Best performance Mechanical 2TB gaming drive?

Katanga · 18 Jul 2017 at 14:23

Or Hybrid one, my current 1TB WD Velociraptor games drive is close to filling up now and I need something larger, 2TB SSD's are still a bit expensive and I dont see any 1.5 ish TB SSD's? an SSD would be perfect other wise though.

So what is best performing 2 TB Mechanical HD or possibly Hybrid one, would hybrid be noticeably faster in games I wonder? When I say faster I mean load time too of course.

Rroff · 18 Jul 2017 at 14:25

When testing game load times with a hybrid drive I didn't really notice a huge difference in load times versus a HDD without SSD caching - probably around 30% faster load times while a regular SSD was often around 3x faster.

Katanga · 18 Jul 2017 at 14:47

Thanks, so stick with a pure mechanical one then? pity there was never a 2TB WD Velociraptor, just reading the SSD price surge thread, *sigh* do need a bigger 1.5TB at least performance game drive, so what would be best I wonder?

WD Black? not sure what is fastest for game performance in their range, Black Blue Green or Purple, LOL

Rroff · 18 Jul 2017 at 14:49

I'd look at the benchmarks/reviews some of the SSHDs have their advantages other than their strongest advantage when used as the boot drive.

hornetstinger · 18 Jul 2017 at 14:51

Just have a system with lots of RAM.

Katanga · 18 Jul 2017 at 15:12

hornetstinger said:
Just have a system with lots of RAM.

I have 32GB DDR4 3000

I guess I'm pretty lazy for searching for benchmarks for something like this, had hoped to see a few definitive answers along the lines of the XYZ 2TB drive for sure

If someone could recommend a high performance (with decent reliability) 2TB Mechanical gaming drive from OcUK stock could go order it just now ... I really am quite lazy, sorry

EsaT · 18 Jul 2017 at 15:56

Rroff said:
When testing game load times with a hybrid drive I didn't really notice a huge difference in load times versus a HDD without SSD caching - probably around 30% faster load times while a regular SSD was often around 3x faster.

Yep, Flash cache of SSHDs help only after initial first load.
And unless they've increased cache size it's so small that even single game doesn't fit into it:
http://techreport.com/review/25425/seagate-desktop-sshd-2tb-hybrid-drive-reviewed
Now if that cache were least 32GB then it could actually fit something...

Intel got the idea lot better:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Response_Technology

Katanga said:
I have 32GB DDR4 3000

Which can keep lot more cached than SSHDs.
And file caching to RAM always wins Flash...

As for speed in sequential transfer 7200rpm drives surely match Velociraptor.
Heck, even fastest 5400rpm drives might do it with increased data density and higher linear velocity per rpm of 3.5" drive.
Where Veliciraptor has advantage is in max seek time with lower (rpm depending) rotational latency and smaller distance from outermost to innermost cylinder/track.
Then again 3.5" drives store more data per cylinder/track so files of game can be stored in fewer of them requiring less movement of R/W head.
So wouldn't expect any modern 3.5" to be really worser than it.

Again in case of individual drive reliability any of them can last from dead in hour to lasting years and years.

Hence myself buying main HDD storage drives in pairs...
Currently using 5TB 5400rpm WD Reds when other of RAID1's 3TB 7200 rpm Seagates went haywire year or two ago.
Despite of lower rpm didn't notice significant speed difference thanks to higher data density.
(power consumption went down couple watts per drive)

Rroff · 18 Jul 2017 at 16:15

EsaT said:
Where Veliciraptor has advantage is in max seek time with lower (rpm depending) rotational latency and smaller distance from outermost to innermost cylinder/track.

I used to run some HDDs short stroked to improve game load times - when setup properly you could get sustained 140+MB/s transfer rates and halve the seek/access times of older HDDs - not sure what that would manage with more modern HDDs. (Obviously you lose a load of disc space and/or have to be careful with disc access if you multi partition it to avoid penalties on that drive).

