Additional NVMe SSD question

markrlomas

markrlomas

markrlomas

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2 Jul 2020
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Hi, My Current storage set up is as following

Samsung PM961 NVMe 500GB (OS and some games)
Samsung 860 EVO SATA 500GB (Additional Games)
7200RPM mechanical HDD 1TB (General storage)

I have been having to split my games across my NVMe and SATA SSDs but have noticed with games becoming pretty big lately that I would maybe benefit from some additional SSD storage space, so I have bought a Samsung (&) EVO plus 1TB NVME drive. SO here is my question:

Should i migrate my windows installation over to the new drive (being as the 970 EVO plus has slightly faster speeds than tha PM961, and then use the 500GB NVMe and 500GB SATA drives for storing games, or will the real worls difference in performance be so negligible that I should just leave Windows where it currently is and save the hassle of migrating, and then use the new 1TB drive purely for games storage, so basically what should my end result be:


Samsung PM961 NVMe 500GB (OS)
Samsung 970 EVO plus 1TB (games)
7200RPM mechanical HDD 1TB (General storage)
Samsung 860 EVO SATA 500GB (unused but spare if ever needed for any storage)

Or:

Samsung 970 EVO plus 1TB (OS and games)
Samsung PM961 NVMe 500GB (additional games)
Samsung 860 EVO SATA 500GB (either spare or available for overflow of additional games)
7200RPM mechanical HDD 1TB (General storage)

What would you recommend?

Thanks
 
Personally I only use a 256gb NVME as a C: drive, this is because I image my Windows drive several times a week and I don't want to be taking a 1tb image everytime.
I've always used a small drive for C: and my current setup is;

C: 256gb NVME
D: 4tb WD for everything else
E: 4tb Toshiba as backup of D: and images of C:
F: 4tb Steam,Origin, Battlenet, Uplay and older games library (200+ games on steam alone)
G: 2tb Patriot SSD for newer/currently being played games

C: is small (only windows and apps) and easy to image & store several times over.

So I'd personally leave your 500gb nvme as the C: drive. The new nvme will be faster in benchmarks but in real world use you won't be able to tell the difference until you're moving very large files between it and another equally fast drive.
 
Be careful running 2 nvme drives, as I know my boards that have supported it turns the PCI_E x1 slot into x8 speed, I have bought a pci_e adaptor to get round this, as I want another nvme for music storage / samples.
 
maklabouhlel said:
Even if your drive was 1TB, wouldn't the image only be proportional to the amount of data on it?
Click to expand...

Yeah, using smart sector imaging it only images the used bits of the drive. For this reason I only install Windows and apps to C:
I could easily use a 1tb drive but if I'm not going to use that much space on it there's no point.

I also don't like having games installed to C:, if I need to format I have to copy off or re-download them all again.
 
EsaT said:
There's hardly any Windows loading time difference between NVMe and SATA SSD:

And forget Samsung's brand overprices.
You could get PCIe v3 drive for good amount less and PCIe v4 drive to same price!
Click to expand...

Yeah this^^

I have a Samsung 870 Evo Plus and my partner has an Addlink S70 NVME. The Addlink was half the price of the Samsung at the time.
In benchmarks I think I get around 3500mbs and she gets just over 3000mbs.
There is no difference in the real world usage though. In fact I think hers starts up quicker as she has fewer drives and peripherals plugged in...
 
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