advice sought sourcing best value solid state usb storage.

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Hi all I am new here joining specifically to seek advice on this subject..

I have built a basic quiet celeron based pc for browsing/netflix/'retro'-gaming on the TV based on a sbc with a 128gb emmc built in storage drive. 128 gb is not sufficient space for all the old games.

excluding old hdds what would be the best value option for external storage, would A1 sd cards or branded 'performance' flash drives for example provide suitable storage for games files such as command and conquer and starcraft?

I was hovering over the buy button for a branded ssd when i thought all these read and write metrics are impressive but are they necessary for my task? and i simply dont know so here i am asking..

Thanks in advance
 
You're not saying any hard numbers of what space you want or are ok with spending.

An external hdd is the best value for space per money but a branded one of any capacity starts from about £40.

Solid state cards or drives are much worse space / money but if your budget was £15 you could still get a branded something even if it isn't very high capacity.
 
Your not wrong, my bad.. disk space wise Multiples of 32gb could probably work but i was initially looking at 128-256gb ssd drives for fitting into a usb enclosure. Using 2,3 or even more drives wouldnt be a big issue .

Ive ruled out hdds due to noise, Its a quiet pc - NO FANS - another significant use for this pc will be interfacing with systems hosted on a Pi for home automation and browsing text based web pages for a read and even the humm from an almost silent fan would be a distraction and would annoy me as the intent was a quiet puter... And it may also run 24/7/365 ? there is at least one service i am having a problem hosting on my pi that may be better served by a M$ host

Cost - as usual as little as possible.. this 'pocket money' project has already over run its budget expectations.. I thought I had 2 x good quality usb3 hubs, HA - oh no i hadnot.. (both lemons now replaced with a nice independently powered 6 port hub with Lan and a PDP power port.. And I never seem to account for the cost of cables... hmmm

Im pretty sure a run of the mill flash drive will work fine, thing is i dont have a spare on hand to test and with the current situation i cant pop round a pals to borrow one as i usually would, and even a £20 punt in the wrong direction atm would sting more than a little.
IM unsure of the metrics but a run of the mill hdd from 15-20 years ago cant have been much faster than flash drive from sandisk et al boasting usb3 performance?? But im just aware enough to realise its more to do with use case than just a best condition metric used for marketing.

I didnt see this coming after all games installed from cd's cant take up that much disk space can they??
 
Up to 700MB a disk depending on how much they put on it.

You could get a cheap branded SSD or flash drive for £20 around 120, 128MB depending on what is cheaper for you to acquire and connect.

I would probably go for a SSD if cables and enclosure is not extra cost otherwise usb3 drive into usb3 port should reliably cost nothing more to use.

May need some fiddling to get games to work correctly: https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmanager/run-game-from-usb-flash-drive.html
 
Cheap SSD drives are hit and miss - I picked up a 64GB one for a little disposable project for not much more than a couple of quid recently that performs OK and verified full capacity but other people have had the same model that was fake with only 8GB actual capacity.

Kingston have some pretty decent 128GB and 240GB SSDs around £15-25 for the sake of a few quid here or there worth it IMO over anything else (couple of places are lining up Black Friday deals on them as well I think by the stock build so worth keeping an eye - I can't be more specific than that).
 
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