Discussion Do you use all your storage?

[Dj0gany]

Hi,so this is a question for people who have 5TB + storage, or 5 or more SSD's/HDD's, do you actually use all of your storage, or are you just playing it safe by never running out of storage?
Are there any benefits with less storage used?

 

[USAFRet]

Hi,so this is a question for people who have 5TB + storage, or 5 or more SSD's/HDD's, do you actually use all of your storage, or are you just playing it safe by never running out of storage?
Are there any benefits with less storage used?

For SSD's, you don't want to fill them up anyway.

My current 7 drives, all SSD:

Each physical drive has its own use.
One of the 250GB 840 EVO (K or E) is about to be replaced with a 1TB 860 EVO.

 

[Dj0gany]

So from what i see you use around half of your storage.
How much did you pay for all of them?
Any benefits/dissadvantages of using both SATA and m.2 drives?

 

[USAFRet]

So from what i see you use around half of your storage.
How much did you pay for all of them?
Any benefits/dissadvantages of using both SATA and m.2 drives?

These were collected over time, as size met needs met budget.
The 2x 840 EVOs are from Nov/Dec 2014.

For instance, the 1TB Intel 660p H drive.
Didn't really need it. But there was a 1 day Newegg sale for $88, back in 2019. That price for a 1TB NVMe was too good to pass up. It is in a PCIe adapter.

In my use, I see ZERO difference in performance between the 660p and the various SATA III Samsung/Sandisk drives. Even though the sequential benchmark number is 3x that of the SATA III drives.

 

[Dj0gany]

These were collected over time, as size met needs met budget.
The 2x 840 EVOs are from Nov/Dec 2014.

For instance, the 1TB Intel 660p H drive.
Didn't really need it. But there was a 1 day Newegg sale for $88, back in 2019. That price for a 1TB NVMe was too good to pass up. It is in a PCIe adapter.

In my use, I see ZERO difference in performance between the 660p and the various SATA III Samsung/Sandisk drives. Even though the sequential benchmark number is 3x that of the SATA III drives.

So there is really no point in going with a m.2 (unless is somehow chepear ofcourse) over sata III?
A good sata III SSD i mean.
I dont understand why so many people would die to have a cheap m.2 over a good quality sata, which probably costs less than that m.2 .
I mean i understand why so many youtubers use it in their builds,which are ussually above 1000$,but i swear people forget how good a good SATA III drive is.

 

[USAFRet]

So there is really no point in going with a m.2 (unless is somehow chepear ofcourse) over sata III?
A good sata III SSD i mean.
I dont understand why so many people would die to have a cheap m.2 over a good quality sata, which probably costs less than that m.2 .
I mean i understand why so many youtubers use it in their builds,which are ussually above 1000$,but i swear people forget how good a good SATA III drive is.

At price parity for a GOOD M.2 NVMe, and a fully compatible motherboard, there is no reason NOT to.

But yes, people drool over NVMe far too much.
Trying to forcefit a 980 Pro into a 10 year old motherboard, on a system used for Minecraft and homework.

 

[Dj0gany]

At price parity for a GOOD M.2 NVMe, and a fully compatible motherboard, there is no reason NOT to.

But yes, people drool over NVMe far too much.
Trying to forcefit a 980 Pro into a 10 year old motherboard, on a system used for Minecraft and homework.

Literally just replied to a thread similar to what you said about minecraft xD.
Thanks for sharing your experience : )

 

[BogdanH]

...do you actually use all of your storage, or are you just playing it safe by never running out of storage?

I find that very interesting question... and you actually gave the answer.
Yes, I think, we wish to be sure about having enough storage space .. just in case.. for future. And many time we actually over estimate our needs.

For example: we have 1TB drive for 2 years and we filled it with 400GB of data during that time. And now we become insecure about space, in sense "What? Almost half of drive is already filled? Time to get another/bigger drive..."
At this point we forget how long it took to collect that much data -we probably trail some of that data for many years, before we even got this 1TB drive. That is, we probably don't add 400GB of data every two years and when we add some, we also delete old data (i.e.replacing software versions). In short, it might take 8+ years before we actually add another 400GB of data.
Ok, is different story if we collect games, movies, etc. But in this case, one should get a NAS anyway.

SATA vs NVMe... well, NVMe is 5-times faster than SATA, so there for sure is noticeable difference. No, it's not "night and day" difference, but as there isn't much (if any) price difference between both, why not NVMe? At least for OS and daily work.

