Can I install BF2 on a second HDD?

2009-02-01 19:38:25

#1

Mr.Dooomed: Find your center.; +752|6586

I got the game installed on my C: drive, but I wanna install it on a second drive to see if it loads faster when playing, I run the disc, and there is no install option, I want the game on both drives, so I don't want to uninstall it, and reinstall it. Is there any way to install BF2 to another drive without having to uninstall it?

Nature is a powerful force. Those who seek to subdue nature, never do so permanently.

2009-02-01 19:39:49

#2

Cheez: Herman is a warmaphrodite; +1,027|6697|King Of The Islands

They got you to do this when with the beta test.

However, it's method was to have a folder of the original install location at all times.

Best bet, search the registry for your bf2 path.

My state was founded by Batman. Your opinion is invalid.

2009-02-01 19:42:41

#3

elite.mafia: Banned; +122|6712|USA

I do that so I don't see hy not... You have to uninstall though. Why don't you want to uninstall???? That's the easiest way.

2009-02-01 19:46:28

#4

bugz: Fission Mailed; +3,311|6570

I have mine installed on a separate HD than my operating system. It works fine.

Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/ebug122

2009-02-01 19:51:16

#5

Cheez: Herman is a warmaphrodite; +1,027|6697|King Of The Islands

ebug9 wrote:
I have mine installed on a separate HD than my operating system. It works fine.

He wants two simultaneous installs on two hard drives to benchmark.

Guess you could also use HDTach. It's obviously not 100% because bf2 could be at the start of the slow drive, and the end of the fast drive.

My state was founded by Batman. Your opinion is invalid.

2009-02-01 19:52:01

#6

Mr.Dooomed: Find your center.; +752|6586

elite.mafia wrote:
I do that so I don't see hy not... You have to uninstall though. Why don't you want to uninstall???? That's the easiest way.

i dont wanna go through the hassle of installing bf2, patching, installing SF, patching again, installing AF/EF if I dont have to

Basically, I do not wanna uninstall BF2 from my C drive, I just want to install it again on my X drive to see if it runs better/faster.

Is there anyway I can do this? Copy the BF2 folder over to the other drive and try and run it?

Nature is a powerful force. Those who seek to subdue nature, never do so permanently.

2009-02-01 19:53:20

#7

Mr.Dooomed: Find your center.; +752|6586

Cheez wrote:
Guess you could also use HDTach. It's obviously not 100% because bf2 could be at the start of the slow drive, and the end of the fast drive.

curious, whats that 'bout?

Nature is a powerful force. Those who seek to subdue nature, never do so permanently.

2009-02-01 19:55:14

#8

Cheez: Herman is a warmaphrodite; +1,027|6697|King Of The Islands

Are my fkn posts invisible?

Copy it to the second drive then change the path in the registry.

Registry paths:

Vista:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Electronic Arts\EA Games\Battlefield 2

XP:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Electronic Arts\EA Games\Battlefield 2

HDTach is obviously a HDD benchmark. http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/in … est=HdTach

Run it. You will see the performance of the drive degrade as it gets to the end. If your bf2 install is placed here, it may run slower than if it was at the start of the slower drive.

Last edited by Cheez (2009-02-01 19:56:53)

My state was founded by Batman. Your opinion is invalid.

2009-02-01 20:00:39

#9

Mr.Dooomed: Find your center.; +752|6586

Cheez wrote:
Are my fkn posts invisible?

lolwut? I'm copying the files now, wow, gonna take 20 minutes...

Do i change the InstallDir registry file? it reads this:

C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2\

so just add X:

Nature is a powerful force. Those who seek to subdue nature, never do so permanently.

2009-02-01 20:02:16

#10

Cheez: Herman is a warmaphrodite; +1,027|6697|King Of The Islands

Ja.

My state was founded by Batman. Your opinion is invalid.

2009-02-01 20:06:13

#11

Mr.Dooomed: Find your center.; +752|6586

I wonder what the purpose of changing the registry file is? Do you think, that after I copy it to another drive, and run it from that drive, windows will just run the version installed to my C: drive because of that registry file?

Nature is a powerful force. Those who seek to subdue nature, never do so permanently.

2009-02-01 20:09:51

#12

Cheez: Herman is a warmaphrodite; +1,027|6697|King Of The Islands

Yes.

Copy bf2.exe to your desktop. It will still run because it checks the registry and is told where the files are, instead of just looking for the files relative to itself (ie. in the same place).

My state was founded by Batman. Your opinion is invalid.

2009-02-01 21:21:01

#13

Mr.Dooomed: Find your center.; +752|6586

I ran it from each drive 2 times. Here are the results:

High Settings:
WD - 1 minute 43 seconds
ST - 1 min 30 seconds

Low Settings:
WD - 1 min 18 seconds
ST - 1 min 08 seconds

The first time I loaded the game with the WD drive on low, it loaded in 47 seconds! I ran it twice again after that, and each time it was around 1min 18 seconds, so I don't know why or how it loaded so fast that first time. After each time loading a game, I quit BF2 entirely, and ran it again for each test.

After I changed the settings to low, when I loaded it on the second drive, I was surprised to find out the graphics settings were set the same as before, this made me think that maybe its not loading from seperate drives? But, then again the times are always different, so I assume the graphics settings are saved in a universal spot somewhere? I dont know

Has anybody ran time tests with a 7200 rpm SATA drive? 10000 rpm? Would like to know if it'll make a big difference or not before I buy two.

Nature is a powerful force. Those who seek to subdue nature, never do so permanently.

2009-02-01 21:58:57

#14

signa: ~~~~~; +50|6987|Michigan, USA

you might try running your pagefile on a different drive, rather than moving bf2 around. (or do both)!

