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SSD vs HDD for second hard drive

N

n00b2

n00b
Joined
May 31, 2015
Messages
13
Hi All

I am looking to buy a new laptop which has 2 hard drive bays. I am going to put the OS and apps on an SSD but want to know what people think I should do with the second hard drive where I will store mostly movies, music, documents, etc. Should I get another 1TB SSD or should I get 7200RPM hard drive or 5400RPM hard drive for this purpose. I am aware of the price differences between the options but want to know about the overall performance of each of the options. How much faster would the SSD be in reality for reading and writing large files, copying things to an external hard drive, etc? What would the impacts be on battery life, laptop cooling issues, lifespan of the drive for each of those options?

Thanks
 
A SSD will do everything just as well if not better.

Copying to an external drive will depend on the external drive. Almost any spinner external drive will write slower than modern 1tb+ 2.5" spinner drives can read. A SSD will write faster than any 2.5" drive. In real world usage, it depends on the file size. My rough estimation is that a SSD will write 2-5 times faster, though it will depend on the speed of your external drive, and whether it's a USB 2.0 or 3.0 drive.

A SSD will use less power and run cooler. However, if you hardly ever access your second drive, a 5400 RPM drive will spin down and use almost no energy like a SSD. I think most 7200 RPM laptop drives will do this as well, though some certainly do not.

Lifespan will probably be equivocal; both will probably outlast the laptop. Of course, a SSD would hold up better if the laptop was being moved around a lot.
 
Thanks for the reply. So basically an SSD pretty much has no negatives other than price? And the limiting factor for external drives is the external drive itself or USB 3.0 speed and not what the internal drive is?
 
n00b2 said:
Thanks for the reply. So basically an SSD pretty much has no negatives other than price? And the limiting factor for external drives is the external drive itself or USB 3.0 speed and not what the internal drive is?
Click to expand...

Price and size. We are starting to see some larger sizes, but HDD are still the better choice for large Data drives

No question that boot drive should be SSD, its faster, silent, low heat, low power, just as reliable.

If SSDs were the same price and capacity as HDD then nothing would use an HDD
 
I see. 1TB is enough for me so I'll probably go SSD for the second drive as well. Is there much difference between the cheaper 1TB SSD's such as the Crucial MX200 and Samsung EVO 850 and the more expensive ones the OEM is trying to sell?
 
The MX200 and Evo 850's are "not" "cheap" drives. They're some of the better drives in the consumer space. And they're probably superior to whatever the OEM is trying to sell you.
 
And they're probably superior to whatever the OEM is trying to sell you.
Click to expand...

I would say either are most likely superior to any SSD an OEM would try to sell you.
 
I thought they were cheap since the OEM is charging almost 3x as much for the same capacity drive (and similar to them for a hdd). If you guys reckon is it better then the OEM's drive its a no brainer decision then. Thanks for all the help!
 
I thought they were cheap since the OEM is charging almost 3x as much for the same capacity drive (and similar to them for a hdd).
Click to expand...

OEMs sell there base system at very low profit and make a big chunk of their profit by selling upgrades at many times what they pay for the upgrade. This also helps them pay for tech support.
 
Is this an Intel laptop? If so, it should have SRT.

Partition your SSD so that you have ~64GB of unallocated space, use the rest for OS, apps, games, etc. Install a HDD in your 2nd slot, and setup SRT acceleration using the unallocated space on the SSD. That would be as close to a "best of both worlds" solution as you are likely to find.

Of course, if you have money to burn, might as well just go dual SSD.
 
GotNoRice said:
Is this an Intel laptop? If so, it should have SRT.

Partition your SSD so that you have ~64GB of unallocated space, use the rest for OS, apps, games, etc. Install a HDD in your 2nd slot, and setup SRT acceleration using the unallocated space on the SSD. That would be as close to a "best of both worlds" solution as you are likely to find.

Of course, if you have money to burn, might as well just go dual SSD.
Click to expand...

I've never tried Intel SRT. Does it perform similar to those hybrid HDD's?
 
n00b2 said:
I see. 1TB is enough for me so I'll probably go SSD for the second drive as well. Is there much difference between the cheaper 1TB SSD's such as the Crucial MX200 and Samsung EVO 850 and the more expensive ones the OEM is trying to sell?
Click to expand...

thye are mid-high end SSDs and the MX200 is the bang for your buck champ

n00b2 said:
I've never tried Intel SRT. Does it perform similar to those hybrid HDD's?
Click to expand...

Intel RST is intels software raid and its actually what most people use. It works just fine. I'll be doing IRST of 2 1TB MX200 once they go on sale for 270 or less again. Then I can get rid of my 1 TB and 3 TB HDD and throw those into my NAS and other computers.
 
n00b2 said:
I've never tried Intel SRT. Does it perform similar to those hybrid HDD's?
Click to expand...

In my experience it works very well for what it is. I have many of my steam games, ones that I only play every now and then, on a pair of hard drives (in Raid 0) that are cached by an SSD. It works like you would imagine. The first time I load up a game or a level within a game, it is somewhat slow. If I access it again, it will load at essentially SSD speeds. That will remain the case until newer info pushes it out of cache.
 
GotNoRice said:
Partition your SSD so that you have ~64GB of unallocated space, use the rest for OS, apps, games, etc. Install a HDD in your 2nd slot, and setup SRT acceleration using the unallocated space on the SSD. That would be as close to a "best of both worlds" solution as you are likely to find.

Of course, if you have money to burn, might as well just go dual SSD.
Click to expand...

Exactly what I would have said.
 
n00b2 said:
I've never tried Intel SRT. Does it perform similar to those hybrid HDD's?
Click to expand...

If you don't need more than 2tb of space and money isn't a concern, get a SSD and don't worry about any of that stuff. 2tb SSDs are now available, and the 850 Evo was available for $600 during a recent sale at Fry's.
 
Space won't be an issue beyond 1-1.5tb for what it is being used for. I'm not short on money though if I can save money and get similar performance by doing something else with a HDD it's definitely worth considering. If I was to go down the route of Intel SRT I'm guessing it wouldn't really matter if I get a 5400RPM or 7200RPM HDD?
 
Not really. However, if you only use the HDD for storage purposes (movies, music, etc), then I wouldn't even bother with that. Intel SRT is really only useful if there are several programs that you have to put on the HDD and cannot put on the SSD due to lack of space on the SSD.
 
I do only SSD in my machine - and any file storage is put on cheap slow disk in a Synology Nas.
 
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