Moving Skyrim to my SSD?

[Jbee94]

So I have my OS loaded up on my SSD and all my games downloaded on my HDD. But seeing I have a heavily modded Skyrim, I was told it would help with loading times, texture rendering and frame stutters to have it installed on my SSD instead.

 

Can I simply copy/paste the whole Skyrim game? I do have a few games downloaded on my SSD already, so I wont have to generate another Steam folder, and once I have Steam auto detect games, it should pick up Skyrim. I would just try this out, but I honestly don't wanna royally screw something up.

 

Reinstalling all the mods is out of the question, theres no way I would be able to do it all again and get it stable, I have almost 400 mods and about 250 active .esps and somehow its reasonably stable, with a SHIT TON of edited body files and bodyslide outfit edits. PS, I use NMM.

 

All my RAR files from the downloads from Nexus Mods are already stored on my SSD. C:Games:Nexus:Skyrim:Mods, so idk if that helps at all with the transfer process.

 

Only thing not stored on my SSD is the Skyrim game stored in my Steam folder on the HDD, Steam, NMM, and the NMM Mod RARs are already on my SSD.

[Guest]

Runs the Same at hdd, doesnt mattet

[Jbee94]

Runs the Same at hdd, doesnt mattet

 

If you're trying to say it doesn't matter it I transfer it to my SSD, it will run the same, that's not why I wanna move it, its mostly to cut down on the extremely long load times, Which I know moving to SSD will decrease.

[Crooltool]

How I moved my skyrim and FONV to my SSD, I made a copy of each game folder on the HHD, then uninstalled both games from steam, then reinstalled both games to the SSD, started each game thru steam, then copied the game folder copies contents to the new game folders on the SSD <an FYI, you do not need to waste SSD space by storing the .rar and .zip mod files on the SSD, they can stay on the HDD, only the installed files from the .zips and .rars need to be on the SSD> my current setup is 128gb SSD for OS, 250gb SSD for skyrim and FONV, 500gb SSD for all other games. HHDs hold file archives, music files, documents and userfiles such as email profiles, downloads,  and photos. If you leave the /user folders on the SSD with the OS, you will find your SSD fills up rather quickly.

And yes, after moving my skyrim to an SSD, I noticed a great decrease in load times <about 75%>

[LazyBoot]

So I have my OS loaded up on my SSD and all my games downloaded on my HDD. But seeing I have a heavily modded Skyrim, I was told it would help with loading times, texture rendering and frame stutters to have it installed on my SSD instead.

 

Can I simply copy/paste the whole Skyrim game? I do have a few games downloaded on my SSD already, so I wont have to generate another Steam folder, and once I have Steam auto detect games, it should pick up Skyrim. I would just try this out, but I honestly don't wanna royally screw something up.

 

Reinstalling all the mods is out of the question, theres no way I would be able to do it all again and get it stable, I have almost 400 mods and about 250 active .esps and somehow its reasonably stable, with a SHIT TON of edited body files and bodyslide outfit edits. PS, I use NMM.

 

All my RAR files from the downloads from Nexus Mods are already stored on my SSD. C:Games:Nexus:Skyrim:Mods, so idk if that helps at all with the transfer process.

 

Only thing not stored on my SSD is the Skyrim game stored in my Steam folder on the HDD, Steam, NMM, and the NMM Mod RARs are already on my SSD.

First of all, it should be fairly simple, steam does have an option to move a game to a different steam folder on another drive.

Though I'm not sure how well that process handles mods.

 

I'm also not entirely sure how mods managers cope with moving the game folder.

Well, MO handles is quite easily, just needs to edit the game path... However I don't have any experience with any others.

 

You could also do the move manually, but then you need to remember to shutdown steam while moving.

And most importantly, if you're doing it manually, you need to also move the correct appmanifest file (should be named appmanifest_[some number].acf).

[davisev5225]

 

Runs the Same at hdd, doesnt mattet

 

If you're trying to say it doesn't matter it I transfer it to my SSD, it will run the same, that's not why I wanna move it, its mostly to cut down on the extremely long load times, Which I know moving to SSD will decrease.

 

 

This is not true.  You will experience much shorter load times when running from an SSD.  Skyrim streams models and textures from the disk rather than trying to pack them into the VRAM all at once like certain other game engines.  Since SSD's read much faster than HDD's, you'll load models and textures at a commensurately faster rate.

[Guest]

 

 

Runs the Same at hdd, doesnt mattet

If you're trying to say it doesn't matter it I transfer it to my SSD, it will run the same, that's not why I wanna move it, its mostly to cut down on the extremely long load times, Which I know moving to SSD will decrease.

This is not true. You will experience much shorter load times when running from an SSD. Skyrim streams models and textures from the disk rather than trying to pack them into the VRAM all at once like certain other game engines. Since SSD's read much faster than HDD's, you'll load models and textures at a commensurately faster rate.

Not noticeable fastet, Moved My Install from ssd to hdd, enabled ini setting, doesn't make much of a difference.

I guess you could Install mo in a temporary ram disk and launch it from there lol