15" rMBP, Windows 7, Crysis 2 HELP PLEASE!!!

[renosausage]

The rMBP is the first computer I have ever played games on and so far I am really loving it, but the Mac App is really limited in variety.

Soooo... I decided to install Windows 7 through Bootcamp, but unfortunately I only have the 256 GB SSD and I am running really low on room.

WINDOWS 7 TAKES UP A LOT OF SPACE

Anyway here is my question...

I have a USB 3.0 Terabyte HDD connect to my rMBP. I use Steam on Windows 7 to play the games, but I want the actual games to be booted from the HDD.

I keep having issues because Steam will not allow me to install the games on the HDD.

Is my format wrong on the HDD? I formatted in Windows 7.

I would really like to move everything over to the HDD including the Windows 7 OS. Is this possible? Can I boot Windows 7 from an external drive?

If speed is an issue I thought about buying the Elgato Thunderbolt SSD 240GB version and use it as a External Drive.

Anyway, please help me, I need some genius advice, I am itching to play some Crysis 2

 

[Erasmus]

From memory, Crysis 2 is around 10GB. If you're using the high resolution pack, it could be a fair bit more, but still...

Using Steam makes it easy to back up your games to your external disk, and only have a few that you're actually playing now on your internal drive. Surely you can afford to spare 10GB of space for the week or so it will take you to finish Crysis 2...

You can also try optimising the W7 installation for your SSD, removing automatic backups, indexing, and all that rubbish to free a lot of space, especially if you're only using W7 for games.

I also have a 256GB SSD, split 50/50 with OSX and W7. On the Windows side, I still have easily enough space for a whole bunch of large games. If I run out of space, I just back one up on an external disk, and swap it for another. Easy.

 

[renosausage]

From memory, Crysis 2 is around 10GB. If you're using the high resolution pack, it could be a fair bit more, but still...

Using Steam makes it easy to back up your games to your external disk, and only have a few that you're actually playing now on your internal drive. Surely you can afford to spare 10GB of space for the week or so it will take you to finish Crysis 2...

You can also try optimising the W7 installation for your SSD, removing automatic backups, indexing, and all that rubbish to free a lot of space, especially if you're only using W7 for games.

I also have a 256GB SSD, split 50/50 with OSX and W7. On the Windows side, I still have easily enough space for a whole bunch of large games. If I run out of space, I just back one up on an external disk, and swap it for another. Easy.

Yea I think I'll do a 50/50 deal, but I also run Final Cut Pro and Logic. Those projects take up a lot of room and it is so much faster to complete a project from the SSD instead of the External Drive.

I read somewhere that a Thunderbolt SSD would read just like an Internal Drive. Is this true? If so I could externally boot Windows 7 and keep my computer's drive to edit my projects.

By the way how do I optimize Windows 7? Right now it takes up about 17 GB of space just for the OS. What do I need to do to clean that up. All I want it for is games.

 

[Erasmus]

I can't remember, but you just need to google SSD optimisation in Windows 7. A bit of playing around in the prefs, and some W7 terminal thingumibob commands, and you'll probably drop 10 gig.

You could always try around 50GB for W7, if you think you can limit yourself to 2-3 large active games at once.

 

[renosausage]

Thanks a lot, ill try that out tomorrow!!!