2 SSD vs SSD + HDD

[paulsch]

I often see the recommendation to use an SSD for your OS and an HDD for your files.

If you ignore price, would 2 SSD's be better than an SSD + an HDD?
Is there a benefit to storing your files on an HDD over an SSD?
If you could afford a 1TB SSD, would it be better to store files and your OS on just the one drive, or would it be more beneficial to store your OS and files on separate SSD's?
Why?

I am building a computer for engineering software.

 

[volcanoscout]

If price is not an issue, one big SSD is preferable to two of them or to an SSD/HDD combo, although you will still want a backup drive, preferably external. Two SSDs in RAID can be marginally faster, but can also be more finicky. Using one small SSD for OS and frequent use files, and an HDD for bulk storage and media is usually a compromise between capacity and price on the one hand and performance on the other. If you can afford a big SSD you get the capacity and performance without having to screw around.

 

[neon neophyte]

If price is no object, feel free to use nothing but SSD.

People use hard drives for storage because it is much cheaper.

 

[tigerwild]

I am afraid your question isn't a good one to answer as you are asking for an opinion where limiting factors don't matter. I will attempt to clarify and enlighten, despite this.

1a. If you approach data storage from the perspective of 'WHEN it fails can I get that data back somehow' then no SSD (NAND flash based) is a good solution. You can recover data from platters on spinning disk HDDs if you are really desperate to do so.

1b. If you approach data storage from the perspective of 'SPEED is paramount' then nearly all SSDs as above are better than spinning disk HDDs. Of course you removed the factor of cost, without which this is solidly true, and with the lines blur dramatically as you start talking about capacity.

2. In parts 1a and 1b above I point out that YES there are some advantages to spinning disk HDDs vs SSDs.

3. There are a lot of factors which grey the answer to the 1TB storage question. First, if you are a Windows user, where are you going to put your swap, temp, and various other constantly written to files? This matters when it comes to the wear and tear on the drive. Cost not being a factor, get an SLC NAND flash SSD (enterprise capabilities and cost) and you will have years of use without replacing the drive. Otherwise, if you want to save money buy an MLC NAND flash SSD (consumer, high end) which has dramatically less writes capability in its MTBF (time until it fails). TLC and other multi cell tech in the NAND flash arena fair even worse, wearing out dramatically faster the more that you are writing to it.

Ideally I would personnaly build my system with a TON of RAM, a moderately sized enterprise class SSD for the operating system and high write operations where the files written MUST be maintained just in case of a power failure etc. Then finally a MLC NAND flash SSD for everything else that you may want high speed access to, but are most likely reading from 80% of the time or more. Then I would setup a RAM disk that loads on startup. I would change all variables to set swap, temp, and useless to me logs to the RAM disk, allowing me to increase the life of the SSDs by simply not wasting write operations to them.

All of this is assuming that I didn't care if the drive failed outright, as if it did I would further setup a RAID 5, or RAID 1+0, or simply move back to lower cost spinning disk on RAID arrays.

 

[bambiboom]

I often see the recommendation to use an SSD for your OS and an HDD for your files.

If you ignore price, would 2 SSD's be better than an SSD + an HDD?
Is there a benefit to storing your files on an HDD over an SSD?
If you could afford a 1TB SSD, would it be better to store files and your OS on just the one drive, or would it be more beneficial to store your OS and files on separate SSD's?
Why?

I am building a computer for engineering software.

paulsch,

Those in a hurry may simply skip down to: "In Summary:"

I had an identical conversation with myself recently. In an HP z420 (Xeon E5-1620) I bought my first SDD a year ago, a 250GB Samsung 840 ,and installed the OS and applications on it, and placed my files on a WD Black 6GB/s 1TB with three partitions.

