How do people generally have their storage drives setup?

[ScarySquirrel]

Hi all, I've just built my first PC in about 13 years and at the moment I've just got a single WD Black SN770 1TB M2 SSD which I've installed Windows 11 to, and I intend to install most of my apps to this drive.

However, this clearly isn't going to be big enough as I start installing games. I was thinking I could get another 1 or 2TB M2 SSD just for game installs. Would that be sensible? Or are there cheaper SSDs that would be better? I don't really know the difference between these tiny M2 drives and the bigger SSDs that I remember using ages ago.

I have a few HDDs from my old PCs, they are 3.5" SATA drives which I assume will still be compatible with my new ASUS B650 TUF motherboard. I was going to put these in and use for general storage of documents and files.

Does that seem like a sensible setup? Or would you recommend something else?

Thanks

 

[ScarySquirrel]

Thank you for the suggestions, I think I'll leave the old HDDs out in that case. It did seem a bit wrong to put these old ugly things in my nice new build.

I'll look at getting another SSD for the games.

It does depend on what motherboard you have
How pcie lanes get allocated
Having more than 1 x m2 may disable a couple
Of sata slots

But if there's no issue
Then yes add a second m2 nvme for games
1TB or 2TB depending how many games
The main difference is read and write speed
2.5 sata ssds peak approx 550MBs
Gen 4 m2 approx 7500MBs
But 2.5 sata ssds still have great access times
I find main difference is copying files
Between 2 m2 drives that blows away sata ssds
If prices are roughly equal
No reason not to get the m2 if your board supports it

Assuming enough sata ports
I would shove your old drives into windows storage spaces
It allows mixing hdds,ssds and m2 drives
different size drives with no loss of space
And can be set up with redundancy
If got enough drives
I have all m2 drives and use my old sata ssds
To make storage spaces

My motherboard is an Asus b650 TUF, it supports the following:

1 x M.2 2280 PCIe 5.0 x 4
1 x M.2 22110 PCIe 4.0 x 4
1 x M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 x 4

I'm assuming I've put the current one into the PCIe 5.0 space. Is it OK having another in one of the PCIe 4.0 spaces?

Edit: Just realised 5.0 is Gen5, which my current M2 drive isn't. I'd probably only get another Gen4 one so should be fine.

Edit: I'm so confused. I was just reading that M2 and NVME are different types of storage drive. But the drive I've bought already, and all the other listings I see usually say M2 and NVME in the product name. I don't really understand this.

Anyway, just ordered a Crucial P3 Pro 2TB for £97, hopefully it works!

 

[ScarySquirrel]

Ah ok got it, thank you.

I've checked and I can run 2 of them no issues

 

[ScarySquirrel]

Thanks for all of the comments.

I ended up buying a Crucial P3 Pro 2TB. I love how easy these are to install. Had a brief panic when it didn't show in Windows, until I realised I had to create a partition on the disk.

Anyway, all sorted and pretty happy with the space I've g ot now.