I have 512GB NVMe, one 256G SATA and one 128GB SATA drive. Both "small" SATA drives are from my previous build, so I just kept them. And that's it. For long term storage (backup, movies, etc.) NAS is used.

But as always, these things very much depend. I can read many gamer tend to have a bunch of games installed all the time. And many "collectors" don't use NAS (I guess), so it's normal they need to populate every SATA slot available, with as much TB they can get

 

[USAFRet]

but as there isn't much (if any) price difference between both, why not NVMe?

That is the case only very very recently.

A year ago, a 1TB 970 EVO ($250) was 50-75% more than a 1TB 860 EVO ($150).

 

[Dj0gany]

I find that very interesting question... and you actually gave the answer.
Yes, I think, we wish to be sure about having enough storage space .. just in case.. for future. And many time we actually over estimate our needs.

For example: we have 1TB drive for 2 years and we filled it with 400GB of data during that time. And now we become insecure about space, in sense "What? Almost half of drive is already filled? Time to get another/bigger drive..."
At this point we forget how long it took to collect that much data -we probably trail some of that data for many years, before we even got this 1TB drive. That is, we probably don't add 400GB of data every two years and when we add some, we also delete old data (i.e.replacing software versions). In short, it might take 8+ years before we actually add another 400GB of data.
Ok, is different story if we collect games, movies, etc. But in this case, one should get a NAS anyway.

SATA vs NVMe... well, NVMe is 5-times faster than SATA, so there for sure is noticeable difference. No, it's not "night and day" difference, but as there isn't much (if any) price difference between both, why not NVMe? At least for OS and daily work.

I have 512GB NVMe, one 256G SATA and one 128GB SATA drive. Both "small" SATA drives are from my previous build, so I just kept them. And that's it. For long term storage (backup, movies, etc.) NAS is used.

But as always, these things very much depend. I can read many gamer tend to have a bunch of games installed all the time. And many "collectors" don't use NAS (I guess), so it's normal they need to populate every SATA slot available, with as much TB they can get

Thank you for your reply.
If there isnt much of a price difference and you have a m.2 slot available, sure i would go for the m.2 too.
But people tend to forget how good a solid sata ssd can be.
I will understand people who will pay double the price more for a m.2 that boots 2 seconds faster that a sata,especially if that money can be spent on something that would make a more significant difference.
Im currently running 1TB HDD, i have 800GB free....

 

[BogdanH]

That is the case only very very recently.

Yes, is true -I commented today's situation. I have NVMe only for about a year now, after prices became more "reasonable".

But people tend to forget how good a solid sata ssd can be.

Many of us are blinded by benchmark numbers, which again, influence our purchase decision. Yes, SATA SSD is more than good enough for average user... still, NVMe is better (faster, no cables). And if price is close enough... Or let me say, if someone is about to buy new SSD (as a main/OS drive), then it sure makes sense to consider NVMe.

Im currently running 1TB HDD, i have 800GB free...

You're using classic HDD as your main drive? ..interesting

 

[Dj0gany]

Yes, is true -I commented today's situation. I have NVMe only for about a year now, after prices became more "reasonable".


Many of us are blinded by benchmark numbers, which again, influence our purchase decision. Yes, SATA SSD is more than good enough for average user... still, NVMe is better (faster, no cables). And if price is close enough... Or let me say, if someone is about to buy new SSD (as a main/OS drive), then it sure makes sense to consider NVMe.

You're using classic HDD as your main drive? ..interesting

Money priorities to say the least.
I will buy it around June though.

 

[DSzymborski]

I like having multiple drives for organization and for modularity and enough room to fulfill all my needs. Things inside my main rig include an automatic weekly backup of Steam directories (F/G/L to N) and normally, a daily backup for the D and E drives, with more mission-important data to I. H and K are spare drives that don't have a use at the moment, J is the weekly backup of the OS drive. M is the Blu-Ray burner and O is a USB drive for things I want to travel with without necessarily wanting to download things from home.

I is missing at the moment because it suddenly became grindy and unreadable, but D and E are also backed up to the file server (not seen here) and to the cloud, both automated daily.

I'm moving the main rig soon to a case with only four drive bays, so there will be some reshuffling of what drives are where among my PCs, though the backup regimen will be largely the same.

 

[USAFRet]

And my drives depicted above doesn't touch the 50+TB in or attached to the NAS. 12 drives of varying sizes.

TS-453A:
480GB Ironwolf SSD - System drive and volume
3x 8TB Seagate and Toshiba, one JBOD volume

TR-004 external:
4x 4TB Ironwolf, one JBOD volume

MediaSonic external:
2TB
3TB
3TB
3TB