This proved to be somewhat of a miscalculation as the file loading was more or less at the HD speed. It occurred to me that I should have active files on the SSD. The problem was, my C:\, thanks to page files and restore points and etc., was 170GB and the Samsung formatted was about 226GB. If I left an overhead to C:\ and made a partition for files, it would be limited to about 20GB. However, I did make a 20GB partition to try it and loaded only 8GB of active projects. I unfortunately did not align the partition properly- the partition MB total should be divisible by 4096, so I wasn't having the full benefit off the SSD speed, but I could see that having the OS, applications, and active files on the SSD is the best situation for performance.

However, I am still conservative in my belief - which may or may not be justified- that files are safer on a mech'l drive. I also feel quite strongly that keeping files in a partition is better from an organizational standpoint- with backup software, the whole partition can be copied. My brother recently gave me a Dell Precision but the price was that I had to extract all the data files off it. The 20GB over 5 DVD's was tedious work as everything was on the C: drives and I had to skip around in Win Explorer and check every folder and do searches by file extension.

As I was preparing for my annual reloading of everything last month decided to experiment, with lessons form the year using the SSD. I bought an Intel 730 480GB (chosen as this is an enterprise drive with a 5 year warranty and extreme memory overhead) and my plan- with a now slimmed down 122GB C:\ was to have a 160-180GB C:\ and the ~300GB partition for active files and then configure backup to the three partition on the WD Black. The 300GB is actually far surplus to need as everything (excluding sound recordings on a dedicated system) I've done on the computer since 1993 comprises only about 80GB. Having a 1TB drive and only producing 80GB in 20 years makes me wonder if I've worked hard enough! I also purchased Acronis True Image and my idea is to have the active files on the SSD and have daily incremental backup to the mech'l drive. I've been lazy over the years and do haphazard backing up but it's time now to get organized.

I recently purchased a used Dell Precision T5500 as backup, and rendering system and I'd hoped to be wiser in it's configuration. This has a PERC 6/i SAS controller- and I found a reasonably priced 300GB 15K SAS drive that is faster than some early generation SSD's. The Samsung 840 from the z420 -and the Quadro 4000 replaced by a K2200 will go to the T5500 and I'll have a 50-60GB active file partition on the SSD and backup to a pair of the 300GB SAS drives in RAID 1. I think this will provide a good combination of complete access to everything, performance, and protective redundancy.

In Summary: I suggest considering a 480 to 512GB SSD, setting appropriately scaled OS/application and active file partitions and configuring automatic incremental back up to an appropriately scaled pair of mech'l HD's in RAID 1 containing all files, both active and archived.

What is your proposed system configuration, software and intended use?

If you are on a tight budget, as a result of helping a friend with a Matlab system, I might recommend a tactic to have a good scientific system at reasonable cost.

Cheers,

BambiBoom

HP z420 (2014) > Xeon E5-1620 quad core @ 3.6 / 3.8GHz > 24GB DDR3 ECC 1600 RAM > Quadro K2200 (4GB)> Intel 730 480GB > Western Digital Black WD1003FZEX 1TB> M-Audio 192 sound card > Linksys AE3000 USB WiFi > 2X Dell Ultrasharp U2715H 2560 X 1440 > Windows 7 Professional 64 >
[ Passmark Rating = 4402 > CPU= 9280 / 2D= 7971 / 3D=3480 / Mem= 2558 / Disk= 4498]

Dell Precision T5500 > Xeon X5680 six -core @ 3.33 / 3.6GHz, 24GB DDR3 ECC 1333 > Quadro 4000 (2GB ) > PERC 6/i SAS/ SATA controller > Samsung 840 250GB / 2X Seagate Cheetah 15K 300GB SAS > M-Audio 192 sound card > Linksys WMP600N PCI WiFi > Windows 7 Professional 64> HP 2711x 1920 x 1080 < system configuration in process

2D, 3D CAD, Image processing, rendering, architecture, industrial design, graphic design, written projects [ AutoCad, Revit, 3ds Max, VRay, Solidworks, Sketchup, Adobe CS, Corel Technical Designer, WordPerfect, MS Office ]