SSD/HD/SSHD - I can't decide which way to go!

Associate
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1 Jan 2012
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Scottish Borders - UK
Guys - After some input here please if possible.

I have a 256gb SSD for my OS.

I currently also have a couple of Steam games installed on it.

I also have a 2TB 7200 HD a 3TB 7200 HD and a 4TB 5900 HD.

I'm aware my SSD is going to get pretty full very quickly once I start installing some games to it.

My question is will the standard 2TB or 3TB HD be sufficient for running modern games from? I was thinking of getting an additional 500gb SSD for games, but then I was also looking at SSHD.

Will I notice a BIG difference between the SSD, HD, SSHD?

Any input would be appreciated!
thanks.
 
Caporegime
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8 Jan 2004
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Rutland
I have most of my infrequently played steam games on an 3TB drive and they load fine, it's certainly not bothersome. I just keep my main games on SSD.

You can move steam games on and off your SSD from your HDD too, I used to use a little app called steam-mover although I think the steam app will let you do this now.

If you need more space I'd just add a larger SSD and use this purely to install games, SSHDs aren't really designed to work as a games drive.

The beauty of an SSHD is when you have your OS and media on it. All the frequently used OS files are kept easily accessible in flash whilst your infrequently used games/media will be dumped onto the mechanical part. As a games drive you'll be accessing large game files each time you start a different game and these won't always be cached so it won't be hugely faster than a good mechanical drive.
 
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Soldato
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SSHD's are a complete waste of time for what you are looking at using it for.

That 8 or 16GB of SSD space at the start of the drive is used effectively to cache for the larger spinning disk.

Your HDD's will cope fine, although some games prefer SSD to get a "smoother" gameplay (DayZ for example) and levels do load faster with an SSD.

Cross the SSHD out of your mind completely, personally I'd go with an SSD (and I run a 256 OS drive with a 500GB SSsteam drive) so very similar setup.
 
Soldato
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18 Oct 2002
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Behind you... Naked!
I have a few of those hybrid drives.

I first bought a 1TB Laptop drive, but it was a waste of time really.

I then bought a 2TB Desktop Drive and just recently I bought another one, purely to do a little Raid test to see if striping 2 of them to a 4TB drive might ge tabit of a boost ?

It does not.

Not enough to give a monkeys about anyway.

Dotn get me wrong... You do see a noticeable difference, but this is very short lived and very soon, you will realise that it is just like any other drive, but more expensive.

My Family PC in the Living room, was running a 1TB WD Black for D: and a 2TB Hybrid for E: and D: was filling up and so I swapped them over and noticed a huge drop in speeds ( D: was the games drive, while E: was the Media )

So, rather than go back to the WD Black, and have next to zero space, I got the second Hybrid 2TB and setup D: and E: from a Striped RAID array using those 2 drives, and sure enough, I got a boost again, but those 2 drives were only just a little quicker than a single WD Black. - Maybe benches will show a big boost but real life speeds are unimpressive.

So, use a real SSD for C: and a standard HD for D: and you're peachy.
 
Associate
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21 Oct 2008
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UK
If you have an Intel setup use Intel Smart Response Technology. It's sort of a DIY SSHD - uses (upto) 64GB of your SSD as a cache of your most accessed HDD files.

Then install any games that you think need the extra performance on what's left of the SSD space. Most games only benefit from faster load times when using an SSD, so instead of waiting 10 seconds between levels you'll wait 2, it's not a huge benefit. Where it benefits most is in multiplayer games where you can grab the best items, etc if you're in the game ahead of everyone on HDD.
 
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