SSD v HDD ?

venomx

venomx

venomx

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I have a 120GB SSD and a 1TB HDD

I install my OS on the SSD, and use the HDD for gaming and storing music, is this the best way to do it ?
Some games on the xbox app are like 40GB so obviously I cannot use the SSD for it
 
Yeah thats the best way to do it given your current setup.

Depending on what motherboard you have, I would recommend upgrading your SSD to one of a larger capacity so you can store all your games on there and your OS and it'll be much faster.

You can get a 2tb nvme drive fairly easily, and its more space than both your drives combined atm, not too expensive, and performance will be 100x better
 
Len Dananey said:
Get rid of the hdd and use an SSD only system. I use ICYDOCK front bay drives to hold my ssd's. I have 10 drives, 2 of which are partitioned. Getting some larger drives myself and more storage!
This is the Icydock https://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=192

Click to expand...

How much does that cost without the drives?

It seems it can hold a fair few drives in there, but the cost of filling those up is going to be really expensive
 
Praz94 said:
You can get a 2tb nvme drive fairly easily, and its more space than both your drives combined atm, not too expensive, and performance will be 100x better
Click to expand...

Depends a lot on what motherboard he has, but even so for Games the difference between a Sata drive and NVMe M2 is fairly unnoticeable.


Len Dananey said:
Get rid of the hdd and use an SSD only system. I use ICYDOCK front bay drives to hold my ssd's. I have 10 drives, 2 of which are partitioned. Getting some larger drives myself and more storage!
This is the Icydock https://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=192

Click to expand...

For most people that's completely unmanageable - most people are better off with a couple of larger SSDs (or worst case using some kind of JBOD/Storage pool software to at least combine them into a single drive letter). I can only assume you inherited a lot of older SSDs that you wanted to reuse - no sane person would deliberately force themselves into that sort of configuration.




Something like this a 500Gb 2.5" SATA SSD would probably be a good starting point, especially if you are on a tight budget:

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £68.69 (includes shipping: £8.70)​
​
 
Armageus said:
Depends a lot on what motherboard he has, but even so for Games the difference between a Sata drive and NVMe M2 is fairly unnoticeable.
Click to expand...

Yeah its not as much for the boot speeds of games, but rather future proof and its actually fairly cheap these days anyway as its become the norm to use
 
Yeah I use X99 @Armageus and have all of the ports used up plus extra ports. I agree larger ssd's are a must better option for anyone, I have just kinda built these up over time from sales really, but I am planning on swapping them all out for 1tb+ drives.
 
Praz94 said:
You can get a 2tb nvme drive fairly easily, and its more space than both your drives combined atm, not too expensive, and performance will be 100x better
Click to expand...

I`d love a 2tb SSD to replace by 2tb HDD what is your idea of not too expensive £200 for a 2tb is expensive to me.
 
varkanoid said:
I`d love a 2tb SSD to replace by 2tb HDD what is your idea of not too expensive £200 for a 2tb is expensive to me.
Click to expand...
2TB Patriot P200 can be had for less than that.
Though it lacks DRAM cache making it not so great if non-sequential write speeds are important.
In mostly read focused use lack of cache isn't that big thing.
 
As #5 grab yourself a 500GB SSD on the cheap, it'll be a welcome boost over the mechanical.

I used to swap game files on and off my 120GB SSD for years before I got my 2nd and 3rd SSD.
 
EsaT said:
2TB Patriot P200 can be had for less than that.
Though it lacks DRAM cache making it not so great if non-sequential write speeds are important.
In mostly read focused use lack of cache isn't that big thing.
Click to expand...

Its cheaper because its been discontinued. I prefer better brands, if a decent brand drops for around £150 in the sales coming up I might take a chance.
 
1TB SSD's are good value now. If you can't stretch to that then 500GB is usable for games, as i've has 2x256GB in my gaming laptop for a few years.
 
120gb ssd for OS, 500gb ssd for games then a bunch of 1-2tb HDD for storage is what I use.

Theres no benefit to having games stored on same drive as OS is there?

I never install many, just backup the save files and uninstall them when I don't need.
 
