SSD Formating for Game Hot Swap?

[Galvanized Dreamer]

This is something that has intriuged me for a while now. How would you format(Or whatever) an SSD to directly stream a program off of it, and have the data be acessible (Via hot swap) to multiple systems?

On most pre-2013 console games, data was streamed off of the disk directly. No need to assign a partition drive letter, and that data could stream to any compatible system the disk was in without re-formatting.

Would it be possible to do that with an SSD or other non CD based storage devices?

[Air]

Well, if you want to hot-swap a drive, you'll likely want a 5.25" hot swap bay, although you'll likely be better off with a USB 3.0/3.1 HDD for that situation. Along with that, you'll want to make sure that write caching is turned off for the drive, or you will likely have to deal with corrupted data when hot swapping. Also, some games will not work between different editions of Windows, and you can't use the same game files between different OSs(Windows, Linux, Mac), mostly due to file system restraints.

If you're asking for seperate games on different drives, that will likely be too much a hassle to keep configuring things between each swap and will definitely be more expensive.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Hot swap bays? LOL...
U just put the SATA on ACHI mode, install those drivers for that. And then u can hot-swap secondary drives while in Windows. Just ensure no data is being read/written to that drive prior to disconnect, cause there is not "eject" option for those like what USB drives have.

If you really want to be sure, you can load up Disk Management, click the drive u wish to hot-swap, then take it "offline mode". Once that is enabled, the drive is ejected from the system, ready to be disconnected.

I've done it this way for years (since Vista came out) for secondary drives I use for Music, Photos, Videos, etc.

Yes you could do it with game drives, but you'd need to ensure a few things.
That Steam Client is fully exited before u swap drives.
And that your drive letters don't change, as that will screw up everything (install paths) if they do.

Secondary drives, what I do is manually change those other/extra drives further down the alphabet, so those I can be assured won't be used/taken be a hot-plugging drive at any point in time, like when plugging in a USB drive, etc.

For hot-swapping SATA drives, again you need SATA on AHCI mode and proper drivers installed; and supported OS. Obviously most are using Win7 64bit at the minimum, so yes this OS or later is what you'd want to use, for WinOS anyways.

For ease-of-access, have extra SATA data & power cables in your system ready for those hot-swap drives. On my home server I generally leave the side-panel off so I can hot-swap that way. Just using the cables. drives like SSD can just lay anywhere for most part. Mechanical drives you need to be more careful where u lay them, since they typically tend to have an exposed PCB side on the drive.