2 SSD options which one is best?

[urville]

Most people seem to like to buy a 120 to 500 SSD and then get a mechanical. I'm ready to move past mechanicals.

People seem to ignore the question and advise a mechanical in all the threads I searched and read. There will be no mechanicals here.

The question is: Is there any benefit to having two drives, with apps on one and the OS on the other? Like mechanicals? Clearly we avoid the mechanical part of the equation, but perhaps the controller or seek is still benefitted by being split between two drives still?

Option 1) Just buy a 1TB 850 Pro as the sole drive.
Option 2) Buy a 120GB 850 for the OS and a 500GB 850 SSD and put applications and data on it.

 

[Gingerbread]

No, there is no clear benefit, but you can run two 500GBs SSD in RAID 0 and you will get more performance out of it

 

[USAFRet]

No, there is no clear benefit, but you can run two 500GBs SSD in RAID 0 and you will get more performance out of it

No, you don't. In 99% of usage, anyway.

 

[USAFRet]

Most people seem to like to buy a 120 to 500 SSD and then get a mechanical. I'm ready to move past mechanicals.

People seem to ignore the question and advise a mechanical in all the threads I searched and read. There will be no mechanicals here.

The question is: Is there any benefit to having two drives, with apps on one and the OS on the other? Like mechanicals? Clearly we avoid the mechanical part of the equation, but perhaps the controller or seek is still benefitted by being split between two drives still?

Option 1) Just buy a 1TB 850 Pro as the sole drive.
Option 2) Buy a 120GB 850 for the OS and a 500GB and put applications and data on it.
Option

I much prefer 1 drive for the OS and applications, other drives for other things.
Why? OS on a drive. Applications on that same drive, because if/when you reinstall the OS, you need to reinstall the applications anyway.

Other things like music/video/downloads....do not need to live on an SSD. Your music library does not play any faster if it lives on the SSD.
And when you need to reinstall the OS drive...the drive with your music/video/etc is not touched.

 

[USAFRet]

My current main system has 5 drives:
250GB SSD - OS and applications
250GB SSD - photo work, mainly
960GB SSD - games, doc, music, video, and whatever else
120GB SSD - used to be the OS drive, now, a holding place for other stuff
3TB HDD - location for backups


The main music and video library lives on a whole different PC on the LAN.

 

[babernet_1]

I'm with you. I have only a 500GB SSD. Don't bother with raid 0, SSD's are fast enough. Even the new ones with doubled speed make no real noticeable difference. Just get a 1TB 850 EVO or 850 Pro and be done with it.

Backups should be at least on a different computer and should be in a different place in case there is a fire or something.

 

[Solandri]

Most people seem to like to buy a 120 to 500 SSD and then get a mechanical. I'm ready to move past mechanicals.

Stick with 250+ GB SSDs. The 120GB SSDs usually have half the number of flash dies operating in parallel as the 250+ ones, leading to slower performance. (500GB SSDs currently don't have more flash dies because the 250GB already maxes out SATA 3, and there isn't enough physical space on many of the smaller form factors to attach more dies.)

The question is: Is there any benefit to having two drives, with apps on one and the OS on the other? Like mechanicals? Clearly we avoid the mechanical part of the equation, but perhaps the controller or seek is still benefitted by being split between two drives still?

Not really. It helps on mechanical HDDs because they're so slow at random read/write. When the HDD has to switch from reading one file to another, it typically takes 12-18 ms. That's an eternity in computer CPU time. So if the HDD is busy retrieving something for the OS, it's effectively blocked from retrieving something for an app. It's why if you start a virus scan on a HDD computer, it basically becomes useless until the scan is finished. Putting the OS and apps on separate HDDs helps prevent OS read/writes from blocking app read/writes.

SSDs are so fast they have the opposite problem. They can retrieve small files faster than the computer can request them over the SATA interface. That's why NCQ dramatically speeds things up on SSDs. NCQ allows the computer to request multiple files at once from the SSD. Typical SSD 4k read/writes are around 25-70 MB/s, but with NCQ enabled they can hit 250-400 MB/s).

