[SOLVED] NVME for OS or Storage?

[regeisle]

This is for a graphic design / coding / development system, not gaming.

I currently have a Samsung 850 Evo 120gb SSD for my OS/boot drive, and data on an old WD Black 1TB HDD. Looking into getting an NVME drive to drop into my single M2 slot, but don't know if it makes more sense as boot/OS or data drive.

Data sizes range pretty widely, from small code files to huge design files (several hundred MB).

Data files are saved to Dropbox to sync up with business partner, so there's a fair amount of syncs, downloading new files, etc. Active drive.

Either way the HDD is gone. Just not sure if it makes sense to swap the current SSD boot drive for faster NVME and switch to a 1TB SATA SSD for data, or keep boot as is and go NVME for data.

Any suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks!

 

[Ralston18]

My thoughts/recommendations:

NVME as boot drive but should be at least 256 GB.

Then the 1TB SSD for data.

 

[Newtonius]

I agree with @Ralston18, look at my build below and you'll see that same spec going on. In my experience an NVMe for boot has felt snappy even on laptops that use a SATA M.2. Though Windows' constant updates and small writes here and there during daily usage will wear on the drive after a year or so for small m.2 NVMe's/SATA drives. After 6 months my NVMe is at 99% life capacity - so still plenty of life left.

 

[jeremyj_83]

This is for a graphic design / coding / development system, not gaming.

I currently have a Samsung 850 Evo 120gb SSD for my OS/boot drive, and data on an old WD Black 1TB HDD. Looking into getting an NVME drive to drop into my single M2 slot, but don't know if it makes more sense as boot/OS or data drive.

Data sizes range pretty widely, from small code files to huge design files (several hundred MB).

Data files are saved to Dropbox to sync up with business partner, so there's a fair amount of syncs, downloading new files, etc. Active drive.

Either way the HDD is gone. Just not sure if it makes sense to swap the current SSD boot drive for faster NVME and switch to a 1TB SATA SSD for data, or keep boot as is and go NVME for data.

Any suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks!

Since your data sets will be at the most several hundred MB, I would use a SATA SSD for that. Had you been doing video editing with data sets in the multi GB range the NVMe data drive would make more sense. There fore I also agree with a 240GB+ NVMe OS/application drive and a good SATA SSD (Crucial MX500, WD Blue, SanDisk Ultra 3d, Samsung 850/860 EVO) for the data. You can keep your HDD as well and just relegate it to music, documents, video, downloads, etc... storage.