Gaming PC storage setup

[narsenau01]

Hi there, im currently building a new (and my first) gaming pc on an asus rog maxus x hero (w/wifi), i78700k, 32gb corsair dominator plat ddr4, geforce 1080 sc gpu, corsair hxi1000w psu, and custom liquid cooling loop all enclosed nicely in the corsair carbide740 air case. I recently purchased 2 500gb samsung 960 pro m.2 drives and ever since ive had this lingering feeling about how that may not be sufficient. I am thinking of buying a separate ssd with small capacity for the primary boot drive then a larger 1-2tb ssd for a backup. Ive never really played with storage and storage configurations before so im truly not sure what the optimal set up for my fancy new pc would be. Is it possible to have a boot drive, raid0 the m.2, and back up everything through a program? would it be better to get an internal or external ssd for backup ? also im not even quite sure what raid really is or if i should use a raid or which raid would be best. please help this noob get his new pc up and running at lightning speeds! thank you in advanced! (ps. buying new ssd's isnt an issue and im open to all suggestions)

 

[Zerk2012]

You should of asked before you bought any drives.
Since your using SSD's 1 M.2 250 GB would of done fine for the boot drive then a 1TB regular SATA SSD for your games.
32GB of memory was also overkill for just gaming and a 1000 watt power supply is overkill 650 watts would of been fine even overclocking.
Their no reason to Raid anything it's not really going to help.

For the drives you have you can start with just them depending on how many games and their size your going to download. Use one for the OS and programs and the other for games, when you start running out of space on the gaming drive just add a 1TB SSD and keep going.

For backup you could use a external regular hard drive 1TB should be fine. In reality for just gaming your not going to have anything you cant just reinstall.

 

[narsenau01]

You should of asked before you bought any drives.
Since your using SSD's 1 M.2 250 GB would of done fine for the boot drive then a 1TB regular SATA SSD for your games.
32GB of memory was also overkill for just gaming and a 1000 watt power supply is overkill 650 watts would of been fine even overclocking.
Their no reason to Raid anything it's not really going to help.

For the drives you have you can start with just them depending on how many games and their size your going to download. Use one for the OS and programs and the other for games, when you start running out of space on the gaming drive just add a 1TB SSD and keep going.

For backup you could use a external regular hard drive 1TB should be fine. In reality for just gaming your not going to have anything you cant just reinstall.

thank you for the speedy response Zerk2012! I should have included that this pc will also function as a workstation, i am an enthusiast music maker and video/graphics producer/designer. I will but running such programs as Adobe premiere pro, after fx, lightroom, photoshop, and various music production software. im sure that you are correct the memory was probably overkill but running premiere, AE, and PS at once has proven to be.. well.. laggy. Atleast on my old system. im making a huge jump from my dell dimension e520 which i modded a bit. I threw a core 2 quad extreme 6800 on the original board (couldnt find a replacement that fit the OG case, threw 4 2g ddr2 sticks in, added mini gtx 1050ti after making custom fitting for back side of case, and replaced the old hdd with a little 500 ssd as boot and storage. I wanted a dramatic improvement and, as stated before, i am a bit of an enthusiast. if you think thats overkill you should see the loop i designed.. will upload pictures once its complete . All that being said, do you still think itd be best to possible return one of the m.2 drives and swap it out for a 1 tb? i was thinking maybe getting an 280 octane pci express card for boot and using the 2 m.2's as a single 1tb main storage, then getting a 1 tb backup drive. although this may be "overkill and a half", would it work ? and if so would it theoretically maximize my workstation's potential as both a super fast gaming comp and highly efficient recording/designing/editing/ production station ?

 

[Zerk2012]

I would not use a SSD for backup.

In my PC I use a SSD for the OS and programs, SSD for games, small SSD for a scratch drive, 2X regular drives for storage, regular internal drive for backup and a regular external drive for backup.
Works very good for work programs. I one time lost 6 hours of work on a drive failure so their no such thing to me as overkill on backup for work.

 

[narsenau01]

I would not use a SSD for backup.

In my PC I use a SSD for the OS and programs, SSD for games, small SSD for a scratch drive, 2X regular drives for storage, regular internal drive for backup and a regular external drive for backup.
Works very good for work programs. I one time lost 6 hours of work on a drive failure so their no such thing to me as overkill on backup for work.

I hear ya ! Yeah maybe i will do something similar then. Im going to look into maybe picking up 1 hdd storage and 1 internal backup. Ill probably look into picking up a couple of 4tb's just incase. Im not quite sure yet how it will come together but i do appreciate the advice!