Storage question

[shayan288]

Hi all,
i have a question about hard drives.
I currently have my OS (vista home premium 32bit)
and a lot games and stuff on one 500gb Western digital hard drive.
I plan on buying a ssd one day and i am wondering if there is a way I could liek transfer my OS to the ssd and still be able to play my games, or if I have to just isntall a whole new OS on the ssd, and when I do so, will I still be able to play my games?
Please help..
Thanks.

[Perineum]

If your WD 500GB hd doesn't have much on it and your SSD is big enough you could probably just clone your HD right onto the SSD.

But what I THINK you're saying is that you'd like to have your games on the HD and keep your OS on the SSD... and then you're wondering if the games would work.

I'm pretty sure it depends on the game. Games like World of Warcraft install to it's own drawer and don't have things in the registry, etc so I'm positive it would work fine. I'm not sure about other games.

Most likely they still write things to the registry, which is a HORRIBLE practice and I hope it's stopped. Games should install everything to their own drawer. If the uninstaller screws up then it's no big deal.... just delete the damn drawer!

However, if you uninstalled all the games off your current HD you could likely keep your OS exactly how it is by just cloning it over to the SSD as long as there was enough room.

I'm saying this in theory as these are both SATA devices so should work but I've never done it.

[PLg]

Why exactly do you want to copy the whole Hd. Is it because you don't have the cd for vista? Because it is a different technologie, I would extremely suggest that you use a fresh install. Second, you mentioned that you had a lot of stuff, I don't know what is your budget, but if you have like 350gb of stuff no way you can fit that on a ssd.

[shayan288]

My hdd has used up like 450gb of the disk, and I dont want to clone, I would just like to put the vista on the ssd and leave the games on the 500gb UNTOUCHED with all my saved games fine. I do still have the vista disk.
The most important part is steam, I am also wondering if I can switch my steam games to the ssd and still have all my games on it untouched with all my saved games (not all of them are valve)
thanks.

[shayan288]

lol.. bump?

[ripken204]

i would suggest putting windows 7 on the SSD.. windows 7 has some optimization in it for SSDs and vista does not.

[Perineum]

I've gone kinda silent because you're asking a question I can't really answer. I have no experience with SSD's, and I think your results with the games are going to be 50/50'ish.

If you are good with the registry I'm sure you could get it done though.... you'd have to copy your registry over, etc. It would be fairly involved, I think.

I'm no expert in Windows registry. Given enough time I get shit done though.

[shayan288]

Yeah I think I am just gonna reformat. Thanks for the help though.

[Prof. Dr. Silver]

Make sure the SSD you're buying is a big one if you intend to put your games on there...! 32Gb is way to small... A full OS can take anything from 15-25Gb. 64Gb... which I have myself, I find too small... a bit of DL and your drive is full! It is doable though....

A 120/128Gb SSD or bigger would be the best! Lots of space for many applications/games...etc

Here are some examples:
G.SKILL Falcon 128GB $ 349
OCZ Vertex 128Gb $ 369

[shayan288]

Yeah I am planning on getting the 120gb OCZ vertex and putting my OS and steam account on it, and keeping everything else on the normal HDDs.
But I have one last question. Can somebody please tell me how to reformat a disk? Do I need somekind of software, or what?