Recommendations please :-)

mikeym · 29 Jun 2018 at 21:45

Looking for recommendations from the wise people at OcUK as to what I should do with my hard drives and what to buy. I could probably just use what I've got but have the itch to get a nice new shiny SSD and minimise the number of drives.

I am contemplating an MX500 1TB SSD to replace the M4 128GB SSD (boot drive + main progs / games). M4 will take place of the OCZ Vertex 2E and might use the Vertex in another laptop / pc.

I am also contemplating getting a larger HDD storage drive. Originally I was thinking of matching the WD Caviar Black 3TB but this is no longer available, so logical choice would be the newer WD Black 4TB. However, I then thought maybe just a cheaper WD Blue as a back up drive / storage for blu-ray rips. This would then allow me to get rid of the Samsung 500GB drives. Not sure what to do with the Samsung 1TB...

Current overview

Crucial M4 128GB SSD (30GB free) - boot drive + main progs/games
OCZ Vertex 2E 120GB SATA-II (49GB free) - overflow of main games
WD Black 3TB (1.6TB free) - other games and general files+pictures+video that are backed up via Dropbox
Samsung HD501LJ 500GB (1) (74GB free) - Blu-ray rips that I haven't used in ages but tempted to sort out rest of my Blu-Ray collection and have them available to stream on home network
Samsung HD501LJ 500GB (2) (81GB free) - in the process of moving files off this drive due to CrystalDiskInfo Health Status 'Caution' - see below
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB (clean) - recently consolidated files over to WD Black

Thanks in advance for any help offered!

Journey · 29 Jun 2018 at 23:49

NAND flash prices are going down daily, and following suit are the SSD's so now is a good time to watch and buy in the next couple of weeks/months.

I would 100% go with a 1TB SSD as you can pick up many good drives for a lot less than £200 now, and still falling. If you are feeling flush, and have the PC to support it, you could look at an NVMe M.2 drive, but they are about 30-50% more expensive for the same capacity.

Dump all your spinning disks, other than your Black 3.0TB if it is in warranty, some cracking deals one pretty big drives these days, and unless you are running them 24/7 no need for Reds/Blacks, so you could just buy an £80 4TB Seagate or Western Digital drive, and make sure it is backed up of course, unless the data has no real value to you.

Hope that is of some help.

tamzzy · 30 Jun 2018 at 01:19

Yeah. Deffo a 1tb ssd.
Got one in my computer. Never looked back since.

mikeym · 30 Jun 2018 at 17:21

Journey said:
NAND flash prices are going down daily...

tamzzy said:
Yeah. Deffo a 1tb ssd

Thanks Journey and tamzzy. I think the 1TB SSD is definitely on the cards. Will keep an eye on prices.

Might hold off on a decision regarding new large storage drive, have a bit of a tidy up and think if I would prefer to spend the money on something else

4K8KW10 · 30 Jun 2018 at 23:23

Well, I would buy these, if you have an M.2 slot:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x Seagate 6TB IronWolf NAS 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (ST6000VN0033)= £159.95
1 x Samsung 970 EVO Polaris 250GB M.2 2280 PCI-e 3.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive= £98.99

Total: £267.64 (includes shipping: £8.70)

or an equivalent SATA SSD of larger capacity for bootable drive.

And keep the 3TB drive as a backup drive for the most important files and data.

edit: The idea is to use the M.2 drive as primary drive for OS, to use the 6GB drive as secondary drive for everything that you have, and to use the 3GB drive that you already have as a backup drive for the secondary drive.

mikeym · 1 Jul 2018 at 01:47

4K8KW10 said:
Well, I would buy these, if you have an M.2 slot:

Unfortunately no M.2 slot with my ageing Z77 mobo.

I don't feel I'm losing out though, reading reviews and forum comments it seems unlikely I'd notice much improvement for quite a difference in cost.

I had looked at maybe upgrading mobo, cpu and ram but again, doesn't seem worth it for the bump in performance / features from my Z77 / 3770K when compared to cost. Maybe I'll look to upgrade in the future and jump on M.2 bandwagon at same point in lifecycle of that technology...

4K8KW10 · 1 Jul 2018 at 10:53

mikeym said:
I don't feel I'm losing out though, reading reviews and forum comments it seems unlikely I'd notice much improvement for quite a difference in cost.

I feel it is like the story about the fox and the sour grapes. Of course, there is a significant difference. Windows will boot at least 4 seconds faster and you will be able to extract files from one partition moving them to another in a fraction of the time.

Watch this review:

And then, buy these:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x Seagate 6TB IronWolf NAS 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (ST6000VN0033)= £159.95
1 x TeamGroup 480GB L5 Lite SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 3D NAND Solid State Drive= £89.99

Total: £258.64 (includes shipping: £8.70)

With the same idea - remove all your additional drives - keep just the 3GB drive.

tamzzy · 1 Jul 2018 at 11:05

4K8KW10 said:
extract files from one partition moving them to another in a fraction of the time

only if you're transferring from nvme to nvme. else the rate limiting step is always going to be the slower drive.
#4k8kw10wronginfoasusual

4K8KW10 · 1 Jul 2018 at 11:08

tamzzy said:
only if you're transferring from nvme to nvme. else the rate limiting step is always going to be the slower drive.
#4k8kw10wronginfoasusual

I said from partition to partition meaning the same drive. Not from one drive to another drive

tamzzy said:
#4k8kw10wronginfoasusual

Don't troll! :mad:

tamzzy · 1 Jul 2018 at 11:12

4K8KW10 said:
I said from partition to partition meaning the same drive. Not from one drive to another drive

don't be silly. 250gb isnt a large drive, partitioning wouldn't be of much benefit to an ssd/nvme drive.

4K8KW10 said:
Don't troll!

perhaps your idea of trolling is different to mine.
you're using very obscure uses to justify your wrong information.
that's the bigger troll no?
i'm just calling you out for it.

mikeym · 1 Jul 2018 at 14:43

4 seconds faster to boot though :eek:

mikeym · 20 Jul 2018 at 17:29

As an update, I got a Crucial MX500 1tb whilst on sale for very good price.

It's just been delivered and now I'm in two minds - whether to leave existing m4 128GB SSD as boot (now has 46GB free) and have MX500 1TB for games and programmes...

I should probably stop being lazy and get to work re-installing Windows using new MX500 1TB!

mikeym · 21 Jul 2018 at 16:07

Bit of a shortcut but ended up using Macrium Reflect to clone disk across and MiniTool Partition Wizard to extend the volume as Windows Disk Management kept giving an error (not enough space!). Have a backup image of my old boot SSD using Macrium Reflect and have wiped the old SSD ready to be re-used

JasonM · 22 Jul 2018 at 12:58

Western Digital Black as boot / app drive, then use the Crucial M4 for 64GB Intel Rapid Start technology.

DarkBahamut · 22 Jul 2018 at 13:20

I ran Intels SSD caching solutions for a few years back in the early days on my Z68 system. My advice is not to bother. While performance was better than just a HDD, it was always full of issues. Storage corruption was common due to dodgy intel drivers, the caching was actually quite poor and did things they claimed it didn't (like caching long sequential transfers - a compete waste of time). They sell it was a all singing and dancing advanced solution, but once you watch what it's actually doing you soon see it's a pretty 'dumb' algo just picking up nearly everything hitting the HDD. Very easy to see when you monitor the SSD's writes.

It might have some use for caching a game drive with unimportant data but I've never ever recommend it for a boot drive or anything else with critical data on it. By far better just running a pure SSD for a boot drive.