ssd/hdd combination recommendations and guidance please

[MSNBC22]

System finally arrived, but only has one ssd. I'd like to add at least one 2tb stick to the second m.2 slot and a 6-8tb hdd for games/movies. But after reading a few posts, I'm wondering whether I should use the 2tb stick for the games instead. I've always assumed that since everything gets loaded into ram, it doesn't matter where it sits when it's not being used. Also, should I even bother with an internal hdd at all? Wouldn't an external be fine?




Ryzen 7 5800x 3.8GHz
Radeon RX 6900XT
G. Skill Trident Z 32gb DDR4 3600 RGB
Seagate FireCuda 520 NVMe M.2 2280 ssd 1tb (ZP1000GM30002)
MPG X570S Edge Max Wifi(MS-7D53)

 

[Dan_D]

I wouldn't bother with a mechanical hard drive at all unless you absolutely need tons of space and can't afford to do it all in SSD's. The fact is that games cannot load completely into RAM and really never have been able to. Nor do they even do that unless you specifically create a RAM drive to do it. Think about it, Destiny 2 is 79GB. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) is 260GB for everything. Modern games will all fall between 50GB and 150GB in most cases. That much RAM would be cost prohibitive and even if it wasn't, these are mainly designed to stream from an SSD into memory and then execute from RAM. But understand that games are made for the lowest common denominator, which are consoles and lower end PCs.

But again, it does matter where the game loads from. Mechanical drives load considerably slower than SSD's do. With the way games stream from disk into RAM, you can end up with all kinds of hitching and stuttering in games. Some games are more sensitive to this than others. The short version is, no on really runs SSD's off of mechanical hard drives anymore. As storage for movies, files or data where performance isn't an issue, mechanical storage is fine. But for anything requiring decent IO performance, you really should be using an SSD. I'd use a 2TB drive for games and a mechanical for movies and stuff. As for internal versus external, I've found USB interfaces to be flaky at best, unreliable at worst. Though this depends on a lot of factors. I'd just go with an internal SATA drive as they are cheap enough and not difficult to install.

 

[FlawleZ]

X2 what Dan said. Many games will flat out stutter, hitch, and otherwise be a choppy mess running from a mechanical HDD. My Destiny 2 install is actually something like 130GB. I just installed AOE4, another 130 something GB.

 

[Ranulfo]

I've always assumed that since everything gets loaded into ram, it doesn't matter where it sits when it's not being used. Also, should I even bother with an internal hdd at all? Wouldn't an external be fine?

As others have stated, many games really need an ssd to run well. Mostly open world games, mmo's, things where you are loading in new data on the fly work best on ssd. Strategy games, not always a big deal to run it off of a hard drive besides initial load time. In the end, it all depends on your preferences. If you want a lot of games installed at once, a hdd is the only price/performance option that makes sense. SSD's just don't compare where $/GB is concerned. If you are going to game off of a hdd, get a 7200rpm drive, the WD Blacks or Seagate models. Steam and other game platforms make it fairly easy to swap games' installs around between drives. Given game sizes these days, ssd's need to catch up. 2TB drives don't last long when games are 100-200GB. Not everyone has the speed and/or bandwidth to constantly redownload those games either.

That or you get an hdd for internal storage for media, miscellanous files, back up. For my gaming systems, the ssd's are for the OS, games and a few programs that need or might as well be on ssd and don't take up much space. Everything else goes on the internal hdd. Having an internal backup of your OS ssd can be very helpful at times vs having it on an external or networked drive. I wouldn't recommend having an external usb hdd always connected to a computer for storage, it usually doesn't end well.

 

[MSNBC22]

Thanks for the input guys. This is the 2tb drive i'm looking at: https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Internal-Extreme-Performance-SB-ROCKET-NVMe4-2TB/dp/B07TN1MNJ4/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2K1PA41AEI9DK&keywords=sabrent+rocket+4+plus+2tb&qid=1640479353&s=electronics&sprefix=sabrentrocket+4,electronics,102&sr=1-3&tag=hardfocom-20
Ranulfo, so for hdd's I should look at WD Blacks and Seagate Barracudas only, what about the WD Blues, it even has "pc" in it's title. I haven't bought hardware in awhile. Sounds like the best thing to do is use the 2tb drive for games, I only plan to have 3-5 at most.

 

[blackmomba]

Copy the games you want fast storage for back and forth from your spinner to your SSD. Takes like 5 mins for big games, not even

 

[TheSlySyl]

I use Primocache for my game drive and love it. I have a 14tb WD as my base drive, a 512GB Corsair MP600 PCIE-E 4.0 as my NVME acceleration drive and also 8GB ramcache. I have my entire Steam/Epic game library on my spinner and whenever I want to play a game, it'll cache it into the NVME drive and also cache the most used bits onto ramcache and its the best of both worlds. It's pretty damn easy to setup and it prevents me from having to move shit around or redownload stuff, which is considerably more time consuming than just using a cache drive.
If I want to "force" something onto the cache before playing it (rarely necessary) I just tell steam to verify the files and it'll move the whole thing over. You rarely need the whole game on SSD though, especially games that have a ton of audio or video files that basically only ever need to be read once (at low speed) and then never again.

 

[Dan_D]

I'm just going to run NVMe SSD's only in the Alder Lake setup I'm building. I have a Gigabit internet connection so redownloading something isn't a big deal to me.

 

[Ranulfo]

Thanks for the input guys. This is the 2tb drive i'm looking at: https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Internal-Extreme-Performance-SB-ROCKET-NVMe4-2TB/dp/B07TN1MNJ4/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2K1PA41AEI9DK&keywords=sabrent+rocket+4+plus+2tb&qid=1640479353&s=electronics&sprefix=sabrentrocket+4,electronics,102&sr=1-3&tag=hardfocom-20
Ranulfo, so for hdd's I should look at WD Blacks and Seagate Barracudas only, what about the WD Blues, it even has "pc" in it's title. I haven't bought hardware in awhile. Sounds like the best thing to do is use the 2tb drive for games, I only plan to have 3-5 at most.

The Blue's are probably fine, as long as its 7200rpm. They will just be 2 year warranty vs 5 year of the Black models. Seagate usually has a 2TB hdd for around $60 that is 7200rpm.

I'm just going to run NVMe SSD's only in the Alder Lake setup I'm building. I have a Gigabit internet connection so redownloading something isn't a big deal to me.

It wouldn't be a big deal either for me if I didn't have a bandwidth cap of 1.2TB per month.

 

[pavel]

Does anyone have any thoughts on these external SSDs? I am wondering why ppl buy them or why they are on the market? Couldn't you just buy a SSD and place it in your own enclosure? They're more convenient? I think it sucks that 2.5" SSDs are so expensive still. I don't like HDD platter drives anymore. The moving parts, they seem to run hotter and yes, the best part is the capacity and price - 4TB HDD is still way cheaper than comparable SSDs.