Running Games from a Second Hard Drive

JamesKeenan

I have a ton (Like 30) of games on my 320gb hard drive. It started acting poorly, and I was informed that an impending crash was possible, so I spent a measly 60 bucks to get a second hard drive. No big deal.

Now I have the second, and it's fine. But I still have a ton of games on my first hard drive.

But I can only play them if I boot from my first hard drive. Booting from the second and trying to run the games from the first only results in dll errors and more. I wasn't aware they had to be installed on the drive I boot from. In fact I thought the point of having a boot drive and a slave drive was so that you could boot from one and play from the other.

But this isn't working for me.

1. Why would this be the case?

2. What can I do to work around this?

Reinstalling isn't really an option for some of these, because I don't have the discs anymore.

RUNN1NGMAN

I don't know a lot about Windows, but don't most Windows programs install all kinds of files all over the place, in the registry, etc.? Hence the need to use the uninstall function rather than just delete the program's files. If that's the case, you're probably experiencing errors when the game looks for files in the boot disk's registry when they are still on the original disk.

Again, I don't really know what I'm talking about but I bet it's something along those lines.

JamesKeenan

Yes, most games install registry files. I understand that, and it's the reason I can't just copy over the Program Files folder. This used to be possible because most games installed their configuration files within the game folder, but now most games use the registry.

But if I'm running the game from the second hard drive, shouldn't it use/search that hard drive's registry for the config files it needs?

TL DR

Well if you cloned the first HDD onto the new one, the registry bits would point to the correct place. Or you could try switching the drive letters of the hard drives, to see if that makes the games look in the right place.

Topweasel

JamesKeenan wrote: »

Yes, most games install registry files. I understand that, and it's the reason I can't just copy over the Program Files folder. This used to be possible because most games installed their configuration files within the game folder, but now most games use the registry.

But if I'm running the game from the second hard drive, shouldn't it use/search that hard drive's registry for the config files it needs?

No your registry is loaded into memory to a degree and is an integral part of windows. Its not looking at registry files perse but basically asking itself if it knows where you installed a program, or where is the .dll it needs located (a lot of important files are shared or used directly from the windows directory). You can install programs during the installation phase onto the second HD but I would recommend getting save files and and other documents you need off of it and formatting it first.

Topweasel

Timothy Leary Come Check Out This Theory wrote: »

Well if you cloned the first HDD onto the new one, the registry bits would point to the correct place. Or you could try switching the drive letters of the hard drives, to see if that makes the games look in the right place.

Thats still not right. Both drives will have their own MBR and whichever one the version of windows he is loading came from the primary partition on that drive will be C:. If he cloned it he wouldn't need to be loading programs from the first drive anyways. Not only that but I am sure that most of the catastrophic pending failure has more to do with his old windows installation anyways.

JamesKeenan

Topweasel wrote: »

Timothy Leary Come Check Out This Theory wrote: »

Well if you cloned the first HDD onto the new one, the registry bits would point to the correct place. Or you could try switching the drive letters of the hard drives, to see if that makes the games look in the right place.

Thats still not right. Both drives will have their own MBR and whichever one the version of windows he is loading came from the primary partition on that drive will be C:. If he cloned it he wouldn't need to be loading programs from the first drive anyways. Not only that but I am sure that most of the catastrophic pending failure has more to do with his old windows installation anyways.

I was more under the impression it was a hard drive issue rather than a Windows problem. I had another thread about it. Though I suppose I never did find out for sure.

JamesKeenan

Topweasel wrote: »

You can install programs during the installation phase onto the second HD but I would recommend getting save files and and other documents you need off of it and formatting it first.

I was afraid of that.

Are you sure there isn't any other way besides reinstalling onto the first drive from the second?

Jasconius

Maybe I am missing the part on why you want to boot with the second drive at all.

Anyway, with Windows, there is not much chance of you moving the games to the second drive without losing some data or forcing reinstalls. Especially with games older games that I find tend to lean heavily on the registry.

Welcome to the future.

JamesKeenan

In the case that the first drive is going to fail, I don't want anything on it. I've moved important files off already.

Games, however, aren't as easy to move.

It's a nice idea to have two hard drives.

And I was under the impression it was preferable to have different drives for different purposes to begin with.

Jasconius

Define "acting poorly". That can mean anything as little as you haven't defragged since 1985.


Two drives is great, but most people who have two don't boot with two different drives. They have two drives, one drive for the system files, and another for games, media, etc.

Topweasel

JamesKeenan wrote: »

In the case that the first drive is going to fail, I don't want anything on it. I've moved important files off already.

Games, however, aren't as easy to move.

It's a nice idea to have two hard drives.

And I was under the impression it was preferable to have different drives for different purposes to begin with.

Well if your worried about saves and settings you can re-install the games on the new drive and then copy the old installs over them.

Topweasel

While two Drives is preferable, the idea is at minimum two partitions. That way a windows reinstall can be done without worrying about deleting information. But that choice needs to be made early in the process and can only be done under a single OS install. You should never expect a program to work in an a windows installation that you didn't originally install it on. When it does work its a bonus though.

Richard M. Nixon

From what I'm reading here, it sounds like you bought a new hard drive and installed Windows onto that drive fresh. If that's the case, you have a brand new registry that has more-or-less none of the right registry entries for any of the games you have now.

You can continue to access the files on the old harddrive but none of the games will run because the new windows registry has no entries for the games. When you boot into your old windows installation (on the old drive), you can still play the games.

You have a couple options:
1. You can clone the old drive onto the new one as was suggested above, and your games ought to run just about right.
2. You can re-install the games on the new Windows installation on the new drive which it sounds like will be a pain in the butt, so maybe not the best option.
3. You can try to copy the pertinent registry entries from the old windows installation into the new one. Basically to do this you would boot into the old installation and open up regedit. Then you would export registry entries forever and ever amen (there are usually a whole pile of them relating to each program you have installed) and then import them into your new windows installation. This would probably be more of a butt-pain than re-installing or cloning, but it is an option.

Edit: I would also suggest having a C drive for your windows installation and programs (this can either be a partition or a physical drive) and then a second partition/drive (mine is E) for documents, save games, etc. etc.

JamesKeenan

For those curious about, or questioning of, my original drive's issues, here are the threads I made about the problem.

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=92176

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=100990

Applications would hang randomly. All the time. Sometimes not for days, and sometimes my computer would be unusable. And trying to restart would often end in the OS being unable to boot, Disc Read errors, or simply do nothing at all. Disconnecting the hard drive during an "episode" was the only thing that fixed it, if only temporarily.







Partitioning my drive is something I have wanted to do only because I prefer organization and optimization. But I never have done it, so I've always been nervous about it, about potentially screwing things up. And so I didn't on this new drive.

Daenris

JamesKeenan wrote: »

In the case that the first drive is going to fail, I don't want anything on it. I've moved important files off already.

Games, however, aren't as easy to move.

It's a nice idea to have two hard drives.

And I was under the impression it was preferable to have different drives for different purposes to begin with.

In many cases it is. However, you didn't have two drives to begin with. You had one drive, and then later added a second. As mentioned, you could clone the first hard drive to the second, this would give you an identical copy of the first drive, so you would then be able to run your games off drive #2. Other than that, there is very little chance of being able to successfully move the games completely over to drive 2 without reinstalling.