What size for boot drive?
- Thread starter doopydug
- Start date
I use a 250 GB SSD for windows 10 and this is plenty big enough for a boot drive. You could probably get away with less but there's probably no point buying smaller than 250 GB these days. I've never used anything by Sabrent Rocket so I can't comment on the brand.
Regarding M.2 drives, the M.2 refers to the form factor, not the protocol for transferring data. An M.2 SSD with be the same speed (~500 MB/s) as a 2.5" SATA SSD. The advantage of an M.2 drive over a 2.5" drive is firstly the smaller size which is good for laptops and secondly (and possibly more importantly) is the option to use the NVMe protocol which is faster (up to 5000 MB/s almost). So if you want a faster drive make sure it's an NVMe drive and not SATA. You'll also get slightly faster speeds with an M.2 drive using PCIe 4.0 than the more common PCIe 3.0 drives.
Remember that the speeds quoted by manufacturers are sequential speeds so you're unlikely to reach these speed depending on your usage. For example, M.2 NVMe drives typically have no advantage over SATA drives for game loading times. For booting windows though you'll maybe save a few seconds at most, although I've not done any tests. I'm sure the internet has much to say on this issue though.
Regarding M.2 drives, the M.2 refers to the form factor, not the protocol for transferring data. An M.2 SSD with be the same speed (~500 MB/s) as a 2.5" SATA SSD. The advantage of an M.2 drive over a 2.5" drive is firstly the smaller size which is good for laptops and secondly (and possibly more importantly) is the option to use the NVMe protocol which is faster (up to 5000 MB/s almost). So if you want a faster drive make sure it's an NVMe drive and not SATA. You'll also get slightly faster speeds with an M.2 drive using PCIe 4.0 than the more common PCIe 3.0 drives.
Remember that the speeds quoted by manufacturers are sequential speeds so you're unlikely to reach these speed depending on your usage. For example, M.2 NVMe drives typically have no advantage over SATA drives for game loading times. For booting windows though you'll maybe save a few seconds at most, although I've not done any tests. I'm sure the internet has much to say on this issue though.
Soldato
Nowadays I prefer 1TB for my boot drive. The reason? I generally install all my utitilies on C: i.e. MS Office, diagnostics, graphics software etc etc. That's my C: drive. Then on my D: drive is basically all games. So right now on my C: drive with a 3 week old install an no games... I'm 200GB on a 2TB NMVe. That's gonna last a lifetime. Nothing worse than starting to run out of space and I believe you can use 300GB so easy now on windows boot drives if you DON'T install ALL software to another drive.
Big bonus for M2 drives? Probably shifting massive files so a stated above, if money is a premium, you won't in real life notice too much difference between an SSD and M2. I've gone from a 1GB/s read/write Samsung 84-0 EVO Pro in RAID0 to the 3.5GB read/write of a NMVe drive... windows is quicker to load yeah, but in windows, nahhh barely any difference tbh. However, it's nice knowing their so fast but worth the money? No chance tbh.
Big bonus for M2 drives? Probably shifting massive files so a stated above, if money is a premium, you won't in real life notice too much difference between an SSD and M2. I've gone from a 1GB/s read/write Samsung 84-0 EVO Pro in RAID0 to the 3.5GB read/write of a NMVe drive... windows is quicker to load yeah, but in windows, nahhh barely any difference tbh. However, it's nice knowing their so fast but worth the money? No chance tbh.
How much RAM do you have? Windows will want to put the pagefile and the hibernation file on the system drive, and those will each default to the size of your RAM. So if you have 32 GB RAM, Windows will commandeer 64 GB for these two alone.
Zero reason to go for multiple small drives.
Especially on M.2 drives with very limited number of ports for them, it's best to buy the biggest size you can afford easily.
For easier organizing of data on same drive there's good old partitioning.
And it doesn't matter on SSDs, if there are half dozen programs doing random accesses around drive simultaneously.
In fact having dozen+ programs doing that is the only way to reach those advertised IOPS numbers:
Random access read performance with single access at time from single working thread is only little better in NVMes than in SATA SSDs.
And big marketing numbers are only achieved by having many reads going on in parallel and with big pile of them in queue for controller to be able to choose from for optimal pattern of accessing actual NAND cell locations.