Danny75 · 18 Jul 2017 at 19:18

When SSDs of the right size aren't available/too expensive, and more speed than a single HDD can provide is desired, and it's for games not work/valuable data, seems like one of the few good reasons left to have 2 x HDD in RAID 0. The Toshiba P300s are about 200Mbps read/write (sequential), so double that is nice. Of course the seek/access time won't be as good as SSD. But once it's rolling it's rolling about as fast as a normal SATA SSD. Like Rroff mentioned, if you short stroked them to create a first partition where you want your fave games (or the games you want faster loading times for), then bonus.

Hell, even 3 x 2TB HDD (one for backup) don't cost as much as a 1TB SSD.

Katanga · 18 Jul 2017 at 21:53

Danny75 said:
When SSDs of the right size aren't available/too expensive, and more speed than a single HDD can provide is desired, and it's for games not work/valuable data, seems like one of the few good reasons left to have 2 x HDD in RAID 0. The Toshiba P300s are about 200Mbps read/write (sequential), so double that is nice. Of course the seek/access time won't be as good as SSD. But once it's rolling it's rolling about as fast as a normal SATA SSD. Like Rroff mentioned, if you short stroked them to create a first partition where you want your fave games (or the games you want faster loading times for), then bonus.

Hell, even 3 x 2TB HDD (one for backup) don't cost as much as a 1TB SSD.

Cant do RAID of any sort on this system and rather not from bad experience reasons doing that in the past, can explain if anyone really wants to know, but no Thanks.

Still waiting to hear what the best performance 2 TB Mechanical HDD is for games is, nobody seems to know?

Danny75 · 18 Jul 2017 at 22:44

There's not really much by way of up-to-date professional HDD benchmarks (on an extensive range of them). If we go by recent years, some might say WD Black 2TB (2013). However, the Toshiba P300 2TB has faster sequential read speed, ideal for a games drive. Which isn't to say it's the fastest reader out there.

Check out user benchmarks maybe, and sort by Read: http://hdd.userbenchmark.com/

The fastest Read 2TB in the list is the Seagate Barracuda (2016).

Disco_P · 19 Jul 2017 at 15:39

They're all a much of muchness tbh. Unless you get your stopwatch out during loading screens you won't notice the difference.

seagate_surfer · 19 Jul 2017 at 22:52

Katanga said:
Or Hybrid one,...
So what is best performing 2 TB Mechanical HD or possibly Hybrid one, would hybrid be noticeably faster in games I wonder? When I say faster I mean load time too of course.

Hi Katanga,

considering a SSHD if you are only looking for a single drive is actually not the worst idea!
Whether you buy the SSD or SSHD first depends on your needs. SSD is obviously going to be unmatched for performance increase, but the cost can be a bit prohibitive. SSHD drives like the listed FireCuda have an 8GB SSD cache which the drive firmware determines files/data that is accessed frequently and puts them on the SSD cache portion so they load faster, and then utilizes the rest of the storage, which is spinning disk, for any other data, so it just depends on how much space you feel you will need right off the bat as far as storage goes.

Our SSHD's have recently been upgraded to store even more data with our 4TB drive, so basically what you get is increased performance over a "regular" HDD with the benefit of having up to 4TB of storage!

Also, if you'd like a little more information on how these drives stack up performance-wise, here are a couple of charts we would like to share. The first one compares startup times across several popular games across a traditional spinning 7200 RPM HDD, our SSHD, and an M.2 SSD (128GB). The white is for SSD, the orange for our SSHD, and the grey for the 7200 spinning HDD:

Startup Times

The next one compares the first 3 days of gaming storage utilization across several popular titles, and SYSmark ratings from various drive types and combinations. First of the grays is 7200 RPM 1TB spinning HDD, second (lightest gray) is our SSHD, third (darkest gray) is an SSD + 7200 RPM HDD combo, purple is SSD + our SSHD combo, and lastly blue is SSD:

First 3 Days Gaming Storage Utilization

We hope that helps - enjoy your new drive!

