Question Hard Drive Setup for Gaming

[fkouloufakos]

I'm building out a PC and wondering how I should set up my hd's. I'm thinking of a 500tb m.2 for the boot drive, a 1tb m.2 for a gaming drive, then 2+tb 3.5" for editing apps/mass storage. Is this overkill/should I be thinking differently?
Thanks all!

 

[drivinfast247]

I'm building out a PC and wondering how I should set up my hd's. I'm thinking of a 500tb m.2 for the boot drive, a 1tb m.2 for a gaming drive, then 2+tb 3.5" for editing apps/mass storage. Is this overkill/should I be thinking differently?
Thanks all!

That's fine, though 1tb is small for games.

 

[fkouloufakos]

Appreciate the opinion. Not sure I can afford going to 2tb m.2 for gaming lol I'll try to get something figured out but I'm not sure I'd need more than that for gaming. I mean CoD is only 120gb...At that size I could put 5-6 without much degradation right?

 

[hotaru.hino]

I'd say find a way to ditch the separate OS + games drive to make things simpler and more flexible. I'm not sure which brand or whatnot you're going for, but as an example, taking the Samsung 970, a 2TB drive will be $30 more than a 500GB + 1TB setup.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Is this overkill/should I be thinking differently?

No. That's not overkill.
In fact you're thinking too small.

500GB SSD for OS drive is fine. You can even have windows 10 in one partition and windows 11 in another partition. Probably some space left for having linux there as well (if this interests you).
1TB for games is not enough. Think of double or triple that. SATA SSDs for game library is fine. No need to go for expensive NVME drives there.
2TB for mass storage/backups/media is not nearly enough. This depends on, what you want to keep and how long. But probably 5x or 10x more.

 

[Richj444]

Appreciate the opinion. Not sure I can afford going to 2tb m.2 for gaming lol I'll try to get something figured out but I'm not sure I'd need more than that for gaming. I mean CoD is only 120gb...At that size I could put 5-6 without much degradation right?

The size of the gaming drive kind of depends on your internet speed too. If you're lucky enough to have a fast setup so you can download games in a few minutes as opposed to hours, you might not mind a smaller drive as you can delete and install games with minimal hassle. If you want / need to have multiple games permanently installed, I'd agree with a 2tb drive.

 

[doughillman]

I'd say find a way to ditch the separate OS + games drive to make things simpler and more flexible. I'm not sure which brand or whatnot you're going for, but as an example, taking the Samsung 970, a 2TB drive will be $30 more than a 500GB + 1TB setup.

Hard disagree. Boot drive gets Windows ONLY. Games / data all go on AT LEAST one separate drive. Makes it MUCH easier to wipe and reload Windows if you need to, or to upgrade the size of the other drives, or to transfer them to a new build, etc.

OP, your plan is a good one. Though I would echo the suggestion to go with a bigger games drive, unless you are TRULY the sorta person who plays just a few games at a time and is then fine with deleting them afterwards. Personally, my games take up over 3 TB on my gaming system. I clearly don't live that way. I'd step down to a Gen 3 m.2 if it meant being able to fit a 2TB instead of a 1TB into my budget. You're not realistically going to notice the speed difference between the generations, but you will notice the speed decrease if you fill that drive up. Plus, you'll notice when you run out of room.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Hard disagree. Boot drive gets Windows ONLY. Games / data all go on AT LEAST one separate drive. Makes it MUCH easier to wipe and reload Windows if you need to, or to upgrade the size of the other drives, or to transfer them to a new build, etc.

Some points in no particular order

• Wiping and reloading Windows should only happen enough times that you can count it on one hand throughout the life of the computer. If you need to do it more than that, that tends to indicate a problem between the chair and the keyboard
• A ton of important data gets saved by default on the users folder anyway and trying to move the default location somewhere else is not exactly recommended. So if you were going to wipe Windows, there's already some prep you need to do to store this data before proceeding with the wipe.
• Most applications can be redownloaded anyway. If they can't, then I'm sure you'd keep a backup of it somewhere. There's also the issue that there's some manual work involved with applications that you want to tie into some Windows functionality like context menus or setting default apps that reinstalling would take care of.
  • If downloading and reinstalling a bunch of apps is troublesome, then I'd argue you're not doing things efficiently (e.g., like using Ninite) or you should pare things down to the absolute essentials and install other things as needed when you need it.
• Unless you're on a laptop, adding more storage space typically means adding a whole physical drive, not replacing one with something larger.

I mean all of this can be worked around anyway by partitioning the drive.

 

[sonofjesse]

2TB drives have come down a lot. I would not go lower than 2TB. Some good deals on 4TB as well.