cunctatorg Posted February 3, 2019 Share Posted February 3, 2019 (edited) Hello again! Let's rock n' roll and let us have a lot of fun!! The story so far; a) In order to run the game (as a Subscriber) I bought (back in December 2011) a whole new desktop PC and, on game's launch, I downloaded and installed the game at the "primary"(meaning that this HD was the "home" of the Operational System, the Windows 7 Pro English back then) Hard Disk of my PC, a SSD of only 120 GB! Everything went really fine ... though many NPC's made the *** of my Captain Orfy Orfyless, my first char that is, ... really red... b) After a few years the aforementioned "primary" SSD HD left out of space, the OS plus the GPU software plus some Windows "auxiliary" files/folders etc. grew too big for the 120 GB of that HD. Eventually I asked the SWTOR Community for a piece of advice and they gave to me a wise one; they said to me to create, at the "secondary" HD of my PC, a new folder named "Games" and to copy/cut and paste there the folder "Electronic Arts/BioWare/SW-TOR" while I left at the "primary" SSD HD a BioWare folder, created back in 12/17/2011! To be more specific this folder is at "Windows 7©/Program Files (x86)/Common Files/BioWare" and its size is less than just 1 MB, it's really only 894 KB. As I previously mentioned, that piece of advice http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=903749 was wise indeed and the game was running perfectly; the difference in speed (between the "primary" SSD HD -where I had initially installed the game- and the "secondary" huge (650 GB) magnetic HD wasn't an issue at all! So far, so good!! c) Time didn't stop for my PC and the really brave and glorious Gigabyte Z-chip Motherboard isn't able anymore to support the functions of the GPU, regarding that very game at least. Therefore I have to replace my Motherboard plus my CPU (plus my 16 GB RAM) plus the old Windows 7 with Windows 10, Pro English of course. Hence I decided to buy also a new 'primary" SSD HD, one much faster (M or so...) which (that's the point!) has a size of about 240 GB, it will be twice bigger that the nowadays "primary" SSD HD!... Obviously I can copy the game (now installed at the "secondary" HD) back there but this isn't the main issue. The main issue is about the aforementioned smallest BioWare folder (about 890 KB) that is still at the nowadays "primary" disk of my PC. This disk's content will be erased by format and the corresponding content will be installed at the new "primary" disk of my PC. But what about the functionality of the small BioWare folder?!? The rest of the whole game is now installed at the magnetic "secondary" HD and the game could be running smoothly and gloriously but I have a sense that the aforementioned "small" BioWare folder will be necessary for the future. So the question arises: shall I have to download (and install) again the whole game at my new "primary" SSD HD?!? Just because, that is, of the deletion of the aforementioned "small" BioWare folder, now in the nowadays "primary" SSD HD ... or what?!? Edited August 28, 2020 by cunctatorg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mubrak Posted February 3, 2019 Share Posted February 3, 2019 (edited) Just checked my old PC where I had installed Swtor originally... The Common Files/Bioware folder just contains the deinstallation programs for various Bioware games. Since then I just copied the Swtor folder to new PCs and HDs/SSDs, there is no installation neccessary to run SWTOR, and the deinstallation files aren't needed if you just copied the folder. Edited February 3, 2019 by Mubrak Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cunctatorg Posted February 3, 2019 Author Share Posted February 3, 2019 (edited) Thank you very much for the kind answer! By the way: any idea about the differences of SSDs with SATA III connection vs. SSDs with the new M-something connection? I ask about because their prices are almost the same, cheap all of them, though there is a great difference in speed of reading/writing: Corsair's SATA III comes with 560/530 MB/sec though M.2 (NVMe PCI Express) comes with 1580/920 MB/second! To be honest nowadays I should be fine with SATA III but experience has gave me a lot of lessons that, regarding PCs' performance, usually nowadays OK is not enough for tomorrow... Edited February 3, 2019 by cunctatorg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JediQuaker Posted February 3, 2019 Share Posted February 3, 2019 (edited) By the way: any idea about the differences of SSDs with SATA III connection vs. SSDs with the new M-something connection? The main differences are: 1. Size - the M.2 drives are much smaller than the 2.5" SATA drives. The 2.5" form factor is a standard size, but inside the 2.5" case, the actual SSD can be about as small as the M.2 2. (Data) Connection. All the 2.5" drives are SATA. The M.2 form factor can be SATA, PCIe (x2 or x4), or NVMe PCIe (x2, x4) 3. Speed. As you noted, the NVMe drives are much faster than SATA. (SATA M.2 is the same speed as 2.5" SATA) Because SSD speeds are already so fast (compared to HDD), it's hard to even tell the difference between a system running on SATA vs M.2 NVMe SSD. An NVMe M.2 SSD will remain viable for many years to come. Edit: 4. Cables - M.2 drives require no cables. Edited February 5, 2019 by JediQuaker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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