Rroff · 19 Jul 2017 at 23:05

Danny75 said:
There's not really much by way of up-to-date professional HDD benchmarks (on an extensive range of them). If we go by recent years, some might say WD Black 2TB (2013). However, the Toshiba P300 2TB has faster sequential read speed, ideal for a games drive. Which isn't to say it's the fastest reader out there.

Check out user benchmarks maybe, and sort by Read: http://hdd.userbenchmark.com/

The fastest Read 2TB in the list is the Seagate Barracuda (2016).

Game load times are often a mix of bigger sequential reads and lots of smaller reads - depending a bit on the storage architecture of the game i.e. some batch game data into "fastfiles" or similar techniques to optimise loading.

There is also the problem that there is a big difference between having say 1-2 games installed on a hybrid drive (where load times will be closer to SSD - like 2-3x faster than a standard mechanical) and having a dozen plus games and other data where you are frequently playing different games (where load times will be only 20-40% faster than a standard mechanical on average).

Danny75 · 20 Jul 2017 at 04:09

Rroff said:
Game load times are often a mix of bigger sequential reads and lots of smaller reads - depending a bit on the storage architecture of the game i.e. some batch game data into "fastfiles" or similar techniques to optimise loading.

Cheers for that Rroff. I imagined sequential reads isn't the whole story. Just plays a big part it seems.

Wonder if those "fastfiles" are what were writing 2.5GB to my boot drive each time I loaded a game from my games drive. Moving TEMP and TMP to my games SSD has stopped that, without negatively affecting anything (so far) and considerably reducing writes overall. 2.5GB isn't much but I'm in the habit of kicking off a game anything from once to five times a day (sometimes I play only a few minutes then quit, start it up again later), and in addition to Firefox and Windows writing etc, I wondered if that would help. And it did. Whether those are "fastfiles" or not, they did appear to be being written to TEMP or TMP.

Rroff · 20 Jul 2017 at 04:19

No the "fastfiles" are talking in generic terms about the way some game developers package up their data files into larger lumps of data and/or other techniques so as to minimise load times.

What you are talking about sounds like some kind of dynamic pagefile allocation or something or maybe something some antivirus does to check files, etc.

Danny75 · 20 Jul 2017 at 04:24

Rroff said:
No the "fastfiles" are talking in generic terms about the way some game developers package up their data files into larger lumps of data and/or other techniques so as to minimise load times.

What you are talking about sounds like some kind of dynamic pagefile allocation or something or maybe something some antivirus does to check files, etc.

Aha. Game folder and exe is excluded in Defender. But dynamic pagefile allocation sounds bang on, as I don't have a Page File currently, and was wondering if something like it could be temporarily created if needed by apps.

EsaT · 20 Jul 2017 at 10:10

Rroff said:
No the "fastfiles" are talking in generic terms about the way some game developers package up their data files into larger lumps of data and/or other techniques so as to minimise load times.

World of Warships is good example.
Its ~20+GB used to consist way over 100k or even 200k separate files.
Around year ago they changed its file structure and now game's data is packed into ~600 separate files.

seagate_surfer said:
SSHD drives like the listed FireCuda have an 8GB SSD cache which the drive firmware determines files/data that is accessed frequently and puts them on the SSD cache portion so they load faster

While still good for programs games just have exceeded that size many many years ago.
And wasn't part of that 8GB used as faster SLC cache?
http://techreport.com/review/25425/seagate-desktop-sshd-2tb-hybrid-drive-reviewed

hornetstinger · 20 Jul 2017 at 10:13

EsaT said:
World of Warships is good example.
Its ~20+GB used to consist way over 100k or even 200k separate files.
Around year ago they changed its file structure and now game's data is packed into ~600 separate files.

While still good for programs games just have exceeded that size many many years ago.
And wasn't part of that 8GB used as faster SLC cache?
http://techreport.com/review/25425/seagate-desktop-sshd-2tb-hybrid-drive-reviewed

X-Plane had tens and tens of thousands of files, it was horrid loading.