Should spend more and get a large SSD or a small SSD + a HDD ?

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Subzerok11

Gawd
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Aug 13, 2014
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Are most people who are getting new builds getting a small SSD & say like a 2B HDD ?

I'm currently rocking just a 2TB HDD. I'm kinda want to move to a SSD completely. I know there's samsung $750 2TB SDD but to expensive. I'd have to settle for a 1tb like this one for $350:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147374&ignorebbr=1

With a 1tb could get probably get away with not having to use my current 2tb as a backup/for whatever.

It seems the most popular size is around the 500GB's probably due to half the price of the 1tb. There's no disadvantage in getting a larger SSD over a small one other then price correct ?

Should I just buy the 1tb and just use that or get the 500gb and use my 2tb HDD also ? It would be nice to just have the SSD in the tower.
 
I could be wrong, but it was my understanding that data recovery from an SSD is quite expensive, I tend to use a 500GB boot drive(SSD) and then a 4TB data drive HDD.

When an SSD dies it just dies there is no warning or errors and that is my reasoning for keeping a data drive separate from my boot/game and software drive
up to you
 
Well important stuff I have on a external so it don't matter. By the way you make it seem like SSD's die prematurely or have a worst reputation of dying then a traditional HDD. I thought SSD's were more durable then HDD's ?
 
I thought SSD's were more durable then HDD's ?
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In general SSDs are significantly less likely to fail than hard drives however if a SSD fails you are less likely to be able to get your data back if you do not have a backup ( which you should regardless of your storage methods). Also a SSD tend to fail without warning.
 
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To be fair I've had quite a few HDDs fail without warning too.

I do small hdd + large hdd as well, it works great.
 
I know that a SSD won't necessarily boost fps in games, but it seriously reduces the load times right ?
 
It really depends on the game. My roomie has a 256GB SSD for the OS / some apps, and a 1TB HD for games / media. We tried a number of games on the SSD vs HD, and didn't notice much of a difference. WoW was the only one where it made a noticeable difference, and that was 1-4 seconds.
Having 32GB of memory for cache helps a lot too xD
 
OS wise though it's way more zippy, desktop boots much faster and programs start up faster right ?

Well if games dont really load faster then there's not much of a point get a larger SSD then, might as well use a separate HDD.
 
Subzerok11 said:
OS wise though it's way more zippy, desktop boots much faster and programs start up faster right ?

Well if games dont really load faster then there's not much of a point get a larger SSD then, might as well use a separate HDD.
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it depends the game but it is always nice to use an SSD for everything.
 
Subzerok11 said:
OS wise though it's way more zippy, desktop boots much faster and programs start up faster right ?

Well if games dont really load faster then there's not much of a point get a larger SSD then, might as well use a separate HDD.
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As a previous poster said: It really depends on the game. Some games benefit greatly with an SSD. Half-Life 2's load times go to almost nothing. Similar with Fallout: New Vegas, not much for load times on the SSD.
I've gone SSD only on my desktop, was totally worth the cost.
 
FnordMan said:
As a previous poster said: It really depends on the game. Some games benefit greatly with an SSD. Half-Life 2's load times go to almost nothing. Similar with Fallout: New Vegas, not much for load times on the SSD.
I've gone SSD only on my desktop, was totally worth the cost.
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I guess it depends on your use case, 500GB is large enough for all my games and programs to be loaded on the SSD and then any actual Data is on my hard drive. It just isn't cost effective for me to buy a large enough SSD to run everything.

WD Black 4TB HDD was under $200 when I bought it on sale

So for around the cost of an additional 500GB in SSD I got 4TBs.
 
zaniix said:
I guess it depends on your use case, 500GB is large enough for all my games and programs to be loaded on the SSD and then any actual Data is on my hard drive. It just isn't cost effective for me to buy a large enough SSD to run everything.

WD Black 4TB HDD was under $200 when I bought it on sale

So for around the cost of an additional 500GB in SSD I got 4TBs.
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Well, in my case i've got a separate server for bulk storage. (forgot to mention that) Anything in permanent storage gets burned to disk and moved to the server.
 
I think the ideal setup is actually a SSD for OS/applications/games, then at least 2 HDDs for data that doesn't require speed (music, movies, documents, etc) with one of those HDDs synching to the other one as a backup. Hard drive failures are only a question of WHEN not IF. Of course if you want a truly secure backup you would also want an off-site backup (which many online services now offer).

Of course you could probably get away with a large SSD and copying everything onto a HDD too. It's just a question of whether that SSD is big enough to have everything you want backed up on it. Having 2 drives isn't a backup if you don't have 2 copies of the same data.

FnordMan said:
As a previous poster said: It really depends on the game. Some games benefit greatly with an SSD. Half-Life 2's load times go to almost nothing. Similar with Fallout: New Vegas, not much for load times on the SSD.
I've gone SSD only on my desktop, was totally worth the cost.
Click to expand...

It makes a big difference in Battlefield games too. I've had BF4 on both my 7200rpm HDD and my SSD and it loads probably 4x faster on the SSD.
 
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New hard drives are fast, as fast as SSD's only their latency is higer.. My 2-5TB hard drives have transfer rates of 180mb to 225mb.. While my SSD is a from 250-500MB.. The only time I see a boost is like at times when a bunch of small files are loaded.. When the windows desktop comes up the hard drive takes like 5 seconds to show all the icons while with the SSD it is like a second.

I tried a JBOD card which turns the SSD into the first part of the hard drive.. So frequently used directories are placed on the SSD and all the rest fits on the hard drive. It shows up as a single drive and the card software moves the files around. I place some directories I want speeded up in the list so the card copies it to the SSD. Like the temp directory.. For large file copy, I abrely notice any difference in speeds.. hard drives will copy files as fast as SSD's.. You are talking about copying the entire SSD of 250GB or 500GB where you will notice like a 5-10 minute time difference.. But for like a 1GB file a difference of 1-5 seconds is not much...

The page file seems to be the one that takes up those annoying pauses that people notice.. Even if we dont use all the memory, windows seems to swap unused stuff into the file and there is a pause before the window comes up. Placing this file on the SSD still causes a pause but it is like a second or so faster.
 
1 year since I went from a 256GB to a 1TB SSD and that was a great move. I still have a HDD as a second drive though (a 6TB Red), only for media.
 
I had an OCZ ssd bought in November 2014 (they were acquired by toshiba Jan 2014). It was Vertex 460 480gb, die on me after 3 months of usage (probably no more than 100 hours on time, used MAYBE 150gb). If you value your data, dont go cheap on an SSD. Fuck ocz, even if its now owned by Toshiba.

That and like everyone else said, important data should be backed up to a hard drive or maybe even two if you have storage ocd.
 
It's really a cost thing for me. 3.5TB of SSD would destroy my personal computer expenditure budget. I much rather put the savings to other areas.
 
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