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Shocktroop0351

Installing Arma 2 and addons on an SSD

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Hi guys, I came across your site while trying to find some information, I hope you don't mind me asking my question on here. Basically I purchased a 60GB SSD to install my OS and to run Arma 2 and all the expansions. What I failed to realize was how big A2 is, and after doing a fresh install of Vista I only have 25GB left to install Arma 2 with. I also have my old HDD hooked up for storage. Is there a way that I can get Arma 2 and all the expansions installed so that I am taking advantage of the SSD? I swear I remember reading something about it on another site but now I can't find it. I believe that they had partially installed the expansions onto an HDD or something like that. Thank you in advance for any help.

Edited by Shocktroop0351
changed "addons' to "expansions"

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You should have enough space to install the base game. From there I would put any Islands you use directly on the SSD (with all the textures they need they'll benefit more). The other mods can reside elsewhere and you can use the windows junction feature to make them look like they are on the SSD. I suggest you take a look at Link Shell Extensions as an easy way to do this.

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My entire Arma II folder with OA, PMC, and BAF sits around 17.2 GB if that is of any help to you. You do have enough room to put OS and full Arma install on one 60 GB SSD... but you will have little room for anything else.

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?81161-Running-Arma2-from-SSD&highlight=ssd <--- has loads of information

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Also, do make sure you have some space left on the SSD. It's supposedly good for its lifetime and performance.

You can put most of your documents and photos on the HDD, who need "My Documents" in some cryptic location anyway? D:\DOCS is the good old way :)

Also, you could upgrade to a newer Windows and / or uninstall unneeded Windows features (nLite or even MS own feature) - I believe Vista might be quite bloated.

For example, I am running Arma II CO+RFT plus ACE (quite big mod) and JSRS sound mod (which is quite big as well, 1.6GB) from a 60GB SSD. My Windows 8 folder is 9GB, Arma 22GB, plus few more GB in Users and other software. So it's manageable. OK, there is not much other software on that disk, my main disk is different SSD with different OS. But I still have a lot of space for few maps and other software.

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My entire Arma II folder with OA, PMC, and BAF sits around 17.2 GB if that is of any help to you. You do have enough room to put OS and full Arma install on one 60 GB SSD... but you will have little room for anything else.

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?81161-Running-Arma2-from-SSD&highlight=ssd <--- has loads of information

Did you just install all of them straight to your SSD, or did you use the link shell extension method?

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You should have enough space to install the base game. From there I would put any Islands you use directly on the SSD (with all the textures they need they'll benefit more). The other mods can reside elsewhere and you can use the windows junction feature to make them look like they are on the SSD. I suggest you take a look at Link Shell Extensions as an easy way to do this.

So I installed everything onto my HDD and upgraded to v1.6. I'm still trying to figure out how the link shell extension works. I'm not exactly sure what I need to do now or what files need to be where. If I could get your advice on what you did I would greatly appreciate it, Thanks again

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Did you just install all of them straight to your SSD, or did you use the link shell extension method?

straight to SSD... I use regular HDD for non-bis games and other crap

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So I installed everything onto my HDD and upgraded to v1.6. I'm still trying to figure out how the link shell extension works. I'm not exactly sure what I need to do now or what files need to be where. If I could get your advice on what you did I would greatly appreciate it, Thanks again

All it does is create a folder junction on any drive (this is a standard windows process, the LSE just adds a context menu to make it easier).

Anyway lets say you have a folder;

d:\mods\@mymod

And you have your SSD with arma..

c:\arma

You can right-click on the @mymod folder and choose 'select Link Source'. You then navigate to c:\arma and right click and choose 'Drop as/Junction'.

What does this do? It creates a symbolink link folder in c:\arma called @mymod and as far as the operating system is concerned, that's where the folder is. If you use explorer it acts as if @mymod is in c:\arma when in fact it is in d:\mods.

This way you can have files sitting off the SSD that are not so important or less used and they will be accessed by Arma as if they were on the SSD.

Note, if you delete the @mymod link in c:\arma it only deletes the link and not the original folder! If you copy c:\arma somewhere, it will copy all the symbolic link contents just as if they were actually physically in the folder.

Hope this helps? In a rush so may be a bit garbled!!

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One thing (and I use Win 7 rather than Vista) - isn't there a 'hibernation' file of sorts which is 10Gb+ and automatically added when you install and use a version of Windows ? I have a 64Gb SSD for Arma2 and Win 7, and after removing the hibernation still have plenty of space even with most of the popular islands, BAF, PMC and CWR2 installed (and have included ACE in the past). You might free up some space, assuming you don't need the hibernation.

Just a thought.

cj

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I tried installing everything onto the HDD and then junction the files to the SSD, but for some reason it wasn't nearly as smooth as when I had installed the game onto the SSD. I had moved every .pbo file I could find to the SSD, and it ended up adding up to about 16.7GB. So since it was nearly as large as the full installation anyways I decided to just reinstall the the SSD. I do appreciate the information on Link Shell Extension because I'm sure I'll be using it for other things later on. Thanks again for all your guys' help.

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Ah, well that would be slower. Juntioning the file from the HDD to the SSD means the file is still on the HDD and therefore dependent on it's read/write speed. My reasoning to do this was that you would install SOME files on the SSD (base game + islands) and put the less used stuff on the HDD and junction those to the SSD. You would only do this if you were restricted by available space on the SSD.

If however you have enough space on your SSD then it's always better just to install everything there! My whole Arma/ToH install is on an SSD.

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