Condensing old HDDs to a single one & use for Gaming

whatalegend123 · 12 Jan 2021 at 21:13

I have a 500gb SSD for my OS but also quite a few old HDDs laying around the place, ranging from 20gb-250gb which i would like to condense down to one larger storage drive probably circa 2-4gb.

Is there any particular brand at the moment which are recommended?

I saw the below which seems reasonable.

Seagate BarraCuda 2 TB – 3.5 Inch SATA 6 Gb/s 7200 RPM 256 MB Cache 3.5 Inch

Is there a noticeable difference between the 128MB and 256MB Cache ?

Would this drive still be suitable for running some larger games on ? or do you really need a SSD ?

Cyber-Mav · 13 Jan 2021 at 14:43

the mechanical drive will be fine but it will be slower for initial loads in games. youtube videos plenty of them show side by side speed difference.
if you have multiple mechanical drives of the same type then how about a raid 0?

jrwagh333 · 13 Jan 2021 at 20:01

Cyber-Mav said:
the mechanical drive will be fine but it will be slower for initial loads in games. youtube videos plenty of them show side by side speed difference.
if you have multiple mechanical drives of the same type then how about a raid 0?

RAID 0 for storage? Never

Cyber-Mav · 13 Jan 2021 at 20:21

jrwagh333 said:
RAID 0 for storage? Never

if its just for games that can easily be downloaded again from steam etc then why not?
obviously dont use it for critical data.

andy_mk3 · 13 Jan 2021 at 20:24

If budget allows for an SSD then it's the best option out there. RAID0 HDDs don't even come remotely close to the performance of an SSD. If you don't want to pay that much then pretty much any HDD will be ok.