Question Are 7200RPM HDDs Still Fast Enough for Modern Gaming

[Gamefreaknet]

I'm looking to upgrade my laptop internal storage capacity however whilst I do already plan to get a 4TB SSD ( Fanxiang S880 ) to replace my current 1TB SSD I am also considering upgrading my SATA Capacity at the same time.

I could go for a 4TB SATA SSD for around £220ish or for the same price a 7200rpm 16TB Seagate IronWolf Pro ( or an 18TB Toshiba MG09 512e - just under £300ish).

Whilst a SATA SSD would be faster I'm pretty certain 7200rpm is still sufficient for decently running games (Forza 5, Modded Minecraft, COD Warzone, etc...)?

 

[kanewolf]

I'm looking to upgrade my laptop internal storage capacity however whilst I do already plan to get a 4TB SSD ( Fanxiang S880 ) to replace my current 1TB SSD I am also considering upgrading my SATA Capacity at the same time.
I could go for a 4TB SATA SSD for around £220ish or for the same price a 7200rpm 16TB Seagate IronWolf Pro ( or an 18TB
Toshiba MG09 512e - just under £300ish).
Whilst a SATA SSD would be faster I'm pretty certain 7200rpm is still sufficient for decently running games (Forza 5, Modded Minecraft, COD Warzone, etc...)?

HDDs make some sense for desktops. IMO, they don't make sense for laptops.

 

[Lutfij]

Get an SSD that serves as your game library. HDD's are better as storage only. You'd be better off replacing the 2.5" HDD with a large capacity 2.5" SSD. To add, that 3.5" drive won't fit in any laptop from the past decade.

I'm pretty certain 7200rpm is still sufficient for decently running games (Forza 5, Modded Minecraft, COD Warzone, etc...)?
Out of curiosity, what does etc entail?

 

[Gamefreaknet]

Get an SSD that serves as your game library. HDD's are better as storage only. You'd be better off replacing the 2.5" HDD with a large capacity 2.5" SSD. To add, that 3.5" drive won't fit in any laptop from the past decade.

I'm pretty certain 7200rpm is still sufficient for decently running games (Forza 5, Modded Minecraft, COD Warzone, etc...)?
Out of curiosity, what does etc entail?

Etc... basically just any other game I could've listed but the list would've gone on too long. Would I be better still going for the 4TB SATA SSD then and potentially expanding out further storage to an External drive rack (like the Sabrent 10 Bay Rack). [My laptop has a Thunderbolt 3 Port I'd use to connect to the rack since it only requires 10 Gbps between the rack and the PC]
8TB SATA SSDs start at around £500+

Generally what I'm "following" is: Get more storage than you're going to need for a while, you essentially now have a ton of excess storage for whenever you next need it
instead of
Get smaller storage upgrades that cost less at the time, replace them later on when you next need an upgrade.
So rather than jumping from 1TB SSD to 2TB SSD (and overall spending more) going straight for a 4/8TB SSD.

 

[Misgar]

for the same price a 7200rpm 16TB Seagate IronWolf Pro ( or an 18TB Toshiba MG09 512e - just under £300ish).

I'd expect both of those drives to have transfer rates faster than 200Mbytes/sec at the outer edge of the platters, probably faster. I tested a couple of 8TB Toshiba drives with Hard Disk Sentinel and transfer rates started at 250MB/s, dropping to 120MB/s at the innermost cylinders.

I know 250MB/s is only half the speed of a 2.5" SATA SSD and random small file speeds will be even slower, but if you're simply loading a game into RAM, you might get away with a high capacity hard disk.

If you have any other modern hard disks of at least 6TB capacity lying around (3.5" 7200RPM) try loading a few games after running CrystalDiskMark and HDTune to check their speed.

 

[Moonstick2]

For modern gaming, no.

More and more games are either mandating or highly recommending SSDs. Plenty of complaints out there about stuttering and so on that go away when the user upgrades their HDD to SSD. HDDs struggle to keep up with the amount and size of assets a modern game loads on the fly. Plus in a laptop where it's your only storage, the HDD performance is going to suffer as the heads keep jumping around to service the OS in the background.

An SSD isn't faster than an HDD, it's faster!!! I haven't used HDD in my PC for something like 12 years, and I was stunned when I discovered how long some people were waiting to load levels on HDD-based PCs or consoles.