NVME versus platter

hornetstinger

hornetstinger

hornetstinger

Soldato
Joined
6 Sep 2016
Posts
11,431
What games would you say aren't worth installing on a SSD/NVME? For example DCS flight sim must be installed on a SSD due to horrendously slow load times like 15 minutes on a regular drive.

I'm thinking due to cost per GB/TB, and also having one bigger drive is just easier to manage/navigate than several smaller nvme (and using the limited number of nvme slots)#

Or is it now due to all games pretty much being 100GB+ nvme is required for every game? Not only for loading times (which I don't mind if just a few more seconds) but for the constant reading of large amount of data/textures that regular platter drives simply can't keep up?
 
Is anyone really using spinning disks for apps/games still?

I've got one for media dump but nvme is cheap enough that I wouldn't even consider a HDD
 
I personally wouldn't put any game on a HDD nowadays. All my mobo SATA ports would have SATA SSD's in them now, minimum 2TB each, in addition to NVME on the mobo. Very little real world speed difference between a sata ssd and an nvme. I'm not sure if the list of modern games which wouldn't be massively hampered by the speed of a HDD is very long to be honest. By and large if a game install wants say 100gb, its going to be thrashing the disc. My strategy would be to put one or more sata ssd drive aside for those games which you know you are permanently going to want to keep, mmos etc, and then have another for your floating games which get uninstalled when finished.

Btw, I just bought a new mobo which only has 4 motherboard sata ports, which is a change from my previous one which had 8, but you can get nvme to multiple sata port adaptors to give you extra sata ports for more sata ssds. I got one with adds 5 sata ports to a single nvme slot, but you can get up to 6 ports on the one card. Plus you can get proper pcie addin cards for more ports if you want the maximum speed for games, though spare pcie slots are probably even rarer nowadays. I will keep one hdd attached for storage, but by and large it is ssd/nvme for everything else. A ball ache to have so many drives yes, but hdd is not viable for game installs now I reckon.
 
hornetstinger said:
What games would you say aren't worth installing on a SSD/NVME?
Click to expand...
Small indie games are okay, platformers and the like. Old games that have very small files (e.g. a GB or two).

hornetstinger said:
Or is it now due to all games pretty much being 100GB+ nvme is required for every game? Not only for loading times (which I don't mind if just a few more seconds) but for the constant reading of large amount of data/textures that regular platter drives simply can't keep up?
Click to expand...
You might find this interesting:

I'd say the number of games that are unplayable or near unplayable on HDDs due to streaming assets is going to get bigger.
 
I remember there is also a built in Windows feature called Windows Storage Spaces whereby it will treat a bunch of physically separate drives as a single volume. So you could have 4 ssd drives plugged in and windows would see them all as one drive letter with with the full combined capacity as one volume, so you don't have to mess about with multiple drive letters which was one of your criteria. Windows will install things across the drives seamlessly.
 
If you use Steam then it's really easy to move games. You could keep games on a slow drive to avoid having to download them all the time, but when you start a spell of playing the game, move it to a small NVMe.

I do this, sorta, in that I have a scrappy SSD that I used for long-term storage, then a really fast NVMe for play.
 
I would buy more NVME before using spinning rust for live games..well thats not quite true..during the humps i have used spinning rust and it makes me feel dirty. Made a big mistake going for 2TB PCIEx5 rather than waiting for 4TB PCIx4 at same price to come into stock last cycle.
 
To be honest its getting to the point where using a fast enough USB docking station where you can swap out SATA SSD's, each with one game install on, is going to be the way to deal with these ever growing games. It will basically be like going back to an Atari 2600 with SSD instead of cartridges. Like, oh I want to play Call of Duty 9, let me reach for my 250G Call of Duty 9 SSD and plug that in.
 
Last edited:
Bubo said:
I remember there is also a built in Windows feature called Windows Storage Spaces whereby it will treat a bunch of physically separate drives as a single volume. So you could have 4 ssd drives plugged in and windows would see them all as one drive letter with with the full combined capacity as one volume, so you don't have to mess about with multiple drive letters which was one of your criteria. Windows will install things across the drives seamlessly.
Click to expand...
If one drive failed you'd lose everything though?

Are there any pools where individual files arnt spread across multiple discs?
 
Hostile_18 said:
If one drive failed you'd lose everything though?
Click to expand...

Not sure to be honest. Don't know if if treated the same as a RAID setup, or if it is literally the one file that happens to spill over on to the next drive that is at risk. But since you back up all your files you shouldn't actually lose anything.
 
An NvME isn't necessarily needed for all games, but anything remotely modern I'd want on at least a SATA SSD which can be had for quite cheap.

There's regularly high capacity variants in the B-Grade section of OCUK and they'll often accept some very low offers on them, I've had a few for an absolute song.

The only thing I'd use an HDD for as of 2024 would be storing large files, such as a ripped movie and lossless music collection, or work related stuff while running some form of redundancy.
 
Last edited:
Bubo said:
I remember there is also a built in Windows feature called Windows Storage Spaces whereby it will treat a bunch of physically separate drives as a single volume. So you could have 4 ssd drives plugged in and windows would see them all as one drive letter with with the full combined capacity as one volume, so you don't have to mess about with multiple drive letters which was one of your criteria. Windows will install things across the drives seamlessly.
Click to expand...

I wouldn’t trust windows to manage a storage array. Iffy AF.
 
Last edited:
hornetstinger said:
What happens if you need to reinstall windows? That will bugger up the data? Or just lose the data that's part between drives? ie with JBOD you can recover the data apart from a file that spans across two disks
Click to expand...

Microsoft are outstanding when it’s comes to finding opportunities to fail. Fatal error> attempt a recovery>fail spectacularly. Force update+non standard storage>fail>attempt recovery fail even more spectacularly.

I wouldn’t trust windows to manage any important data
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom