Question Advice on preferable storage setup

mazinyo

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Aug 19, 2009
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I bought a Intel 660P 500GB thinking it would be enough for what I need. Now, if what I read is correct, and its preferred not to fill up more than 75% to maintain fast performance, that leaves me with about 375GB to use. Considering games, windows, Office and other data, that wont leave me a lot of space, especially since games arnt getting smaller. Of course I could always play 1 game or 2 at a time and save space. I cant return the 500GB, so its pointless to buy 1 TB too since its too much storage.

1. Get another 120 GB just for windows, Office and all those small installation programs (pdf, AV, GPU drivers, etc ). Not sure how much this is cost effective.

2. Just install everything on my 500GB 660P M2 drive and move pics and big files to an external WD HDD
 
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If you choose option 1, most probably you'll have to reinstall everything, since you can't close selectively.
I'd go with option 2. You don't need "fast" access to these media files anyway. And if you're on a desktop (or have the 2.5" bay empty on the laptop), I'd go with internal HDD, and leave that WD for backups.
 
I bought a Intel 660P 500GB thinking it would be enough for what I need. Now, if what I read is correct, and its preferred not to fill up more than 75% to maintain fast performance, that leaves me with about 375GB to use. Considering games, windows, Office and other data, that wont leave me a lot of space, especially since games arnt getting smaller. Of course I could always play 1 game or 2 at a time and save space. I cant return the 500GB, so its pointless to buy 1 TB too since its too much storage.

1. Get another 120 GB just for windows, Office and all those small installation programs (pdf, AV, GPU drivers, etc ). Not sure how much this is cost effective.

2. Just install everything on my 500GB 660P M2 drive and move pics and big files to an external WD HDD


Not so sure about 1TB being to large.

I have a 1 TB SSD just for games and it's 50% full, and it just has games on it and that's it.

Why not just get another 500GB SSD just for your games?

Either one of these two are excellent choices.

PCPartPicker Part List
Storage: Crucial - MX500 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($69.85 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Samsung - 860 Evo 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($79.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $149.84
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-05-01 18:16 EDT-0400
 

USAFRet

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Moderator
OS and applications on one drive (your current 500GB), games and media files on other drives.

A 120GB SSD is a really bad choice these days.
The better manufacturers (Samsung, Crucial) don't even make them in that size anymore. And it WILL fill up far faster than you think. It never stays (just the OS).

Choices for the second drive - 1TB MX500 or 860 EVO.
 

mazinyo

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Aug 19, 2009
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Is it really true that i shouldnt fill up more than 75% of the drive?

I could get another 500gb, just thought it wouldnt make sense since 2x500 would cost more than a 1TB drive. UNLESS theres a problem to have windows and other apps on the same drive with games? or its better to separate them? I take it that a drive that stores games would write more than a drive with just windows and system apps? is there any benefit in having 2X500 vs 1TB?

By the way, using only 75% of a SSD in order to keep it faster is a tremendous waste of space. its so stupid. You pay for 1TB and can only use 750 if you want to keep it speedy. 250GB wasted. Just a waste of money
 
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USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Is it really true that i shouldnt fill up more than 75% of the drive?

I could get another 500gb, just thought it wouldnt make sense since 2x500 would cost more than a 1TB drive. UNLESS theres a problem to have windows and other apps on the same drive with games? or its better to separate them? I take it that a drive that stores games would write more than a drive with just windows and system apps? is there any benefit in having 2X500 vs 1TB?

By the way, using only 75% of a SSD in order to keep it faster is a tremendous waste of space. its so stupid. You pay for 1TB and can only use 750 if you want to keep it speedy. 250GB wasted. Just a waste of money
Yes, it is true. Don't go over about 75% capacity.
Why? This is to allow the TRIM function to work. And the basic way that SSD's function.

Unlike HDD's, and SSD doesn't go directly from a 1 to a 0.
It first must change that cell to a NULL value. 1 -> NULL -> 0.

Wear leveling. Each cell on the drive has only so many write cycles. And then it actually dies. Now...that number is a large one, but it IS finite.
Having free space allows the drive firmware to shuffle data around, so that it doesn't write to the same cells all the time. Conceptually, a little bit like defrag on a regular HDD.

Read here for what the TRIM function does: https://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/TRIM
 
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USAFRet

Titan
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So there is really no benefit whatsoever to store music, pics, data on a SSD?
Your music playlist does not play any faster if it lives on an SSD.

Pics? If you do a lot of image manipulation, and move a lot of pics back and forth between drives and locations, obviously SSD's are faster.
For basic storage and viewing? A single jpg opens in 1 sec from an HDD, maybe 0.5 sec from an SSD. Not something you actually notice.

My main system is all SSD. 6 different drives, each dedicated to some particular use.
CAD, image editing, video editing, application dev...
One of them is dedicated to cache space for the above applications.

But my music and video libraries live on the NAS box, on HDD's, accessed across the LAN.
My download folder is also on that NAS. Downloading a large ISO file (linux, for instance) is not any faster if it were saving to an SSD, vs the NAS box.

For those types of files, there is no real benefit of SSD vs HDD.