Real question is it worth moving WoW to an SSD?

[kibil]

For those who actually have WoW installed to an SSD drive is it worth it? Are load times cut down majorly? Or is it hardly noticeable?

I've got a 240gb SSD so I wonder if its worth moving WoW to it.

Honestly do it ASAP, the difference is enormous, everything inside the game load so much faster. Personally I use and SSD for all my games and a HDD to keep files.
SSD it's a MUST nowadays. You'll not regret, to be honest you'll be thankful doing that.

[MrPaladinGuy]

It was definitely worth it. I went from something like a 30 second loading bar to a 9 second loading bar and once I was in the game everything was loaded, nothing was lagging behind like it was with a mechanical drive. This is with my Samsung 830 pro from 5 years ago. My mechanical was also a 1TB SATA 3 7200 RPM Western Digital Caviar Black.

[facelesssoul]

I would say that wow is not playable on normal drives, you might get d/c'd on loading screens if you have a lot of Addons.

You could play around a little with virtual folders if you are using a Windows PC and the drives are NTFS. You'll need to know what you are doing or you will cause some trouble to your WoW install. The idea is that you can actually turn a folder into a shortcut to another folder/drive. WoW won't know the difference but you can say, put you 'Interface\Addons' folder on a faster drive while keeping the bulk on a slower drive.

Check out this program and fiddle around with it for WoW http://www.traynier.com/software/steammover

[HuxNeva]

That video is a joke... i spent ~10 years playing WoW from HDD with 40+ addons, max settings and i never spent more than 30 second on a loading screen

(Don't get me wrong, im not arguing against SSD, it's obviously MUCH MUCH MUCH faster. Im just calling those 2 min long HDD examples bullshit)

You did notice where it said 'THIS TEST OBSOLETE!: PLEASE, SEE NEW VERSION'

[MrPaladinGuy]

Have a look for yourself

This person doesn't even understand SSD's because the text is claiming M.2's are faster when they're not as it's simply a form factor change. NVMe's are, however, a different story.

But the speed comparison looks like what I remember it to be. There's also the aspect that with a mechanical it's still loading things even once you're in the game.

Edit - I see that the M.2 was actually an NVMe, but it also shows they don't matter for games and their wording was incorrect.

[Tomana]

Yes, absolutely. Better yet, move it to a dedicated SSD disk (128 Gb is enough for the time being).

[WoWGoneBad]

That shouldn't make a difference. Installing the OS however is needed, unless you manually wan to go through the necessary changes (The OS when installing configures the system differently when it notices it is installed to an SSD). Some HDD->SSD migration utilities can do this for you on an existing install, but not all cover all the potential issues.

Well the OS is installed on the SSD and I just moved the Warcraft folder into the C Drive. Figured that woudl be all I needed to do.

[Tunaria]

That'll do just fine, yeah.
I do the same thing, though it's really tempting to get a dedicated SSD for games.

[Zerach8]

Or more likley, terribly made game if there is that much difference

It just loads all the map assets at start so you dont have any issues while playing, some builds can get super fast and having it on HDD would likely cause issues where assets wouldnt load fast enough.

[Kobor]

The more Addon you are using the higher is the improvement to use an SSD over HDD.

Back in time, tested the Loading time with and without addons, it was like 2 mins and 40 sec from HDDs.
SSD have the advantage when need to load several hundreds small files, not much delay between reads, while HDD need to position the Head physically, that is where the biggest difference is.

[Ruffsnuff]

It's 2018 guys, you should only have SSDs for all storage unless you need massive space for media or whatever.
SSDs are really cheap nowadays.

[Wries]

So I had moved my WoW to a SSD and I still get the same stall so long load times as when I had it on my HD. My load times for dungeons is about 30 seconds, and I almost always get a (Not Responding) message each time.

I even tried a new Intel build coming from AMD. On AMD I never had such long lad issues. But the main issue may be that I just moved the folder to my SSD rather than a fresh install of WoW on the SSD.

Addons I am using are ElvUI, DBM, Gear Helper(experimenting with this) Azurite Power(experiment) and Details. Annoying I still get the load screens even with SSD. I went SSD just because people said the load times would be faster.

Chances are something has gone awry with your PC or WoW Addons, but it should not be about how you have moved over WoW. The game is quite OK with being moved over like that and doesn't need or make residue in registry or appdata folders on the side.

I'd suggest you do some startups with an empty add-ons folder and if it still works the same I'd look into checking device manager to make sure you 1) have drivers installed for every device (especially chipset drivers) and 2) have a specific driver installed for the SATA/NVME controller your SSD is installed on, aka not the basic Microsoft one but one your motherboard or OEM vendor should supply for you.

[Afrospinach]

And you don't want to do things that constantly write and rewrite, it shortens SSD lifespans.

You have to be spectacularly industrious for this to ever be an issue. Unless you have a very special use case use your SSD as normal - it is there to be used.

[Niwes]

lol. we have 2018. i am very basic with my computer stuff and buy shit veeeeery rarely. but even i have a ssd since ... cant remember.

i mean... arent you a „bit“ late to the party ?

and for all that „omg flash... write rewrite... data loss“ ppl: again, we have 2018 and you very very quickly should get a reality check and check facts about ssds.

hard stuff here...

[Temp name]

Plenty of things that don't require the super fast read times of an SSD, and some things that are just impractical to place on an SSD. Hell, if you do ANY type of recording you're not putting that on SSDs, it's just not practical with the cost.

And you don't want to do things that constantly write and rewrite, it shortens SSD lifespans.

My current SSD (a 970 evo 1tb) can do 600TB of writes.. I can literally fill it up 600+ times, from empty to full, to break it. And at a max write speed of 0.0035TB/s, it'll take me 171 428 seconds to do that. That's "only" 48 hours. But that's 48 hours non-stop of it running at max speed.

Modern SSD's really don't break from writing to them, unless you do incredibly stupid things like that, or you're a data center (in which case you can get the 970 pro, which can do double the writes)

[smityx]

For those who actually have WoW installed to an SSD drive is it worth it? Are load times cut down majorly? Or is it hardly noticeable?

I've got a 240gb SSD so I wonder if its worth moving WoW to it.

Oh god yes. If there is one upgrade that will have a significant improvement on your machine, games or otherwise, is moving from a mechanical drive to a SSD

[quite an expert in wow]

What else are you going to do with your diskspace? Save your catpics on it?

[dragnipur]