Install your games on a separate SSD - your OS will thank you

The average size of a video game has increased substantially over the years, so it's just as well that storage upgrades aren't anywhere near as expensive as they used to be. But if you've only got one SSD in your PC, even if it's a PCIe 5.0 version, you're courting disaster on the daily. While it's true enough that Gen 5 SSDs are fast, and the capacity for NVMe SSDs has increased to respectable levels, keeping all your data on one drive is never a good practice.

I always use a second SSD for my game installs (although technically I have three other SSDs with games on, because I hate re-downloading them), and I think everyone should. It's not about performance, but there are plenty of other reasons that putting game installs on a second SSD makes sense.

We used to do this when SSDs were new

Except Windows went on the SSD, and games went on a HDD

When SSDs first hit the mainstream around a decade ago, they were space-constrained. It wasn't uncommon to have a 120GB SSD as your boot drive, and have a secondary HDD for data and games to go on. Sometimes you'd put a few of your favorite games on the SSD and swap them back and forth according to what you were playing, but for the most part, you used the SSD for Windows as the speed benefits for the tiny files the OS reads made more sense than game loading screen times.

Then SSD prices dropped, capacity increased, and before you knew it, people were using a single SSD for their system that had Windows and their games on. Some people partitioned their drive to seem like several SSDs for organizational reasons, but it wasn't necessary.

I'm here to ask people to go back to the days of having a second drive to install games on and use it for their documents folder, download folder, and any other data they want to keep. It's not really for performance's sake, although it can probably help in some edge cases, but it makes sense from organizational and data safety perspectives.

Even a Gen 5 SSD can get slowed down

While the newest NVMe SSDs are fast for straight data transfers, that only counts during game loading screens. Most of the time, most of the game's data is in RAM, or your graphics card's VRAM, so the necessary computations can be done from quickly accessible data. Games try not to pull data from the SSD installation while you're actively playing, although that's not always possible, and that could become an issue depending on several other factors.

Windows habitually does things in the background, even when gaming mode is on. That could be swapping RAM data into the cache files on your C: drive, moving junk data around, or performing any small tasks on the SSD on which the OS is installed. When smaller files are being read, it's all about the IOPS performance of the SSD, and even Gen 5 drives can be overwhelmed in this way.

Games are getting even bigger

I wonder when games are going to need their own drive, each

I just looked at the installed games on my SSDs, and four of the top ten (size-wise) are from the Call of Duty franchise. The largest is Call of Duty WWII at 141GB, larger than the first SSD I owned, and ranging down to a more sedate 68.9GB for Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, but I know that one is smaller because I didn't install multiplayer or anything really except for the campaign.

I've installed my Steam library on a second hard drive or SSD for a decade now, because it's easy to reinstall them from a second drive without downloading them over again. It took a while, but Epic Games, EA, and Ubisoft can do the same reinstallation of existing game files from a second drive, making things much easier when (not if, this is a given constant) I have to reinstall Windows.

And whether it's because Windows has become corrupted, the SSD I use for my C: drive has failed, or any other reason, I have long learned only to use the C: drive for my operating system and the programs I use for productivity. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and essential data should live on a second drive.

Not everyone can easily download games again if they lose data

I count myself fortunate to have fiber internet with no data cap, so I could easily download the thousands of games I have spread across multiple game stores. I don't want to do that, because it would still take forever, but I could. But it takes long enough downloading and sync'ing OneDrive and Dropbox when I reinstall Windows, and I'd rather not have to download anything I already had on a drive.

And I know that isn't the situation of most computer users. Whether it's slow ISP plans, restrictive data caps, distance to Steam servers making downloads sluggish, or any of the dozens of reasons that digital ownership of games is annoying, having to download your game library when moving to a new PC or reinstalling the OS on your existing one is a pain. Having those games installed on a second SSD makes sense because you can reuse that drive, and not have to worry about downloads.

And most apps default to installing on your C: drive

The other reason I put games on a second drive is that most Windows apps will default to installing on the C: drive. While some let you move parts, some programs will not work if installed on a secondary drive or won't let you install them. Those apps are things like Adobe's suite or other productivity and creativity apps that I need daily for work.

They take up a significant chunk of my boot drive, and if I had games on it as well, I'd be getting close to the limit for leaving 10% or so free on the drive for peak performance.

Giving your games their own SSD makes sense

The SSD that you install your operating system on has a finite lifespan. Putting games on a second drive makes sense for your computer's longevity, organizes your files better, and ensures data integrity in case the OS drive gets corrupted. I'd caution against using partitions on a single SSD because that still works the controller and NAND, and having a second SSD for games means your gaming isn't competing with the same storage resources when you're trying to click some heads.