Best drive setup for gaming + recording/streaming setup?

[xDarkxIdealsx]

So i currently have a high power gaming pc (I7 5960X @ 4.5ghz, GTX TITAN X @ 1,500mhz: Both watercooled with EK waterblocks, 16GB DDR4 2800mhz Corsair Dominator Platinum, Asus Rampage V Extreme Mobo) and the one weak link in the setup is my Storage.

I currently only have a 500GB WD Blue 7200rpm HDD drive. It seems to be acting up quite a bit though for unknown reasons, it will regularly hit 99% usage or 100% usage for seemingly no reason when the biggest drive usage programs only use 2 to 4mbps at most etc.. and i'm having quite a bit of problems with using Nvidia Shadowplay to record gameplay. I did some recordings of Dark Souls II with the game at max settings 1440p and Reshade + SweetFX 2.0 running, but the recording set to go at 1080p 60fps 35mbps bitrate, and i get random stuttering at certain points in the video playback (not in the game itself, just the recording). It kinda seems like a Hard Drive issue as a TITAN X + 8 core 5960X both overclocked should be plenty of power to run the game and it never dips below 60fps according to the fps counter, this is further backed up by the fact that Crystal Disk Mark is all over the place; sometimes i get 70mbps read and ~50mbps write (sequential), and others it goes as high as 115mbps read and ~105mbps read (sequential), even ATTO benchmark caps out at just over 100mbps no matter the size (4kb, 1024kb etc..)

So it seems that the drive is causing this weird stuttering that only happens when playing back the video (no stuttering in the actual game). I've read similar threads saying upgrading to SSD etc.. fixed it, but that recording to an SSD will reduce it's life. So my question is; since I'm planning on getting an SSD anyway as a boot drive, should i

A) Get just a 250GB SSD, or 500GB if i can afford.

or

B) Get the 250GB SSD, and then get a 2nd 500GB drive to use or perhaps put in RAID0 to increase performance


I figured that having 2 hard drives + the SSD might reduce the load during recording/streaming. I could have windows and all system operations only taking up usage on the SSD, then have the Game itself playing on my current Hard Drive or the SSD, and use the 3rd drive (also HDD) just for recordings so it wouldn't have other things taking up usage.

Or i thought maybe running 2 HDD's in RAID0 would increase performance enough that it wouldn't cause this stuttering problem.

I've done a bunch of things to check the drive, and i can't figure out what's wrong with it, CHKDSK said there were no bad sectors etc.., Antirus scan came up clean, it was defragmented just recently (only 3% fragmented now) so i'd appreciate help.

 

[firefoxx04]

I would not record onto an SSD. It is wasteful because it is footage you will just edit and recreate. SSDs have a limited amount of writes they can handle.

I would get the biggest SSD you can afford for OS and program/game storage. I would then get a hard drive that is big enough to hold any video, audio, extra games, recorded footage.

RAID0 is fine but I would not use it for recording because if one drive dies, you lose the recorded game play. You will be hard pressed to find a modern hard drive that is not fast enough to handle high bit rate recording, especially when the OS and games are running off of the SSD.

 

[xDarkxIdealsx]

I would not record onto an SSD. It is wasteful because it is footage you will just edit and recreate. SSDs have a limited amount of writes they can handle.

I would get the biggest SSD you can afford for OS and program/game storage. I would then get a hard drive that is big enough to hold any video, audio, extra games, recorded footage.

RAID0 is fine but I would not use it for recording because if one drive dies, you lose the recorded game play. You will be hard pressed to find a modern hard drive that is not fast enough to handle high bit rate recording, especially when the OS and games are running off of the SSD.

Yeah this one is fairly modern but appears to be having trouble with recording despite being a modern one like you mentioned. I can't for the life of me figure out if it's just a dying drive or what.

For the record it's a Western Digital Blue WD5000AAKX-08ERMA0 drive (it appears to be this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA85V3R94997 )

I don't have a ton of money after buying all the stuff i already have, so i can't afford TOO much storage. A 250GB SSD will cost me just over $80, and a 500GB one $150. Or i could get the 250GB SSD for $80, and then get a 2nd 500GB HDD for $50, for a total cost of $130.

Which option would be best seems to depend on whether this current HDD i have is dying or not. If it's failing then i might as well get a 250GB SSD + 500GB HDD so i can have the recordings on a seperate drive once this one fails. If this HDD i have now ISN'T failing, then it'd probably be better to get a 500GB SSD for games + OS, then record onto the drive. Just can't seem to figure out which...

