I never had use for this before but spanned disk makes the new volume part of your actuall volume,does this decrease performance ? i'm thinking of using this in a new drive so i can expand my steam library.
Would this work for me ? Currently main steam and games disk is 500gb would like to add the 1tb drive i have to it, since steam can't install games into multiple HDD yet.
Why do you have so many games installed ? -Cos i don't like downloading them when i need,specially with my so trustable isp.

don't know about the partitioning but you can add more folders on different drives for Steam to install to. I've got 3 on my system

Yeah, just tell it where to install when you download. I’ve got 3 drives I use. 2 large HDD and a small SSD for some games that may benefit. No need to complicate it.

Are you sure? I can install games to multiple drives and have done for quite a while.

For what its worth, just echoing the above comments.

I have 217 Steam games, 6 software, 2 VR installed across 3 drives.

The drives are one 6 TB hard drive plus two 500GB SSDs. Very, very few games run better on SSD.

When installing a game, Steam allows one to choose/create the installation disk and directory.

If one does nothing, Steam defaults to the last one used, I think.

Once installed, if you want to change to a different existing Steam drive/folder -- right click the game, choose properties, choose local folders, choose the location.

You can also move a game by copying the files to a flash drive or just directly copy to a new drive and folder. Uninstalling. Copy from the flash to the directory you want to use (ii you did not do a direct copy). Then reinstall the game and point Steam to the new directory. Saves download time.

This was a surprise to me too.I ran some times using various games a while ago (M.2 Sata vs WD Black) and was surprised at the results. Now I don't clutter my SSD with games.

Does this include Flight Sims??

Fuzzy

No,I never tried any,sorry.

Thanks everyone for your help, didn't realise steam had this function.

I do not notice FPS increase. However, some flight simulations initial load is very slow -- e.g. X-Plane 11. The load speeds up slightly. Also new areas have to load while flying and SSD may help.

That's the real advantage of SSD. Things load noticeably faster. However, usually its not dramatic, just noticeable. The SSD is a lot faster itself, but "loading" also involves the CPU and other calculations that take time. Transferring files from one SSD to another is much faster than from HD to HD.

Its my observation (with my old eyes), that very little in the way of hardware components improves things "noticeably" or "visibly" -- things only seem to improve "measurably" (e.g. in benchmarks or in the upper left corner of the screen FPS number on Steam games).

For example, faster memory might improve FPS by 0 to 2 percent -- measurable but not visible. A faster GPU might improve FPS 20 percent -- but that's rarely visible once FPS is above 30 (unless it hits just right and takes out an occasional stutter). Boosting the speed of a CPU 10 percent (e.g. running at 4.2GHz instead of 3.8GHz) is only for bragging rights -- not visible to eyes. I OC my system to 4GHz because I can, not to "see" the difference.

All my opinions based on my builds. Other folks may "see it" differently

I decided to specify an M.2 sata drive on my latest desktop build because I looked at the insane speeds it was offering and thought 'yes,I'll have me some of that'. Yes,it is fast to load windows and things happen quickly during desktop use but gaming? I was disappointed in the loading times,hence why no games currently reside on it. I won't bother with another M.2,just a normal SSD is sufficient. I don't think I'll ever run an O/S on a mechanical drive again though. That seems painfully slow after an SSD.

My games drive currently is a 3 disk RAID 0 set-up (3xWD 750GB Blacks). Probably over-kill but I had the drives sitting around and thought why not. I back it up every week though because of the non-redundancy of RAID 0. They will be replaced by an SSD sometime in the future.

Agree.

Repeating your thoughts: I use M.2 just to get faster W10 and application startups -- but we're only talking a few seconds here and there. Regular SSD fine for Windows -- even HD is not a hardship. My SSDs are only for games that load slowly -- only a couple of those -- and the difference is not great.

You might notice in my signature I have a lot of HD space. That's because I have virtually every game and everything I've done for 20 years on my PC. I don't want to lose it -- some has actual value, some has emotional value. I backup everything right on the PC because its convenient -- and very occasionally the most important stuff on a portable drive. I always was concerned about RAID for your reasons and never tried it.

I did have a 4th WD 750GB and initially I was going to go with RAID 10 (gives good speed and redundancy but you lose 50% of drive space to it) but I leant that drive to my brother who seems reluctant to return it (I suspect he's sold it or lost it). RAID 5 was also an option with 3 disks but I wanted pure speed over anything else.

I also have stuff I would never want to lose (pics especially and like you some has emotional value) so that is double backed up on a couple of external drives. I don't use the 'cloud',I like to have physical copies.

Games that stream data from the drive as you play will benefit the most. i.e. Arma, most simulations, open-world games with RNG terrain, etc. SSD's won't necessarily give better fps, but will eliminate LOD popping, microstutters\hitching, etc.

Most "on-rails" type games (i.e. console ports) will see better load times, but other than that will have very little benefit.

Just from my experience

Better load times is definitely the point. Even then you may discover what you thought was a slow load time due to the drive was actually just the game itself.
With games more and more around the 100GB size, we may find it’s more of a factor in the future.
An SSD is a must for the OS IMO, that’s just too convenient to ignore.

Thank you all for the information.

Fuzzy

Blade_RJ didn't mean to derail your thread.

HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO ME !!??!

no problem mate, i already got my answer, dont feel ashamed to get yours too.

Epic!