(kinda like NCQ in HDDs)
Especially on M.2 drives with very limited number of ports for them, it's best to buy the biggest size you can afford easily.
For easier organizing of data on same drive there's good old partitioning.
And it doesn't matter on SSDs, if there are half dozen programs doing random accesses around drive simultaneously.
In fact having dozen+ programs doing that is the only way to reach those advertised IOPS numbers:
Random access read performance with single access at time from single working thread is only little better in NVMes than in SATA SSDs.
And big marketing numbers are only achieved by having many reads going on in parallel and with big pile of them in queue for controller to be able to choose from for optimal pattern of accessing actual NAND cell locations.
(kinda like NCQ in HDDs)
Actually small drives of model serie usually have lower performance numbers, because of lower drive's internal parallelism.
Half TB is often the smallest size which can achieve anything near full speed advertised for drive serie especially on writes, which are slower operation for Flash.
With more than one NAND chip drive's controller basically distributes data between them like in RAID0 to optimize read and write performance.
WD Blue SN550 is good example of that:
https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-blue-nvme-ssd#specifications
Sequential write is lot slower in 250GB model.
And also random read performance is lot slower.
(sequential reading is easy)
Same for TeamGroup MP34:
https://www.teamgroupinc.com/en/catalog/act.php?act=2&index_id=148
Also bigger drive has more Flash cells and naturally wears down slower over time...
Unless amount of daily written data goes up in same relation as capacity.
Something which doesn't happen in like 99% of consumer use.
Soldato
As said above, yeah you want 1TB to get full speed especially if PCIE4.0 speeds and think about upgrading, which is why I went overkill now on the NMVe when I can't even get 4.0 speeds, but I know that i'll get better performance when I do switch in a year or two rather than buying a lower spec one now then not being happy! Go big or go home lol
I've a 500Gb Intel 600p NVMe drive in my desktop PC and I'm nowhere near half capacity (although this laptop has a 120Gb SSD and has over 60Gb free with office 365 as well as Windows installed) , don't think you'd need any larger than this as a OS drive for quite a while (I have various programs installed on that drive as well but all games are on a 2nd mechanical drive).
As other people have mentioned I would go for the largest you can afford (or willing to pay) as it's a pain in the arse to find you are running out of space and and have to buy a new drive and install everything back on it (I've never had great success cloning drives so just do a complete fresh install).
As other people have mentioned I would go for the largest you can afford (or willing to pay) as it's a pain in the arse to find you are running out of space and and have to buy a new drive and install everything back on it (I've never had great success cloning drives so just do a complete fresh install).
Soldato
Once you have more than 1 of nvme m2
Then they really shine
Copying files to /from them slaughters 2.5ssds
Sometimes my file transfer window doesn't even get time to open lol
Then they really shine
Copying files to /from them slaughters 2.5ssds
Sometimes my file transfer window doesn't even get time to open lol
Associate
Question save making a new thread.
I've read the above I'm picking up a Sabrent Rocket for Steam and general storage.
Was thinking of picking up a 250 gb NVME drive just for the OS to use as a boot drive is this not advisable anymore then?
Thanks
I've read the above I'm picking up a Sabrent Rocket for Steam and general storage.
Was thinking of picking up a 250 gb NVME drive just for the OS to use as a boot drive is this not advisable anymore then?
Thanks
Question save making a new thread.
I've read the above I'm picking up a Sabrent Rocket for Steam and general storage.
Was thinking of picking up a 250 gb NVME drive just for the OS to use as a boot drive is this not advisable anymore then?
Thanks
I'm currently using a Samsung EVO 850 120GB SATA SSD. No issues and got 50GB left. I personally like keeping my OS drive as small as possible with all the other stuff elsewhere
Just today I ordered a Sabrent 2TB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280. It will be used as my games drive for now as seems hard to boot from this on my Z97 motherboard and as above like my OS drive smaller. Motherboard is also only PCIe 2x
My current drives;
C - EVO 850 120GB. OS
D - EVO 850 500GB. Games
E - Crucial M4 128GB. OS backup clone
G - EVO 850 250GB. Software & Docs
Media I have on external drives (and backed up on mechanical hdd)
When the Sabrent arrives, i'll probably clone the D: to it with Macrium