I've been buying SSD's since 2008, right now I have them in use on a laptop, server boot drives, HTPC. From 7 SSD's 3-4 failed or loose all data, 2 Kingstons, Samsung 830 lost data, 500gb MX 100 was intermittent.

So after all those SSD's my current computer uses 2x 2TB WD Gold HDD's (one for OS/Apps, one for data), I do use an old Samsung 840 Pro as a caching drive. And it's totally fine, takes a little longer to start up, but I've got 48GB ram so plenty of standby memory, plus the 840 Pro is doing it's caching thing.

For the first 5 mins after log-in the the OS/App HDD runs 100% but once settled people would be very surprised how fast software loads despite being on HDD's. I'm a software developer computer contains SQL Server, Visual Studio tools, the reason my computer is so fast is the 2 HDD's and SSD caching is working together. So say I do an SQL Query, one HDD is doing temp files, the other HDD is accessing data, and the Samsung Pro 840 is caching over the top of both of them.

I write the above because the general view is a computer with HDD's can't be fast, however if you choose fast HDD's, add an SSD for caching, have lots of RAM to help super-fetch catch data, you can still have a fast computer. And people say SSD's are almost HDD prices, well it's only with the cheap SSD's. 2 x 2TB Samsung Pro's that's like almost £800 and Samsung Pro's are the only SSD's I really trust.
 
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JasonM said:
I've been buying SSD's since 2008, right now I have them in use on a laptop, server boot drives, HTPC. From 7 SSD's 3-4 failed or loose all data, 2 Kingstons, Samsung 830 lost data, 500gb MX 100 was intermittent.

So after all those SSD's my current computer uses 2x 2TB WD Gold HDD's (one for OS/Apps, one for data), I do use an old Samsung 840 Pro as a caching drive. And it's totally fine, takes a little longer to start up, but I've got 48GB ram so plenty of standby memory, plus the 840 Pro is doing it's caching thing.

For the first 5 mins after log-in the the OS/App HDD runs 100% but once settled people would be very surprised how fast software loads despite being on HDD's. I'm a software developer computer contains SQL Server, Visual Studio tools, the reason my computer is so fast is the 2 HDD's and SSD caching is working together. So say I do an SQL Query, one HDD is doing temp files, the other HDD is accessing data, and the Samsung Pro 840 is caching over the top of both of them.

I write the above because the general view is a computer with HDD's can't be fast, however if you choose fast HDD's, add an SSD for caching, have lots of RAM to help super-fetch catch data, you can still have a fast computer. And people say SSD's are almost HDD prices, well it's only with the cheap SSD's. 2 x 2TB Samsung Pro's that's like almost £800 and Samsung Pro's are the only SSD's I really trust.
Click to expand...

I have been using SSD's since 2012, I have 10 in my Rig now currently and 5 in another machine that my son now uses and have never had one fail, you sir have been very unlucky.
 
I have an XPG S11 Pro 512GB PCIe 3 x4 but unfortunately my notebook doesn't want to work with it, so it stays unrecognised.

Because of this, the notebook works with a mechanical 5400 rpm 1TB HDD WDC WD10SPZX-21Z10T0.

I don't know why they sell it like this.
I don't mind because I think SSD SATA are still pretty expensive to my liking.
 
Len Dananey said:
I have been using SSD's since 2012, I have 10 in my Rig now currently and 5 in another machine that my son now uses and have never had one fail, you sir have been very unlucky.
Click to expand...

I forgot to mention I had a Crucial M4 die also. In fairness I don't think i'm a typical user, as the SSD's were in workstation type environment and had a lot of write activity. But as said not all failed, still got 5 left that are working fine. I will go back to SSD's just need the higher end SSD's like the Samsung Pro's to come down in price. It's a horrible feeling when you turn a computer on, and the SSD containing OS has died over night without warning, then you have to spent the next 2 days rebuilding the workstation with all the dev tools, it happened to many times so went back to WD Enterprise HDD's, but then use SSD caching to help them along. If the SSD doing the caching dies it's not an issue as the main data still on those HDD's.
 
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