Getting away with a one storage drive setup

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Hi all,

I'm currently speccing up a new build, my first for many years so I'm happy to go all-out and get close to the best in every component type.

Probably looking at a Samsung 512gb 950 Pro M.2. My only quandary is whether I get this drive on it's own and use it as the Boot drive as well as every day applications and games, or should I get another SSD or HDD for media/backup etc?

In the past, I'd have always had ample spare drives and capacity for MP3 collection, movies, pictures and all that jazz. But I think my usage habits have changed now, to where I have almost no media stored locally, I stream everything, or have online drives to get access to certain files.

I realise this sounds like I'm answering my own question, but wanted to put it out there as I'm interested to hear from people who have done similar and perhaps later encountered scenarios where they wish they'd gone for extra storage on a 2nd/3rd drive.

FWIW, I have a barely used Western Digital Caviar 500GB HDD that for the sake of giving it some use will likely go in too, but that isn't a massive amount of additional storage.

Cheers :)
 
Hi all,

I'm currently speccing up a new build, my first for many years so I'm happy to go all-out and get close to the best in every component type.

Probably looking at a Samsung 512gb 950 Pro M.2. My only quandary is whether I get this drive on it's own and use it as the Boot drive as well as every day applications and games, or should I get another SSD or HDD for media/backup etc?

In the past, I'd have always had ample spare drives and capacity for MP3 collection, movies, pictures and all that jazz. But I think my usage habits have changed now, to where I have almost no media stored locally, I stream everything, or have online drives to get access to certain files.

I realise this sounds like I'm answering my own question, but wanted to put it out there as I'm interested to hear from people who have done similar and perhaps later encountered scenarios where they wish they'd gone for extra storage on a 2nd/3rd drive.

FWIW, I have a barely used Western Digital Caviar 500GB HDD that for the sake of giving it some use will likely go in too, but that isn't a massive amount of additional storage.

Cheers :)
Its very possible unless you like to keep a load of large games installed. Battlefields + gta + doom can all run at 50gb+ each.
 
If your motherboard chipset supports it, Intel Rapid Storage Technology could be used to cache a large cheap spinner with a small fairly cheap SSD. It generally provides roughly 90% of the performance of an SSD on average but for a fraction of the cost per TB.

Here are my before and afters for a budget SSD/HDD combination with IRST...

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6DGwrXwCpAoZ25KMHU1N0pxWVk

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6DGwrXwCpAobzQtdDlKRUg2MWs

Windows would boot just as fast as from a dedicated SSD, and anything else you launch gets cached at the LBA block level on first launch, so acceleration kicks in on the second and all subsequent launches. It is very, very fast.

It's fully compatible with all M$ OSes from Win7 onwards.

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/product/55005/Intel-Rapid-Storage-Technology-Intel-RST-
 
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A 128GB SSD is more than ample for an OS and regularly used programs, it's only when you start factoring in games that you really need more, and with them trending upwards of 50GB these days, your best bet is to have a mechanical for their storage.

Right now I'm running a 256GB SM961 m.2, with a 3TB Seagate mechanical hosting my Steam install as well as non-Steam games, load times are fast enough from that, but certain games stream the gameworld and textures from the drive which can be problematic (GTA5 killed my previous 3TB) so I tend to junction those to the SSD as well and still have ample room to breathe.

I think you'd be fine with just the 512GB SSD given your described usage scenario, but having the small mechanical there as an option as well can't hurt.
 
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