2009-02-01 23:03:08

#15

cospengle: Member; +140|6745|Armidale, NSW, Australia

Im_Dooomed wrote:
I ran it from each drive 2 times. Here are the results:

After I changed the settings to low, when I loaded it on the second drive, I was surprised to find out the graphics settings were set the same as before, this made me think that maybe its not loading from seperate drives? But, then again the times are always different, so I assume the graphics settings are saved in a universal spot somewhere? I dont know

Your preferences, screen shots etc. are stored in the 'Battlefield 2' folder in 'My Documents'. You would have noticed that after changing the video settings the "optimizing shaders" message came up during loading and it would have taken much longer.

I suggest you delete the contents of the 'My Documents\Battlefield 2\mods\bf2\cache' folder between each test.

2009-02-01 23:05:37

#16

Mr.Dooomed: Find your center.; +752|6586

signa wrote:
you might try running your pagefile on a different drive, rather than moving bf2 around. (or do both)!

Elaborate on that? Would it decrease my load times or something?

Nature is a powerful force. Those who seek to subdue nature, never do so permanently.

2009-02-02 04:38:24

#17

Oisín | Irishpride: Banned; +118|5852|Dublin, Ireland

Im_Dooomed wrote:
elite.mafia wrote:
I do that so I don't see hy not... You have to uninstall though. Why don't you want to uninstall???? That's the easiest way.
i dont wanna go through the hassle of installing bf2, patching, installing SF, patching again, installing AF/EF if I dont have to

Basically, I do not wanna uninstall BF2 from my C drive, I just want to install it again on my X drive to see if it runs better/faster.

Is there anyway I can do this? Copy the BF2 folder over to the other drive and try and run it?

Just Install BF2, SF, AF&EF and then perhaps patch???

2009-02-02 05:31:45

#18

cospengle: Member; +140|6745|Armidale, NSW, Australia

Im_Dooomed wrote:
signa wrote:
you might try running your pagefile on a different drive, rather than moving bf2 around. (or do both)!
Elaborate on that? Would it decrease my load times or something?

Perhaps a little. The page file is where data gets stored when it doesn't fit in you RAM, since HDDs are much slower than RAM, if the program is continually running out of RAM while loading this will make a difference, but if the bottleneck is when the data is being read from the drive in the first palace then it won't make a difference.

What drives are you comparing? Are you looking for a huge difference, or are you just doing it for kicks? Really, if you're going to put your page file on the other drive, it's not really a comparison of BF2 loading times, it's more a comparison of two system configurations.

I can see that there may possibly be a performance gain if you have your page file and BF2 install on separate drives, but it sounds like more trouble than it's worth... unless you do the 'RAGE ALT+F4 then restart' often

EDIT: If this thread was moved to the tech forum you might get more specific answers. The whole 'comparing two drives' is more about tech than about BF2 imo.

Last edited by cospengle (2009-02-02 05:35:44)

2009-02-03 16:21:06

#19

Mr.Dooomed: Find your center.; +752|6586

Does anybody have stats on load times for a WD Sata 7200 Black drive?

To be more specific, I'm wondering if I should buy the WD Black series 640 gig drive, which I believe is two platters, or opt for the single platter 320 gig version, would having a single platter make a noticeable difference when loading games?

Nature is a powerful force. Those who seek to subdue nature, never do so permanently.

2009-02-06 11:25:02

#20

NgoDamWei: Member; +7|5921|Western North Carolina

Based on readings from years ago, I have always placed my games on D: and pagefile on C: and have it system managed. I also understand that page files can be spread over several drives for increased performance but I can't say I could ever tell an increase by doing so.

Many games will install easily on D: just by changing the drive letter during the preliminary install. Some not so much, COD GOTY for example. You can however use the MOVE file ability after install, best having a registry cleaner to afterward fix any conflicts (CCleaner's "Applications" tab does a very good job for that.)

After many crashes (those things that make you learn the hard way), I have never used a single HDD since advancing beyond Win98 years ago (actually have used every Win OS except VISTA). IMO, using any single drive regardless of its size invites disaster. Additional drives can take much strain off a single drive system and provides storing any backup, DVD, mp3 files seperately from your OS/pagefile disk.

As most can tell you, loading and performance are dependent on so many variables - background services, RAM, proper defragmentation, disk rpm, TCP/IP settings, ...

This system runs AMD64x2, 4 WD Raptor 75Gb HDDs, 8Gb Kingston HyperX RAM using WinPRO 64, (Win 7x64 looks very very promising).

Software which may interest you: free - AlacrityPC (launches games after disabling any unnecessary background services), free -TCPOptomizer (internet settings other than Windows default settings [read: dialup]), Diskkeeper defrag (has other vital functions).

Of course any BIOS, MOBO, CPU/GPU enhancers should also be researched.

2009-02-06 11:43:58

#21

steelie34: pub hero!; +603|6639|the land of bourbon

mounting a high performance drive as your 'program files' folder is also a good way to increase perfomance, and you don't have to worry about registry cleaning or moving anything.

https://bf3s.com/sigs/36e1d9e36ae924048a933db90fb05bb247fe315e.png

2009-02-06 11:58:44

#22

CC-Marley: Member; +407|7086

Love my 2 WD Raptor 74g in Raid

BF2S Forums Can I install BF2 on a second HDD?

ebug9 wrote:

elite.mafia wrote:

Cheez wrote:

Cheez wrote:

Im_Dooomed wrote:

signa wrote:

Im_Dooomed wrote:

elite.mafia wrote:

Im_Dooomed wrote:

signa wrote:

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