windows 11 boot drive

Associate
Joined
16 Aug 2025
Posts
48
Location
uk
hi building my first pc at the moment and i originally had decided on the samsung 990 pro 2tb but now heard some bad reviews and this had maybe put me off, my second choice was the wd sn850x but i am open to other options, i will use it as the boot drive and possibly a few games. also thinking of the possibility of having a smaller boot drive and another larger drive for games and storage, this is just incase i have any problems with the boot drive and need to format to fix any problems with windows and i dont want to lose all the other things on the drive so keep them seperate. what i have noticed about the smaller drives are that they tend to be older and more budget options. any thoughts.
 
I've had my Samsung 990 Pro 2TB for about 2 years and it's never given me any problems whatsoever. What have you read that's put you off them?
 
Last edited:
are there any good fast m.2 drives for using as a boot gen 4 or above and reliable and is it true some drives do not work with certain mb or is that just something you read and is a myth.
 
thinking 1tb for boot and then 2tb/4tb for games and storage of video files etc but would like to keep price for both drives under £200, was ok for the 2tb/4tb games and storage drive to be a sata ssd but these dont seem any cheaper than m.2 drives, which kind of drives are more reliable and will last longer.
 
dont suppose anybody knows of a 4tb drive under £200 that good and reliable.
At that price point, you're probably entering the territory of cheaper NAND memory, which probably isn't the best for the longevity of your data.

Why not consider a hard drive for the storage of your data? They're better suited for long term storage and it could mean you only need a 2 TB SSD for your OS and games.
 
Would it make sense to have say the os and games on 1 or 2 m.2 drives and the overflow games(games not currently be used) and other storage on a regular sata drive or should i have everything on m.2 drives or should a regular sata ssd drive be involved as well, obviously i can get a large regular sata drive for a lot cheaper than a m.2 drive but i had previously intended to move away from normal sata drives.
 
Would it make sense to have say the os and games on 1 or 2 m.2 drives and the overflow games(games not currently be used) and other storage on a regular sata drive or should i have everything on m.2 drives or should a regular sata ssd drive be involved as well, obviously i can get a large regular sata drive for a lot cheaper than a m.2 drive but i had previously intended to move away from normal sata drives.
I'd prioritise large M.2 drives at this point (2TB minimum, ideally), even for games.

Though, it does depend on how many M.2 slots your board has. A lot of boards only have 2 or 3, so in that case you'd have to be careful about 'wasting' them with small drives.

Older games are fine on SATA drives and archive/data storage is of course fine too. But, it could start to be a problem with newer games (HUB on YouTube have a video on the subject published recently).

 
Last edited:
i was thinking m.2 boot drive then larger m.2 drive for current games and then a larger sata drives for storage and game storage, i would move the games from the game storage to the m.2 when i want to play them. a have a lot of steam games so would need quite a large drive so buying a m.2 drive for that would be too expensive.
 
a have a lot of steam games so would need quite a large drive so buying a m.2 drive for that would be too expensive.
Not sure where you're looking to buy, but getting good, nicely priced SATA SSDs is not easy. The market has really dried up and most of them are poor and expensive.
 
Back
Top Bottom