Don't bother with RAID 0 on SSDs. Their 4k read/writes are already so fast than the extra overhead from RAID can actually make them slower than a non-RAID SSD.

Option 1) Just buy a 1TB 850 Pro as the sole drive.
Option 2) Buy a 120GB 850 for the OS and a 500GB 850 SSD and put applications and data on it.

Option 1 is clearly better. Option 2 is out because it's a 120GB SSD.

If you want to save some money, you may want to do a modified Option 2 with a 250GB 850 Pro for the OS, and 500GB 850 EVO for apps and data. I can't think of many desktop use cases where the price of a 1TB SSD could be justified. If you need that much data storage, just put it on a cheap 3-4 TB HDD which spins down when not in use.

One other thing to keep in mind is that SSDs need about 15%-25% of their space kept empty for best performance. They can't overwrite a 1 with a 0, or 0 with a 1. That is, instead of going from 0 -> 1, they have to go 0 -> erased -> 1. The erased- > 1 step is very fast. But the 0 -> erased step is very slow (slower than a HDD), so they do it in the background while the SSD is not being used. If you don't have enough empty space, the SSD could run out of erased blocks, and be forced to do slow 0 -> erased -> 1 operations in real-time to satisfy your write requests.

 

[urville]

Well, it turns out i just realized they dont make a 1tb m.2 (I read m.2 is faster), so I think I will look to see if the 250/500 option is not more expensive.

 

[urville]

I read there is a program that makes sure you have the % free... i forget what its called, I have it bookmarked

 

[babernet_1]

Well, it turns out i just realized they dont make a 1tb m.2 (I read m.2 is faster), so I think I will look to see if the 250/500 option is not more expensive.

Yes, you can get a M.2 (b) drive that is about 2X faster than one on that SATA bus. But, it is not really noticeably faster. And it cost about 2X as much. The cheaper (b+m) M.2 drives that work off a SATA bus are about the same price as the bigger 2.5 inch drives, but, of course, are much smaller.

 

[urville]

So, if I understand this right. I'll probably love Samsung 850 Satas 2.5" drives. I can get m.2 but it will be same speed. Faster option is the 950 NVME or I buy a PCI-e slot drive which samsung doesnt appear to sell.

 

[babernet_1]

So, if I understand this right. I'll probably love Samsung 850 Satas 2.5" drives. I can get m.2 but it will be same speed. Faster option is the 950 NVME or I buy a PCI-e slot drive which samsung doesnt appear to sell.

Yes, the 950 NVME are M.2 (b). About 2X in price.

 

[urville]

MSI M7 has two m.2 slots any reason to use the 2.5s over the b+m m.2's?

 

[babernet_1]

MSI M7 has two m.2 slots any reason to use the 2.5s over the b+m m.2's?

Looks sweet! Just buy your two M.2 sticks and you are ready!

 

[Gingerbread]

MSI M7 has two m.2 slots any reason to use the 2.5s over the b+m m.2's?

The reason to use sata ports over m2 ports is that m2 uses x4 pci-e lanes and when the cpu works with 16 most (as skylake does so far) then if you use an m2, your GPU will run at x8 instead of x16, which is just numbers and does not reflect on the performance at all, so that's about it, however m2 slots can achieve higher speeds, which the current ssds can't utilize anyways.

 

[babernet_1]

MSI M7 has two m.2 slots any reason to use the 2.5s over the b+m m.2's?

The reason to use sata ports over m2 ports is that m2 uses x4 pci-e lanes and when the cpu works with 16 most (as skylake does so far) then if you use an m2, your GPU will run at x8 instead of x16, which is just numbers and does not reflect on the performance at all, so that's about it, however m2 slots can achieve higher speeds, which the current ssds can't utilize anyways.

You are wrong here. The Z170 has an extra PCIE3.0X4 for the M.2 slot. But only used if it is the M.2 (b) stick. Otherwise, the M.2 slot uses a SATA 3.0 port. But either way, the Skylake has a full PCIE 3.0 X16 for the graphics cards.