Hi, The windows drive on my Pc is becoming full and I want to start installing software like games to a second drive. The question is will there be any slowdown in my games if I install them to a second SATA HD and will any part of the data from the software be installed on the windows HD? If there is any data installed on the windows drive how would I go about deleting it if I wanted to uninstall the software on the second drive? Thankyou!!Should not be a problem. But some free space on the first drive, system drive, for the operating system to work good. Don't let it GET to 90% full.Whether or not it will still install things on the system drive depends on the software and your settings.

Almost all software will install to another drive without a problem, but some programs (like certain games) will create settings and save files in the user's folder on the system drive, usually under "My Games", but depends on the game. This usually can't be changed. However, the location of the user's folders can be changed, therefore changing the location of where all programs that operate in this way save.Any program that stores user-specific data- things like high scores, preferences, settings, etc. should be storing them in the Application Data folder. This usually maps to a folder in the users profile folder. For example, on my system it maps to "C:\Users\BC_Programming\AppData\Roaming". Changing the location of the user profile will change the location of that folder, and I believe some tweak tools can be used to change individual folder mappings for a user, though how robust a solution that will be is another story. And there is of course registry settings which are stored in dat files in the user profile as well.

Usually an uninstaller will remove (and it is supposed to by convention) any registry keys or files it's corresponding installer created or added. However it will often leave behind user data (or occasionally, you will be prompted) on the premise that you are uninstalling the program, but not necessarily the data created with that program. Usually if this occurs you can remove the data by deleting the corresponding folder in %APPDATA%.Hi Crafty

Why do things the hard way. Why not image your old windows drive to the new larger drive and use the larger drive for the BOOT drive. Most harddrive manufactures SUPPLY software to do this. What is the make of your drives and I can suggest some software and advice of how to do this.



Lisa
Quote from: Techo on January 26, 2012, 08:24:44 PM

Hi Crafty

Why do things the hard way. Why not image your old windows drive to the new larger drive and use the larger drive for the boot drive. Most harddrive manufactures supply software to do this. What is the make of your drives and I can suggest some software and advice of how to do this.



Lisa