Seperate drive trends for OS, Games, vs partitioning ?

sastusbulbas · 30 May 2022 at 15:37

Really just wondering what everyone does or recommends these days.

Since the days of Sata HDD, I went with the likes of a 500gb F3 with a 1tb F3 for games and storage, when SSD came out it was a 250gb SSD for OS, 1tb SSD for games and 4tb HDD for storage.

My SSD's are full, 250 Samsung Pro and 960gb Sandisk.

I have an unused Samsung 850 Evo I could use as an OS drive? Could just drop a 2tb in there for games.

But is it better with current prices just so go for a higher capacity SSD and partition it?

I feel 1tb and 2tb ssd prices are the sweetspots, with 4tb being a little pricy still. Though if money was no object I would like a 4tb ssd for games and 4tb ssd for other storage.

Many of you partitioning main drives or is it simply a smaller boot drive? My three kids are happy with 250gb os drives and 1tb storage.

Tetras · 30 May 2022 at 19:22

I'd still prefer a physical 'partition' / small SSD for the OS (probably 500GB now, because 250GB is usually poor value), assuming you're happy to use a SATA drive, but obviously if you're only filing m.2 slots and there's two, then a 250GB SSD would be unwise.

Glanza · 31 May 2022 at 10:41

I used to have separate SSD's for OS and games but these days with the price of 1TB Nvme drives I replaced all my drives and dropped down to one Nvme for everything apart from storage that is on a HDD.

Armageus · 31 May 2022 at 11:09

Can't see much value in partitioning personally - how often are people actually reinstalling Windows or restoring an OS backup? (Since Windows 10 I've done neither)

Much better to have a single drive/partition and make use of all of it, rather than leaving extra space on the OS drive that's never used, or running out of space on the OS drive, whilst your Game partition has plenty.

sastusbulbas · 1 Jun 2022 at 19:22

Well the Samsung 850 500gb is hardly used so will use that for Windows 10 and programs, bought an MX500 4tb to replace the SanDisk 960gb, though now contemplating using that to replace the HGST 4TB HDD instead and get another drive next month for games.

Thank you all

lsg1r · 2 Jun 2022 at 16:22

Bit late but personally I've always (since windows 7 if not earlier) kept my documents/saved data on a different drive to my OS on a desktop anyway. I also have another drive specifically for a scratch disk so I don't 'wear out' the main drives but then to be fair my machine is more 'work' orientated.

Basically it goes something like this:
Drive 1 - OS, Programs and Games (I don't play many games) - Seagate 2tb NVMe in current build
Drive 2 - Scratch disk - Seagate 2tb 530 NVMe in current build
Drive 3+ - Storage of personal data etc (all backed up of course) - I've gone with multiple 1TB SSD drives (I've got some redundancy in my setup) but your single 4TB could do the same job easy enough.

I can then reinstall windows (admittedly rare) without worrying about my documents etc and then just relink my windows account folders with my 'storage drive'.

Cyber-Mav · 5 Jun 2022 at 07:50

plenty people have single drive and partition it and put backups on one partition :cry:

sastusbulbas · 6 Jun 2022 at 12:16

Cyber-Mav said:
plenty people have single drive and partition it and put backups on one partition

Never liked that idea lol.

I have 2 4tb external drives and occasionally back up the main drive, to be honest main drive is a lot of music, movies, and family photos from days of DSLR use and the only value in there are the family photo's. Some phone back ups. But with mobile phones and streaming the storage rarely see's much added or accessed.

OS drive well with that and used programs simply starting afresh is fine for me, same with a games drive, with downloads speeds and unlimited data I usually see no real benefit to backing up operating systems, programs or games.

Not the most robust or up to par way of doing things I guess, lazy these days.