Need recommendation for storage drive primarily for games/photos

[Stevarian]

Hello, I am running out of storage space on my PC, and would like to get a 2 - 4 TB storage drive. My primary use is for games, and photos. I have had my current machine for a few years, and in that time I added a couple of smaller SSD's (bought a long time ago, one is 512 GB, the other 128), and then more recently a Crucial MX 500 1 TB. With the size of new AAA titles even the Crucial is starting to run out of space. I am thinking it would be more cost effective to go for a 2 - 4 TB HDD.

What drive would you recommend? I found a refurbished HGST Ultrastar on Amazon for $68.88 that gets good reviews, but I am a little hesitant on a refurbished drive.
Thanks in advance!

 

[sinisterDei]

Personal opinion - unless something forces my hand, I won't buy refurbished equipment that has moving parts. Nothing with a fan, or spinning platter. I don't have a problem buying used equipment, like from someone I know, but lots of online vendor's idea of "refurbishing" is to make sure it powers on, then put it in a box and sell it.

If you're comfortable with shuffling games between your decently sized SSD and the hard drive, then almost any drive will work. If you're going to actually load games from the hard drive directly, you'll want a 7200RPM drive. It'll still be painful compared to a SSD, but at least less so.

I wouldn't recommend going that route though - the directly loading games from the HDD route. If you're not 'techy' and don't fancy the idea of juggling data back and forth to your SSD, then honestly your best option is probably just to get another SSD, or to make sure to only store non-game things on the mechanical drive like photos/videos/whatever. I've got a 6TB drive in my PC that I use for shadowplay records, ISOs, and my Documents/Pictures/Videos/etc folders.

You can get a non-enterprise 4TB mechanical drive new for as low as $90 on Newegg. Avoid the Barracuda ST4000DM004 that is $95- despite its extra cache, it's a SMR drive and will exhibit 'weird' performance issues under intensive writes. And I wouldn't get an 'enterprise' oriented drive because they can be physically loud.

If you go the SSD route, the biggest SATA SSD you can afford is what I would recommend. $100 gets you a SATA SSD from various brands, while $200 gets you 2TB.

If you do want too buy used, check out the FS/FT forums here on H. I haven't listed them yet, but I have both some 1TB SSDs and some 4TB HDDs that I'll be getting rid of and just haven't gotten around to listing yet, and lots of other folks have stuff for sale as well!

 

[Stevarian]

You can get a non-enterprise 4TB mechanical drive new for as low as $90 on Newegg. Avoid the Barracuda ST4000DM004 that is $95- despite its extra cache, it's a SMR drive and will exhibit 'weird' performance issues under intensive writes. And I wouldn't get an 'enterprise' oriented drive because they can be physically loud.

Thank you very much for the advice. I have read good things about the WD Blue drives, but was hoping for a 7200 rpm drive, and the WD Blue 4tb is 5400. I am glad you told me about that Barracuda.

 

[sinisterDei]

Thank you very much for the advice. I have read good things about the WD Blue drives, but was hoping for a 7200 rpm drive, and the WD Blue 4tb is 5400. I am glad you told me about that Barracuda.

No problem!

If you are used to having your games on SSD, moving them to a mechanical drive - any mechanical drive, even like a 15K one - is going to be *painful*. Doom 2016 takes like... 6+ actual minutes to load on a mechanical drive. I feel like the loading time of like 45 seconds is excessive on a SSD, having it be literally long enough to go to the bathroom, wash hands, and grab a drink from the fridge before it is done is not something I can deal with. The difference between 5400 and 7200 is like... 20% at best, so going for 5400 isn't the worst problem in the world.

 

[MrGuvernment]

How important is this data? Considered say an external 2 drive RAID 1 NAS or something?

Also with the density of newer larger drives, 5400 RPM vs 7200 RPM, while a different, both these days can do 100MB+ second easily for larger transfers, it is the random 4k read/writes that matter.

 

[Stevarian]

How important is this data? Considered say an external 2 drive RAID 1 NAS or something?

Also with the density of newer larger drives, 5400 RPM vs 7200 RPM, while a different, both these days can do 100MB+ second easily for larger transfers, it is the random 4k read/writes that matter.

The data will not be that important. It would primarily be games, most of which can be re-downloaded if needed. Photos and docs would be backed up to USB drive, or I have a smaller external storage drive that I could use.
I am not "with it" enough to have even thought about your suggestion of an external 2 drive RAID 1 NAS....LOL. It sounds like it would be overkill for what I am thinking of using it for. Thank you!