Question 120GB SSD Enough for Windows 10 x64 & Dota 2 Only?

[Shenik]

Guys,

i'm planning to get an 120GB SSD (tight on my budget), was wondering if it will be enough for Windows 10x64 and DOTA 2 ONLY, i do not use the laptop for Gaming, its just DOTA 2. so there will not be any future games or apps added + i have the regular 1TB HDD on my laptop for other apps if needed.

 

[CountMike]

Windows 10 would use about 30GB if left stock, DOTA2 about 15GB which should leave more than enough space of 111 GB that will be available after windows installation.

 

[Shenik]

Windows 10 would use about 30GB if left stock, DOTA2 about 15GB which should leave more than enough space of 111 GB that will be available after windows installation.

Thanks.

but i have seen in few posts, people say that even though 120GB is advertised, the usable is only around 80-90GB? i dont know the technical details of it, is there any truth to that?

 

[retroforlife]

The way SSD work the more free cells the better it can manage wear and tare some have a unusable part for this personally I would try get a slightly bigger SSD so it has a better life span 🤔

 

[iMatty]

Kingston are not the best ssd's out there, but the price they are begin sold at is worth it.
256Gb is really sweet spot, a huge improvement over an HDD.

 

[CountMike]

Thanks.

but i have seen in few posts, people say that even though 120GB is advertised, the usable is only around 80-90GB? i dont know the technical details of it, is there any truth to that?

It's not only SSDs, HDDs are like that too. 120GB is what manufacturers say as they count 1KB as 1000 bytes while windows use 1024. Just that brings available capacity to 117GB. After you install windows it will also make few other partitions which reduce usable space in C: partition to about 111GB. Windows folder and associated folders and files will take about 30GB. For proper windows operation another 10% or 10GB (whichever is less) should be left empty all the time. That leaves you enough free space for DOTA and even more.
So, if Windows + DOTA 2 is your only goal, 120GB is more than enough. You could save another 10GB+ or so by disabling Hibernation if you don't want to use power saving modes like sleep and fast startup. Just paste "powercfg.exe /hibernate off" into Command prompt(as administrator) and it wil delete hyberfile right away.

 

[jnsupes]

I agree that 120 GB is plenty of space for what you plan on doing. As others said the space you lose will be bit more. I have a few programs installed on my SSD and Windows 10.

My SSD was a 500 GB but only shows up as a total of 465 GB that Windows can use. Then those few programs are just game launchers like Steam with the actual games being on my HDDs. The programs and OS bring my total down to 413 GB.

So, just to give you an idea, you could potentially lose ten percent of that stated capacity to bring you close to 110 GB and then the OS would take up another 20 GB or a bit more/less depending on versions and such. Still even after everything is setup you should end up with 80 - 90 GB for your game and other stuff.

Regarding windows partitioning taking up space, you can stop the partitioning if you want (I did that in my clean install I did a few months ago because I don't have any use for a partition taking up space because if the drive fails then it fails and I would just replace it.

It is kind of important to note that with SSDs the way they move data around (especially in the newer data types that have helped make them cheaper) is that you never want to make them too full of data where they can't easily do their job of shuffled data around (they shuffle the data to make it easier to access data that is still on the drive while you may have deleted other things). When they have too much data on the drive without enough buffer, your read/write times will drastically worsen. But as long as you have probably 10 GB or so of free space (I don't know the exact amount but we'll say roughly ten percent of the capacity) you should be fine.

Long story short, 120 GB is fine for your needs.

 

[USAFRet]

So much incorrect here:

120GB drive. Says so right on the box.
Once you put it in the PC, BAM! Windows is telling me it is 111BG. What the....

That is simply a difference in reporting units.
Base 10 vs Base 2.
Human vs computer.

It's not partitioning, its not any software you've loaded on it, its not broken.

So, you really only have 111GB. Being an SSD, you need to keep some free space on it. About 20%.
So that means you really only have 85GB or so for you and the OS to use.

Taking the above example usage from jnsupes - 465GB - 413GB = 52GB
Out of the actual 85GB usable space you have, that 52GB consumed would only leave ~33GB.
Not a lot, is it?

I would NOT recommend a 120GB drive, not even for "only the OS".
Especially at todays prices.
250GB or larger, or don't bother.