things that I value load times and performance in. WoW, Skyrim, et cetera.
The third is a 4tb+ HDD that I use as my data drive. All large files like videos and what-not go here. Strategy games and other games that load time doesn’t really affect also go here.
At the very least I’d reinstall windows to the SSD and then whatever games you want to be snappy. Anything else goes on the HDD.
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I have Windows 10, various programs (e.g. Office 2016, Firefox, Chrome), World of Warcraft, and Star Trek Online installed on my 240 GB SSD and I still have around 90 GB left over.
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I had Windows 10, WoW, and Warframe and was at 90% capacity.
That may be true, but they’re so cheap atm that he may as well get a 1tb one to allow for growth later on.
Nothing more annoying than having to uninstall one game to install another. lol
In my case I have a 1tb SSD for Windows + Steam and Blizzard games. And a 5tb HDD for my docs and files.
SSD really makes the difference, Windows boots up faster and your games run smoothly.
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If it has a launcher then you can point it to the new files.
Depends on the game really. If the game has setup things like registry keys that point to the installation folder and there’s no launcher to fix those then it might not run properly.
WoW you can copy and tell the launcher where you copied it to.
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Totally depends on your current file load and your budget for the SSD. I started with a 256 that filled up fast, with a 2TB SATA secondary drive then picked up a 500GB SSD a year or so back very cheap that still has plenty of room and plug and play external drives for other files are cheaper still.
My answer, OP, would be both. I have my operating system on an SSD, which makes for quick bootups and restarts. I have my game on a 7200 hd, and that’s plenty quick for any purposes I’ve encountered in WoW.
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All of this depends what else you do with your computer. If you don’t use many high resource programs/games besides wow you could probably get away with a 128gb. Just install windows 10 and wow along withyour drivers. I have a few steam games but I keep them on my mechanical drive. Most of them could run on a 15 year old computer.
I did a clean reinstall of Windows, so that probably helped.
I also have a 2 TB HDD so I have room to move games around if I really need to.
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