Any good in having separate drives for OS and storage?

edgedemon · 6 Jan 2024 at 17:12

mahius said:
Always have the OS on a seperate drive with just the OS (and potentially the few software that prefer to run from C drive). Or at the very least on a seperate partition.

This includes putting directories like My documents, pictures, etc on the other drive. May take a few extra minutes at the start to remap those locations, but worth the effort.
It'll still behave the same, just that everything will be stored on another drive. The exception is when programs put stuff in that hidden appdata folder, they will be on C drive unfortunately.

If something goes wrong and you need to do stuff to Windows like reinstall, there will be no worries about your files since they'll be seperate. Obviously copying and backing up the appdata stuff is the exception.

My current OS drive is a standalone 250GB SSD and it's never gotten close to full running Windows 10. Going forward I'll have a 1TB M.2 on the new build (and 2TB M.2 for other storage), since the 1TB is overkill for OS, I'll just partition it and use some of it for some storage.

That's helped me a bit. My understanding was that best practice is to have just the OS in its own partition and all apps installed to a separate partition. This is what we do with our work images. I was planning on 500GB for the OS and 3.5TB for apps/games/storage. I hadn't considered remapping the directories, that is a good tip!

Drumroll · 6 Jan 2024 at 18:00

edgedemon said:
That's helped me a bit. My understanding was that best practice is to have just the OS in its own partition and all apps installed to a separate partition. This is what we do with our work images. I was planning on 500GB for the OS and 3.5TB for apps/games/storage. I hadn't considered remapping the directories, that is a good tip!

Usually, as SSDs and NVME drives are bigger and cheaper, best to keep the OS and Apps that you tend to keep for longer in the same drive. Games, which usually won’t stay installed for longer, or downloads that won’t stay for longer, usually gets another drive, or at least partition.
Fragmentation isn’t an issue with solid state storage opposed to mechanical drives, but writing cycles is. But for the average user won’t be a real issue. My oldest NVME is now about 4 years old, 140ish TB written, 99% life remaining.

edgedemon · 6 Jan 2024 at 18:59

Drumroll said:
Usually, as SSDs and NVME drives are bigger and cheaper, best to keep the OS and Apps that you tend to keep for longer in the same drive. Games, which usually won’t stay installed for longer, or downloads that won’t stay for longer, usually gets another drive, or at least partition.
Fragmentation isn’t an issue with solid state storage opposed to mechanical drives, but writing cycles is. But for the average user won’t be a real issue. My oldest NVME is now about 4 years old, 140ish TB written, 99% life remaining.

I have started to spec my next build (last one was in 2011). Storage wise Im looking at a 4TB PCIe 5 NVMe for for OS and Apps and a 4TB PCIe 4 NVMe for everything else. I was quite shocked at prices, things are really expensive now. To be fair, I haven't really been following prices, but I was very surprised at how expensive 4TB SATA SSD's are

Drumroll · 6 Jan 2024 at 19:47

4TB seems to be the top end. As most motherboards are limited to three or four NVME, and some to only two, and games requiring as much storage space as they can now, the more reasonably priced 1 and 2TB may not be ideal, unless you want to add few SSDs and spreading even further where you install/storage your stuff.
For gaming and storage, I’m quite confident that even PCI-E 3 x 4 should be enough. I would just avoid any NVmE that doesn’t have cache, or use very little of it.
As I don’t have much installed, and my AM5 motherboard only allows 3 x NMVE, 2 x 2TB Samsung 980 Pro and 1 x 1TB Samsung 970 Evo is plenty.
If I ever need more storage I’m more likely to add a SSD than replacing one of the NVMEs, as anything over 2TB, at least for now, costs quite a bit more per GB than buying another drive.

edgedemon · 6 Jan 2024 at 20:18

Agree
Though as I'm going mini ITX then 2 x NVMe is my preferred option for my case of choice. If I can get my cable management perfect I might be able to squeeze an SSD in, but I'd prefer the increased airflow

mahius · 6 Jan 2024 at 20:18

edgedemon said:
I have started to spec my next build (last one was in 2011). Storage wise Im looking at a 4TB PCIe 5 NVMe for for OS and Apps and a 4TB PCIe 4 NVMe for everything else. I was quite shocked at prices, things are really expensive now. To be fair, I haven't really been following prices, but I was very surprised at how expensive 4TB SATA SSD's are

PCIe5 is not worth it at the moment. The speed improvement over top PCIe4 drives is barely noticeable and more importantly, the flash NAND on PCIe5 drives run too hot, which can cause issues with data corruption, performance and such. At the moment, it seems like one must actively/sufficiently cool a PCIe 5 drive (like a CPU or GPU) to have a completely headache free experience.

I've bought 2 top spec PCIe4 drives, even though I have multiple PCIe5 slots on the new motherboard. Cheaper and less hassle than PCIe5.

I'd want to hope that PCIe6 drives don't have this heating and performance issue, but it sounds like PCIe6 will be more of PCIe5

There's been talks of the 3.5" SSD form factor being used for PCIe5 and 6 drives, in order to have space for cooling the chips with fans or something.

edgedemon · 6 Jan 2024 at 20:36

The mobo I'm looking at has active cooling for the gen 5 drive. I was under the impression that the latest drives didnt run quite as hot though still hotter than gen 4.
I have a couple of months before I pull the trigger, speeds will have gone up by then if some of the previews I've read are true

embalse · 7 Jan 2024 at 10:16

Absolutely! Always have at least to drives. If one goes hopefully it won't be your file folder. Then again the file folder should be backed up to!
.

nalla · 12 Jan 2024 at 15:44

always have games on another drive, i do a few lan parties and have had to format at a lan, and if you do have to do this and you have games on a separate drive you don't have to re download them just discover them again, simples, can format and be gaming again in les than 15 mins

Tripnologist · 12 Jan 2024 at 19:15

I would definitely go with at least 2 drives.

I've always had one for the OS and most programs and one for everything else. The idea being that if anything goes awry, at worst, I can just nuke the OS drive and quickly restore from an image.
I'm just about to add another though, so I can have it split:

OS / Programs
Games
Perm Storage - Docs / Video / Photos / Media