 

[hst101rox]

Look at the SMART report for the drive.
I'd get a 500GB SSD and put everything on it, including your games. It'll load much faster. Perhaps record to a mechanical drive, if you want. An MLC/TLC SSD will handle a couple hundred TBs of writes before starting to wear out so I wouldn't worry about it. By the time it does, even if you are recording to it every day, if you were to buy another one of the same model on say Ebay in good condition, it wouldn't be worth much of anything anyway so who cares. 5+years at least.
If you were to get a new mechanical drive too, get 2TB or bigger, otherwise you are paying more/GB. I see a Hitachi 7200RPM 2TB drive on EBay new for $56 shipped.

 

[xDarkxIdealsx]

Look at the SMART report for the drive.
I'd get a 500GB SSD and put everything on it, including your games. It'll load much faster. Perhaps record to a mechanical drive, if you want. An MLC/TLC SSD will handle a couple hundred TBs of writes before starting to wear out so I wouldn't worry about it. By the time it does, even if you are recording to it every day, if you were to buy another one of the same model on say Ebay in good condition, it wouldn't be worth much of anything anyway so who cares. 5+years at least.
If you were to get a new mechanical drive too, get 2TB or bigger, otherwise you are paying more/GB. I see a Hitachi 7200RPM 2TB drive on EBay new for $56 shipped.

How about this one? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148767

Do you think it would perform decent for recordings? If not then i could always put games on that and recordings on my western digital one.

I found one for a pretty good deal used for $15 for the 500GB, or $32 for the 1TB. I'm not super happy about the only 16MB cache on the 500GB, but the 1TB is 64mb cache which would be fine.

 

[hst101rox]

Should do fine for recordings unless the drive is doing a lot of random operations at once (like multiple file operations simultaneously), that's the weakness the mechanical drives of course.
If you're not afraid of Ebay... just a bit more price but 2TB instead of .5TB. 500GB is rather small these days, you'll eventually want more space. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hitachi-Ultrastar-A7K2000-HUA722020ALA330-2-TB-Internal-7200-RPM-3-5-/121678766600?hash=item1c549ea208:g:4jMAAOSwsLtVfvi1

Wait, you found a 1TB for $32, that's a good deal, but still cheaper/GB to get the 2TB linked above.

Summary: SSDs are awesome and don't worry about writes because by the time it may be worn out, you'll be a lot older and you won't care.
Hard drive sweet spot for $/GB is 2-4TB I think.

 

[xDarkxIdealsx]

Should do fine for recordings unless the drive is doing a lot of random operations at once (like multiple file operations simultaneously), that's the weakness the mechanical drives of course.
If you're not afraid of Ebay... just a bit more price but 2TB instead of .5TB. 500GB is rather small these days, you'll eventually want more space. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hitachi-Ultrastar-A7K2000-HUA722020ALA330-2-TB-Internal-7200-RPM-3-5-/121678766600?hash=item1c549ea208:g:4jMAAOSwsLtVfvi1

Wait, you found a 1TB for $32, that's a good deal, but still cheaper/GB to get the 2TB linked above.

Summary: SSDs are awesome and don't worry about writes because by the time it may be worn out, you'll be a lot older and you won't care.
Hard drive sweet spot for $/GB is 2-4TB I think.

I broke down and picked up one of the real cheap but good speed SSD's they just released on amazon. They're made by PNY, but have pretty much IDENTICAL performance to the Samsung 850 EVO's. They had a TLC NAND version which was $57 for 240GB, or $114 for 480GB (PNY CS1311), and then they had the slightly more expensive "gaming" themed one, the CS2211 which was $64 for 240GB or $124 for 480GB, but it had more reliable and longer lasting write endurance MLC NAND and a 4 year warranty vs 3 year on the cheaper. I also had a $25 amazon credit so i picked it up for $110 including tax and 1 day shipping (only 3.99, why not).

So i'll have ~450GB of usable SSD space on that drive to put my games on and use as a boot drive for windows etc.. and i can use the WD Blue for backup stuff, presumably if all my windows programs and games are running on a separate drive i can have the entire ~100mbps transfer speeds for my recordings alone. Unfortunately that $110 spent on the SSD cleaned me out for now, so i can't afford another HDD to RAID or anything etc.. but meh, it's fine. I would've payed $25 more for the 850 EVO anyway, so i saved something.

These PNY drives really are good though, reviews benchmark them at between 525 and 550mbps read and 500 to 520mbps write (sequentials) so it's pretty dead on equal to the 850 EVO but with longer MTBF due to the MLC, and uses the same quad core Phison controller that the new Corsair Neutron drives use. Kinda miss the lack of V-NAND, but that's more of a cool gimmick than anything useful.

 

[hst101rox]

Wow that is inexpensive. I wonder when Sandforce 3xxx controller SATA SSDs will finally come out. Yeah at 480GB I would choose the MLC one as well. But at 960GB I would have stuck with the TLC one, not worth the price difference. Wouldn't tell the performance difference. Less write durability but it's still a big drive so can handle a lot still. V-NAND is just a thing. Xpoint memory is a thing too and would be very useful. Have fun with it