dual nvme drives

[caddi daddi]

I have two 1 TB intel 660P nvme drives coming in, they are going into my game rig.
I have run out of space on my 250 gig 970 evo.
I am going to do A fresh install.
How should I configure my install?

my games are a mixture of steam, on line, downloads and from disks.

 

[dejo]

if you have enough m.2 slots- I would most likely just use the 970 for OS and use the 660p drivers for storage. I know that people rag those Intel drives but I have no issues with my 2TB 660

 

[EarthDog]

This is personal really as there isn't a wrong way....

What I would do, knowing nothing except what drives you have, is use the 970 Evo for your OS and the 1TB drive for games.

Or... you can install both 1TB drives, partition one for ~250GB for OS the other portion for games and the other 1TB for games. No idea how many games you have or, more importantly their install size to do much else. You could install one 1TB drive partition it and be ok....

 

[dejo]

if you only have 2 m.2 slots there are carrier cards that will interface that 3rd drive as well. Not had any issues with the ones that I have

 

[caddi daddi]

My installed game folder size is around 250 gigs, when you see the size of many games it's really not so big.
my back up games folder is the same size, so 500 gigs.
I have 2 m.2 nvme slots.
A few of my addons do not like to be installed on anything other than the os drive.
Can I install the first nvme, install windows, install the second nvme and install it as A spanned volume and windows use it as if it's just part of the first drive?

 

[EarthDog]

You'd have to set it up as JBOD...though, I wouldn't if only to keep church(OS/apps) and state(games, files, etc) separate. This way if your OS craps out, you just blow down an image on your OS drive and nothing else has to change.

 

[caddi daddi]

Ok, then it's the same as I do now, os on one drive and games and programs on the second.
can I move the programs (x86) file to the second drive right after I do the fresh install?

 

[dejo]

I believe that the intel ssd tools has a clone util that you could use

 

[Janus67]

You could try symlinking the Program Files directory to another drive, but it is risky, it is so hard built into the OS that it will likely cause issues with _some_ application(s).

Honestly, I don't mind having games or whatever installed on my C/OS drive, I have unlimited bandwidth and a 500mbit connection, if I need to get a game again from steam or whatever it's not that long of a wait and it means I don't have to micromanage stuff. My next build I plan to have a 1TB (or 2TB if I can swing it) NVME drive and maybe another 2TB SSD for any overflow getting rid of all my spinners in my main build. I currently have a 500GB SATA SSD and a 4TB drive to host other media and games that I don't care about load times, and I just move the games back and forth to the C and E drives based on what I'm playing.

 

[caddi daddi]

Some web searching says you don't move any of the windows folders, but you can move all the others, such as documents and downloads and such.

 

[EarthDog]

Some web searching says you don't move any of the windows folders, but you can move all the others, such as documents and downloads and such.

Correct. Those are simple files and can be moved. Applications/programs are the ones that may not work since they write registry entries when they are installed. If you just move the path but don't have the registry entry, it won't work.

 

[Janus67]

Some web searching says you don't move any of the windows folders, but you can move all the others, such as documents and downloads and such.

Correct, you can redirect the 'library' folders such as desktop/documents/downloads/pictures/music/videos (and AppData, but that can be tricky) that are all found under the user directory, it is very commonly done in the enterprise especially on non-persistent machines. Where applications get installed is a different story altogether, as ED stated, registry entries and such are expecting files in the exact place where they were put. Steam games are an exception if you can move those around and tell it it went somewhere else and they behave fine, there's applications to move those around. Ultimately it depends on the game and source you are using for them to know if it will behave properly.

 

[caddi daddi]

Even moving steam games can be an issue, when I moved steam to another drive, A few of my GTA-V mods would not work.
In fsx, A few of my add on planes will not work properly.
this is why I would like to know if I can install the second nvme as A spanned volume and windows see it and treat it as an extension of the os drive.

 

[EarthDog]

I'm really not 100% sure. Consider emailing/chatting with support for the mobo and see if the slots support JBOD. What system (specs) is this going in?

Or........ buy a single 2TB drive then sell/repurpose the others. Partition a chunk for the OS (200GB?) and save the rest for games?

 

[caddi daddi]

The mother board is an Asrock z370 extreme 4, does not support jobd, so what I want to do will not happen, spanned volumes and striped volumes cannot include the c drive.
I don't see any benefit to having the os on A sata drive and storage on 2 nvme drives, kinda defeats the purpose of two nvme drives.

 

[dejo]

is winraid an option?

 

[EarthDog]

I don't see any benefit to having the os on A sata drive and storage on 2 nvme drives, kinda defeats the purpose of two nvme drives.

I don't think anyone does.

You can still partition one of them and isolate the OS. Put the most frequently used and/or modified games you want to keep on the main drive and others on the secondary.

Or... buy a 2TB drive and repurpose the others.

 

[Janus67]

The mother board is an Asrock z370 extreme 4, does not support jobd, so what I want to do will not happen, spanned volumes and striped volumes cannot include the c drive.
I don't see any benefit to having the os on A sata drive and storage on 2 nvme drives, kinda defeats the purpose of two nvme drives.

Or just go YOLO and out them in a RAID0 configuration

 

[caddi daddi]

looking on the nets it's to late for going raid, I have got it all installed.
There must have been A bunch of crud from the upgrade from win 7 and all the updates.
I just installed from A fresh image from microsoft, ran the decrapifier script to get rid of all the modern apps, installed anti beacon and steam and this thing blazes!!!!!
In project cars, with everything on ultra @ 2560x1440 it makes 120 fps and never quivers, at 1920x1080 it makes 95 fps without A quiver.
Boot time is very short.
Time to install blender and see how it renders, for that I'll use the second drive for cache and the result folder.

 

[caddi daddi]

Soooooo, Time to stick some numbers to it!!!!!!!

This is an old, cheap, 2.5 sata drive,


This is nvme m.2-1 connector,


This is nvme m.2-2 connector.




The numbers sure show the nvme drives to be soooooooooo much faster than the bottom of the line sata drive.
Guess what............ in actual gaming use, they pay no dividend at all, zero, zip, nada.
The single advantage that the 2 nvme drives have over sata, outside of bling is cost per gig, the two nvme drives cost less per gig that any sata setup I could find when I ordered them.
Also, just as A note, there is no difference from my Samsung 970 evo plus and these intel 660p drives.