SSHD as a 2nd drive?

Banzai_Joe · 3 Sep 2013 at 12:11

Guys,

i have a 256Gb Samsung 840 Pro as my main drive, but Steam/Origin are filling it up fast.
I was thinking of adding this SSHD so i can move my steam and origna games to it, but am i likely to see a performance increase over a standard 2.5" non-ssd drive? (i have a few lying around)
I would have thought that the SSHD only has a small amount of nand memory where the OS would sit if its installed as a first drive.

Your thoughts please?

matthab · 3 Sep 2013 at 13:46

The issue is there not much faster than a 5400rpm drive due to the random writes. If it was me I would buy the new Hitachi 1tb 7200rpm drive or a WD 750gb Black.

Banzai_Joe · 3 Sep 2013 at 14:10

Well, for map loading on games reads are more important. The general gumf says they are up to 4x faster than a standard 5400rpm drive.
Don't want anything noisy, and if budget allowed would buy another ssd so i wouldn't have to consider cooling options, even for a 2.5" drive.

inogen · 3 Sep 2013 at 14:21

I've used these drives in a new build and for a laptop replacement. They're really good as OS drives. Windows is just about responsive as it is using an SSD.

I think they'd work great as a Steam drive, but only if you play a small number of games regularly. The speed comes from the SSD cache, not the mechanical drive. The more you access files, the more likely they are to be cached.

matthab · 5 Sep 2013 at 13:30

My 7200rpm drives in my laptop are barely noticeable. As said above cache drives are good for stuff you access regularly. Games show little to none performance increase.

Yes there faster if you open the program a 2nd time, but who opens programs twice.