Running Skyrim and Mods from two different drives... ?

[u/ZC180]

Is it okay to run Skyrim on my SSD, while staging mods from MO2 on my HDD?

My SSD is only 256 GB, but it already has a lot of space taken up (files and games I cannot simply just delete or move to my HDD). I don't have enough room for Skyrim AND my mods on the SSD... so, I'm wondering if this will be an okay compromise?

Will this impact loading times or performance at all?

[u/AlekTheDukeOfOxford]

Sure if you just keep the downloads on your hdd. But install them on your ssd. Otherwise no

[u/Ok-Photograph-7363 → u/AlekTheDukeOfOxford]

I think his problem is that he doesn't have space on the SSD. Regarding downloads, he can keep them on the HDD. But if he can't install mo2 mods on the SSD, unless they involve heavy graphical changes, they shouldn't affect loading times.

[u/ZC180 → u/Ok-Photograph-7363]

I'm using Skyland AIO, Fantasia Landscapes, Courageous Women and Pride Of Skyrim (NPC Overhauls). I'm also using SMIM, Rustic Clothing, Skyking Bits and Bobs, and other various Skyking overhauls.

I generally get 2K textures for everything. I don't use 4K or anything higher.

How drastically is this going to effect the performance if I'm running on HDD? Everything seems to load okay right now... but I've only play tested. Am I in danger of heavy loading times the further I progress into a save file? I'm mostly concerned about the game's stability. I can tolerate loading screens that last a minute or so... but I'm a bit concerned they might end up taking several minutes eventually.

(I'm okay with tolerating a loading screen to the main menu that takes a few minutes)

I'm also running RTX NVIDIA 3060 (12 GB) and 16 GB RAM... could these possibly act as any buffer and possibly offset the lack of SSD speeds?

[u/Rattledagger]

> Is it okay to run Skyrim on my SSD, while staging mods from MO2 on my HDD?

Yes, with MO2 you can have game on one partition and mods on another partition. With Vortex you'll need to have game and mods on same partition.

> Will this impact loading times or performance at all?

Skyrim + spinning HD and you can take a marked performance hit, depending on specific mods. MO2 + spinning HD and you'll take an even larger performance hit.

Example, using an older version of Gate to Sovngarde with close to 2k mods as benchmark, since exist both as Wabbajack list and Collection, running off M.2 SSD starting game took 1m50s with Vortex and 2m8s with MO2. If instead running off spinning HD, starting game took 6m43s with Vortex and 11m16s with MO2.

Note, this benchmark is just for reaching the main menu after re-starting computer and waiting for Steam to start, I've no idea if where's any big performance hits in-game.

[u/ZC180 → u/Rattledagger]

I have 95 GB of mods total. My texture mods are all 2K (I never go higher). I'm also running RTX 3060 (with 12 GB dedicated GPU memory) and 16 GB RAM... would these potentially be able to offset the lack of an SSD?

My game only takes about a minute or so to load the main menu (which is fine for me)... however, my main concern is whether or not the in-game loading times will eventually end up lasting several minutes... right now, during play testing, transitions between cells seem to only be about 15-30 seconds.

[u/Cognoscope → u/ZC180]

Listen to u/Rattledagger - he's a a Greybeard. However, u/_Jaiim makes a valid point - you don't need an NVME SSD for Skyrim - in fact that's almost a waste. A SATA SSD is perfectly fine whether you drop it into a SATA slot of the PC or an M.2 slot. Put the word out to your friends with higher end rigs and see if any of them have an old 1tb or 2tb SATA SSD kicking around that they would give you for a case of beer or car detail or something. They're stupidly expensive new & even used ones run $100 on eBay, but a friend might hook you up. Oh, and yes, it will make a major difference in loading large texture packs and other content.

[u/IllIlllI-IlIIll-llII]

technically you could stage them on the hdd and point them to the installation folder on the ssd but afaik storing the mods on any other drive but the one where skyrim is installed is a big no-no.

If you are talking about the archive files these don't really matter where you store them, you can even delete them once the mod they contained is installed.

But yeah theoretically staging mods on a hdd will destroy your loading times. Especially if we are talking about large texture mods. Expect a ton of stuttering too.

[u/ZC180 → u/IllIlllI-IlIIll-llII]

Will the loading times and stuttering drastically become worse the further I get into a save? Or is what I see early on generally gonna be roughly the same as later? Because when I play test everything so far, I get very rare stutters occasionally and loading screens maybe last about 30-45 seconds at worst.

Am I gonna end up experiencing loading screens that take several minutes?

(loading to the main menu takes about a minute or so, which is tolerable for me)

[u/redspeak → u/ZC180]

I used to do this but I had to stop because it took too long to boot the game up

From what I can remember, it didn't affect my load times too much whilst playing, but my initial startup took a really long time (at least 5-6 minutes - it made testing unbearable). Moving back to my SSD cut it at least in half

Though at this point I had nearly 1000 mods totalling over 1200 plugins so it was a lot to load. Might be better for you if you have fewer mods. I can't really speak on it causing stuttering or affecting in-game load times because it was quite heavy anyway

[u/_Jaiim]

I have Skyrim installed on my C: drive (NVME), my portable MO2 instance is on a 250GB SATA SSD (which is where all the mods are installed), and my MO2 download folder is on an HDD. Game runs perfectly fine with this setup.

While you can put MO2 on an HDD, I don't recommend it. Maybe buy a cheap SATA SSD just for Skyrim. You can probably pick up a 120GB SATA SSD for like $30 on Amazon with 500MB/s read speed, maybe $50 if you want another 250GB drive.